Winter Music

It freezes : all across a soundless sky 
The birds go home. The governing dark's begun. 
The steadfast dark that waits not for a sun; 
The ultimate dark wherein the race shall die. 
Death with his evil finger to his lip 
Leers in at human windows, turning spy 
To learn the country where his rules shall lie 
When he assumes perpetual generalship. 
The undefeated enemy, the chill 
That shall benumb the voiceful earth at last, 
Is master of our moment, and has bound 
The viewless wind itself. There is no sound. 
It freezes. Every friendly stream is fast. 
It freezes, and the graven twigs are still. 

The winter moon has such a quiet car
That all the winter nights are dumb with rest.
She drives the gradual dark with drooping crest,
And dreams go wandering from her drowsy star.
Because the nights are silent, do not wake:
But there shall tremble through the general earth,
And over you, a quickening and a birth.
The sun is near the hill-tops for your sake.

The latest born of all the days shall creep
To kiss the tender eyelids of the year;
And you shall wake, grown young with perfect sleep,
And smile at the new world, and make it dear
With living murmurs more than dreams are deep.
Silence is dead, my Dawn; the morning's here.