[JustAmy]

Snowflakes

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.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

[JustAmy]

THE OLD HOUSE REMEMBERS

The old ranch house is alone with its past,
The windows are closed and the doors are fast;
The windmills are hushed, a desolate pall
Of silence and heartbreak broods over all.
Only the wind in the cottonwood trees
Tells off its rosary of memories.
Once around the wells were cattle that milled
And cooled themselves in the water which spilled
From the brimming tanks and trickled away
To a wet weather stream which trees betray;
There the willows dip their long lacy plumes
Over low marsh grass where the smartweed blooms.

Now the cottonwoods murmur, the willows weep,
And all else is silent, the place asleep,
But above the stillness when soft winds blow
Are the phantom voices of long ago ...
A lone cowboy as he rides down the trail
And yodels to drown out the coyote's wail.
While the walls reecho with rhythmic beat
To the merry tunes and to dancing feet.
So the old house lives again in its past,
Lives in the joys that the years have amassed.
And the full rich life that its loved ones knew
Is wafted back when it comes into view.

By Laressa Cox McBurney
Published in Prairie Panorama in 1938