Ottawa in January
Ottawa in January photograh by Ryan James
The First Snow by William Wilfred Campbell
Over the querulous age of the grey old year
Heaven its mantle of white sends softly down;
And far over mountain and fell and woodland sere
its folds are thrown.
Hushed are the clamours of autumn; old oceans moan
Less loud in desolate caverns; the lonely hills
Are capped with its silence; and all earth's ruin o'erthrown
its great dream fills.
Under the high-arched aisles of the ancient woods.
In those corridors solemn and dim where the sky-patches peer,
A mystical spirit of joy and solitude broods
O'er the tomb of the year.
And here I have loved, in those hours of the heart's high dream
To walk with the silence, and hark to that spirit aglow
Of the trance of forest and sky and mountain and stream
In the pause of the snow.