Poem for the Day

To a Snowflake

 

By Francis Thompson, 1891

 

WHAT heart could have thought you? --

Past our devisal

(O filigree petal!)

Fashioned so purely,

Fragilely, surely,

From what Paradisal

Imagineless metal,

Too costly for cost?

Who hammered you, wrought you,

From argentine vapor? --

"God was my shaper.

Passing surmisal,

He hammered, He wrought me,

From curled silver vapor,

To lust of His mind --

Thou could'st not have thought me!

So purely, so palely,

Tinily, surely,

Mightily, frailly,

Insculped and embossed,

With His hammer of wind,

And His graver of frost."

*

3:00 p.m.: I've been standing at my kitchen's east window, putting things in the dishwasher and watching little snowflakes fall.