Poems: Old and New

by Frederick George Scott

 

AMONG THE SPRUCES.

 
’TIS sweet, O God, to steal away,
   Before the morning sun is high,
Upon some frosty winter’s day,
    When not a cloud is on the sky,
And all the world is white below,
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Knee-deep with freshly-fallen snow,—


To steal into the silent woods
   Before the trees are quite awake,
And watch them in their snowy hoods
   A rough-and-ready toilet make,
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When in the little breezes creep
And rouse them gently from their sleep.


’Tis sweet, O God, to kneel among
   The snow-bent trees, and lift the mind
Above the boughs where birds have sung
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   Above the pathways of the wind, [Page 101]
Into the very heart of space,—
To where the angels see Thy face.


And while my spirit mounts in prayer,
   So keen becomes its mystic sight,
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That through the sunshine in the air
    I see a new and heavenly light,
And all the bowed woods seem to be
Acknowledging the Trinity. [Page 102]