Out of the bosom of the Air,
Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,
Over the woodlands brown and bare,
Over the harvest-fields forsaken,
Silent, and soft, and slow
Descends the snow.
Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession,
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.
This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
This is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
Now whispered and revealed
To wood and field.
Birds of Passage 1863
- Birds of Passage
- Prometheus, or the Poet's Forethought
- Epimetheus, or the Poet's Afterthought
- The Ladder of St. Augustine
- The Phantom Ship
- The Warden of the Cinque Ports
- Haunted Houses
- In the Churchyard at Cambridge
- The Emperor's Bird's-Nest
- The Two Angels
- Daylight and Moonlight
- The Jewish Cemetery at Newport
- Oliver Basselin
- Victor Galbraith
- My Lost Youth
- The Ropewalk
- The Golden Mile-Stone
- Catawba Wine
- Santa Filomena
- The Discoverer of the North Cape
- Daybreak
- The Fiftieth Birthday of Agassiz
- Children
- Sandalphon
- The Children's Hour
- Enceladus
- The Cumberland
- Snow-Flakes
- A Day of Sunshine
- Something Left Undone
- Weariness