  SUDDENLY the snow is falling fast: Slow the lovely speed, All the air being full with fulness cast On the mounded world ... And the firmamental snow will give no heed, Nor the snow terrestrial have a care For anything its heavy deluge hides, For anything upcurled In its mountain-hug, nor what abides Imprisoned deep of the imprisoning air. Peter of Alcantara, how wide And untrodden quite Swells the sudden snow on every side, Speckled with no sign, One in uncontrollable and fearful white! . . . . Swiftly, as it came, its mood is changed ... Now it drifts a white flame of caress, As if it took design, Learnt a new art of its loveliness, And in a cave above the Saint is ranged. Hour on hour the world is flooded bright With fair agency, In continuance a sleep, of might To lay death athwart Any bosom, any limbs that cannot flee: Though in that white storm caught; For the deep snow of earth its snow abates Before a force of deeper chastity. Little flakes, that touch with feet like birds, Touch him not at all, But lie convex in a wave that curds, Bowed upon its vault, Stooping on him almost won to fall, Yet in strength withheld, whole in its love, As a virgin praying for a priest: So in its lovely halt, So aloof from sense, it rears above The saint its covert, not a flake released. |
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