First Snow, February
WOOLNER, to-night it snows for the first time.
Our feet know well the path where in this snow
Mine leave one track: how all the ways we know
Are hoary in the long-unwonted rime!
Grey as their ghosts which now in your new clime
Must haunt you while those singing spirits reap
All night the field of hospitable sleep-
Whose song, past the whole sea, finds counter-chime.
Can the year change, and I not think of thee,
With whom so many changes of the year
So many years were watched-our love's degree
Alone the same? Ah still for thee and me,
Winter or summer, Woolner, here or there,
One grief, one joy, one loss, one victory.