If you walk a winter’s night,
Listen, and you will hear
The shrieking wind evade your sight
And cry into your ear.
It whips away at flowers,
And the roses bow their heads,
Acknowledging the power
Of the singing silver thread
Which leaps about the outcrops,
And laughs with the ravine,
And whistles past the cave tops
Without once being seen.
The sleepy sky is but its stage,
And clouds move at its will.
Through every stream it seems to scream
A sonnet cold and shrill.
Grasses, stalked by ribboned air,
Twist and bend away,
Unable to escape the snare
Or circumvent the fray.
And I am not unlike the night
Upon the rippled river.
My sins are all put out of sight,
But I still see, and shiver.