The snow-birds flutter in the shocks of corn
And loose the icy spangles in their flight;
The hamlet slumbers in the frosted morn
And all the roofs are white.

The sheeted steeples of the village stab
The pallid light above the coming glow,
While the hushed valley, lying dim and drab,
Pales with its pall of snow.

And high aloft, the crows, a hurrying crowd,
Catch, as they wing, the earliest glint of day,
Which tips the engine's upward-rolling cloud
Of elephantine gray.

But now the bright and all-revealing Sun
Our realm of mystery and dream invades,
Shatters the web which dearest Fancy spun
And lo, the glamour fades!