Fairies of the Frost by Irving Sidney Dix — Read

When the Frost-spirit, with her icy wand, / Strikes the cold Northwind, bringing frost and snow, / She sends her Fairies through the frozen land / To deck with sculpture all the world below; / Soon every bank, so lately green with grass, / Like streets of marble to the margin lies, / And here and there, wherever one may pass, / Frail, fairy structures magic-like arise; / The slender willows, bow'd in artless grief, / Appear in white, as pledge of Winter's care, / And every idle reed and clinging leaf / Have spirits, full as bright, beside them there; / While pine and hemlock, shorn of all their green, / Stand out like sculptur'd Druids of the wood; / And the small beeches, hovering between, / Seem children of some banish'd brotherhood; / The broken stumps become as kingly chairs, / The fallen logs, great pillars, round and white, / And the dead branches, Oriental stairs / That lead to rooms all glittering with light; / Each mossy knoll becomes a marble mound, / Th' unlettered stones, all artless works of art, / And e'en the brooklets in the forest round / Are set with diamonds dear to Nature's heart.