Winter Frost Poem by James Grahame

From sunward rocks the icicle's faint drop,
By lonely river side, is heard, at times,
To break the silence deep; for now the stream
Is mute, or faintly gurgles far below
Its frozen ceiling: silent stands the mill,
The wheel immovable, and shod with ice,
The babbling rivulet, at each little slope,
Flows scantily beneath a lucid veil,
And seems a pearly current liquefied:
While, at the shelvy side, in thousand shapes
Fantastical, the frostwork domes uprear
Their tiny fabrics, gorgeously superb
With ornaments beyond the reach of art.
Here vestibules of state, and colonnades;
There Gothic castles, grottos, heathen fanes,
Rise in review, and quickly disappear;
Or through some fairy palace fancy roves,
And studs, with ruby lamps, the fretted roof;
Or paints with every colour of the bow
Spotless parterres, all streak'd with snow-white flowers,
Flowers that no archetype in nature own;
Or spreads the spiky crystals into fields
Of bearded grain, rustling in autumn breeze.