How one Winter Came in the Lake Region Analysis

1For weeks and weeks the autumn world stood still,
2Clothed in the shadow of a smoky haze;
3The fields were dead, the wind had lost its will,
4And all the lands were hushed by wood and hill,
5In those grey, withered days.

6Behind a mist the blear sun rose and set,
7At night the moon would nestle in a cloud;
8The fisherman, a ghost, did cast his net;
9The lake its shores forgot to chafe and fret,
10And hushed its caverns loud.

11Far in the smoky woods the birds were mute,
12Save that from blackened tree a jay would scream,
13Or far in swamps the lizard's lonesome lute
14Would pipe in thirst, or by some gnarlèd root
15The tree-toad trilled his dream.

16From day to day still hushed the season's mood,
17The streams stayed in their runnels shrunk and dry;
18Suns rose aghast by wave and shore and wood,
19And all the world, with ominous silence, stood
20In weird expectancy:

21When one strange night the sun like blood went down,
22Flooding the heavens in a ruddy hue;
23Red grew the lake, the sere fields parched and brown,
24Red grew the marshes where the creeks stole down,
25But never a wind-breath blew.

26That night I felt the winter in my veins,
27A joyous tremor of the icy glow;
28And woke to hear the north's wild vibrant strains,
29While far and wide, by withered woods and plains,
30Fast fell the driving snow.

There have been no submitted criqiques, be the first to add one below.