Poem for the day

My poem for the day is all about how frost and ice can transform ordinary surroundings into a glittering new magical world. In January we can often wake up to the radiant splendour of ice and snow and frost.


For every shrub, and every blade of grass,
And every pointed thorn, seemed wrought in glass.
In pearls and rubies rich the hawthorns show,
While through the ice the crimson berries glow.
The thick-sprung reeds the watery marshes yield,
Seem polished lances in a hostile field.
The stag in limpid currents with surprise
Sees Crystal branches on his forehead rise.
The spreading oak, the beech, and towering pine,
Glazed over, in the freezing aether shine,
When if a sudden gust of wind arise,
The brittle forest into atoms flies:
the crackling wood beneath the tempest bends,
And in a spangled shower the prospect ends.

Ambrose Philips (1674 - 1749)