Winter-Solitude

    I saw the city's towers on a luminous pale-gray sky; 
   Beyond them a hill of the softest mistiest green, 
   With naught but frost and the coming of night between, 
   And a long thin cloud above the colour of August rye.
   I sat in the midst of a plain on my snowshoes with bended knee 
   Where the thin wind stung my cheeks, 
   And the hard snow ran in little ripples and peaks, 
   Like the fretted floor of a white and petrified sea.
   And a strange peace gathered about my soul and shone, 
  As I sat reflecting there, 
  In a world so mystically fair, 
  So deathly silent-I so utterly alone.