MOUNTAINS IN SNOW.

Cold—oh, deathly cold—and silent, lie the white hills 'neath the sky, Like a soul whom fate has covered with thy snows, Adversity! Not a sough of wind comes moaning; the same outline, high and bare, As in pleasant days of summer, rises in the murky air. Very quiet—very silent—whether shines the mocking sun Through the wintry blue, or lowering drift the feathery snow-clouds dun: Always quiet, always silent, be it night or be it day, With that pale shroud coldly lying where the heather-blossoms lay. Can they be the very mountains that we looked at, you and I? One long wavy line of purple painted on the sunset sky; With the new moon's edge just touching that dark rim, like dancer's foot, Or young Dian's, on the hill-side for Endymion waiting mute. O how golden was that even!—O how balm the summer air! How the bridegroom sky bent loving o'er its earth so virgin fair! How the earth looked up to heaven like a bride with joy oppressed, In her thankfulness half-weeping that she was thus overblest! Ghostly mountains! 'Silence—silence!' now is aye your soundless voice, Lifted in an awful patience o'er the world's uproarious noise; O'er its jarrings and its greetings—o'er its loving and its hate— Silence! Bare thy brows all dumbly to the snows of heaven, and—wait!'