Ode to the Last Light of Winter

Ode to the Last Light of Winter

I.
O tender dusk that lingers on the hill,
Where February's breath still haunts the vine,
And frozen rivulets forget to spill
Their silver tongues along the sleeping pine—
I stand beneath thy melancholy shrine
And taste the season's last, embittered wine.
The amber sun descends through veils of grey,
A dying monarch robed in fading day.

II.
What whisper stirs among the barren boughs?
What phantom warmth persuades the crocus-bed
To dream of April's yet-unspoken vows,
While January's ghost lies scarcely dead?
The earth, half-waking, turns her frosted head
And feels the pulse of seasons yet unwed—
A trembling hope, too delicate to name,
Like embers nursing an uncertain flame.

III.
How oft I've wandered through these ashen fields
When twilight draped her mantle on the moor,
And felt what silent consolation yields
The heart that aches yet dares to ache for more!
For Beauty lives not past the bolted door
Of time, but slips like tide from every shore,
And we who chase her fleeting hem must learn
That what we love is loveliest as it burns.

IV.
The blackbird on the frost-encrusted rail
Sings not of spring, but of this very hour—
This breath of cold, this intervening veil
Between the death of snow and birth of flower.
He knows, as I, the transitory power
Of moments poised upon the edge to tower
Then fall, like petals from a winter rose
That blooms in defiance, then in silence goes.

V.
O let me linger here where shadows blend
With the last copper threads of dying light,
Where frost and longing meet, and softly tend
The wounds that beauty opens every night.
For in this gloaming, exquisite and bright
With all the sorrow of departing sight,
I find what Keats once found beside the urn—
That truth is beauty, and both live to burn.

VI.
Farewell, pale sun! Thy journey bids thee sink
Beneath the violet arches of the west,
And I, who stood upon the trembling brink
Of rapture, fold these visions to my breast.
The winter lingers, but its cold bequest
Is not despair—'tis wonder, half-confessed,
That even in the season's deepest night,
The soul may feast upon diminished light.

VII.
So let the frost reclaim these quiet lanes,
And let the darkness gather, soft and slow;
For I have drunk from February's veins
A draught more sweet than any spring may know.
The heart that learns to love the afterglow
Shall never want for beauty, high or low—
For every ending is a beginning dressed
In evening robes, moving gently west.