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The frost that stings like fire upon my cheek,
The loneliness of this forsaken ground,
The long white drift upon whose powdered peak
I sit in the great silence as one bound;
The rippled sheet of snow where the wind blew
Across the open fields for miles ahead;
The far-off city towered and roofed in blue
A tender line upon the western red;
The stars that singly, then in flocks appear,
Like jets of silver from the violet dome,
So wonderful, so many and so near,
And then the golden moon to light me home -
The crunching snowshoes and the stinging air,
And silence, frost, and beauty everywhere.
Archibald Lampman (1861-1899), generally acknowledged as Canada's greatest 19th-century poet, was born in Morpeth, Ontario, and studied at Trinity College (now the University of Toronto). He was one of the "Confederation Group" of poets, which included Duncan Campbell Scott and William Wilfred Campbell. Collections of his poems include Among the Millet and Other Poems (1888), Lyrics of Earth (1895), and the posthumous Alcyone (1899), and Poems (1900).
Julia Kuhl has done illustrations for the New Yorker and the New York Times, among others. She now lives in Heidelberg, Germany, with her neurobiologist husband and is working on a comic book - a Fulika atra (coot) version of Shakespeare's Hamlet.
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