Winter with the Gulf Stream
by Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
The boughs, the boughs are bare enough,But earth has not yet felt the snow.Frost-fringed our ivies are, and rough
With spiked rime the brambles show,The hoarse leaves crawl on hissing ground,What time the sighing wind is low.
But if the rain-blasts be unbound,And from dank feathers wring the drops,The clogg’d brook runs with choking sound,
Kneading the mounded mire that stopsHis channel under clammy coatsOf foliage fallen in the copse.
A single passage of weak notesIs all the winter bird dare try.The moon, half-orb’d, ere sunset floats
So glassy-white about the sky,So like a berg of hyaline,Pencill’d with blue so daintily—
I never saw her so divine.But thro’ black branches—rarely drestIn streaming scarfs that smoothly shine,
Shot o’er with lights—the emblazon’d west,Where yonder crimson fire-ball sets,Trails forth a purfled-silken vest.
Long beds I see of violetsIn beryl lakes which they reef o’er:A Pactolean river frets
Against its tawny-golden shore:All ways the molten colours run:Till, sinking ever more and more
Into an azure mist, the sunDrops down engulf’d, his journey done.
