Frost-Flowers.

Over my window in pencillings white, Stealthily traced in the silence of night— Traced with a pencil as viewless as air, By an artist unseen, when the star-beams were fair, Came wonderful pictures, so life-like and true That I'm filled with amaze as the marvel I view. Like, and yet unlike the things I have seen,— Feathery ferns in the forest-depths green, Delicate mosses that hide from the light, Snow-drops, and lilies, and hyacinths white, Fringes, and feathers, and half-opened flowers, Closely-twined branches of dim, cedar bowers— Strange, that one hand should so deftly combine Such numberless charms in so quaint a design! O wondrous creations of silence and night! I watch as ye fade in the clear morning light,— As ye melt into tear-drops and trickle away From the keen, searching eyes of inquisitive Day. While I gaze ye are gone, and I see you depart With a wistful regret lying deep in my heart,— A longing for something that will not decay, Or melt like these frost-flowers in tear-drops away,— A passionate yearning of heart for that shore Where beauty unfading shall last evermore; Nor, e'en as we gaze, from our vision be lost Like the beautiful things that are pencilled in frost!