Classic Poem

Last night, while all the village slept,
She came—the Lady robed in white;
None heard as thro' the streets she swept,
Her footfall was so ghostly light.

She cast her mantle o'er the lands,
Like a pall for the lifeless earth below,
As she sifted from her elfin hands
The soft and feathery-flying snow.

The fox crept back into his lurch,
The stormy flakes so swiftly flew,
And the owl that shivered on his perch,
Heard her song as the night wind blew.

But the sleepers in the churchyard old
Could not hear her low refrain,
As she drew above them in the cold,
Her smooth and spotless counterpane.

The sad yews sighed as she hurried by,
And shook their phantom arms so bare;
And obelisks and headstones high
Stood like ghosts in the whitened air!

About the woodlands cold cascades
She works to build her magic halls,
And piles the roads with barricades—
White winrows or fantastic walls.

She whirls, she sweeps o'er moor and mere,
And dances down the shuddering air
In gusts that stiffen white with fear
The sighing hemlock's hoary hair!

On barren waste or windy hill,
Or deep in mountain-passes lone,
The wierd White Lady works her will,
And makes the frosty hours her own!