here comes winter

 Sharp is the night, but starts with frost alive

Leap off the rim of earth across the dome. 

It is a night to make the heavens our home 

More than the nest whereto apace we strive. 

Lengths down our road each fir-tree seems a hive, 

In swarms outrushing from the golden comb. 

They waken waves of thoughts that burst to foam: 

The living throb in me, the dead revive. 

Yon mantle clothes us: there, past mortal breath, 

Life glistens on the river of the death. 

It folds us, flesh and dust; and have we knelt, 

Or never knelt, or eyed as kine the springs 

Of radiance, the radiance enrings: 

And this is the soul’s haven to have felt.

                   Winter Heavens by George Meredith