I used to be snow white, but I drifted.
Mae West
December (An Excerpt)
by Adeline Treadwell Lunt
It likes me well—December’s breath,
Although its kiss be cold,
Nor yet the year is sealed in death,
‘Tis only growing old.
Nor yet the brooks have ceased to run,
The rivers freely flow,
And over flowerless fields the sun
Still wreathes a roseate glow.
In stranded boats the children creep
To wait the coming tide,
And watch the foaming breakers leap
Upon the meadow’s side.
The year is dying, ay, is dead,
But yet December’s breath
A glory and a glow can shed
Irradiating death.
December
by Henry G. Hewlett
An old man’s life, dim, colorless and cold,
Is like the earth and sky December shows.
The barest joys of sense are all he knows:
Hope that erewhile made their fruition bold,
Now soars beyond. If one sun-glint of gold,
Rifts in the dense grey firmament disclose,
Earth has enough. ‘Mid purple mist up-throws
The birch her silver; the larch may hold
With fragile needles yet its amber cone,
Tho’ other trees be dark: the pine alone,
Like memory, lingers green, till over all,
Death-like, the snow doth cast its gentle pall.
Child-month and Mother-year in death are one:
The winds of midnight moan memorial.
Fourteen Lines 