Brueghel’s Winter by Walter de la Mare

Jagg'd mountain peaks and skies ice-green

Wall in the wild, cold scene below.

Churches, farms, bare copse, the sea

In freezing quiet of winter show;

Where ink-black shapes on fields in flood

Curling, skating, and sliding go.

To left, a gabled tavern; a blaze;

Peasants; a watching child; and lo,

Muffled, mute--beneath naked trees

In sharp perspective set a-row--

Trudge huntsmen, sinister spears aslant,

Dogs snuffling behind them in the snow;

And arrowlike, lean, athwart the air

Swoops into space a crow.

But flame, nor ice, nor piercing rock,

Nor silence, as of a frozen sea,

Nor that slant inward infinite line

Of signboard, bird, and hill, and tree,

Give more than subtle hint of him

Who squandered here life's mystery.