By Simer Dhume
A beautiful winter home in the Catskills, New York
Winter has begun. Winter solstice started today, December 21. It is the longest night of the year as well as the shortest day, in the upper half of the Earth, the northern hemisphere.
Do you know what is a winter solscite?
In the northern hemisphere, the winter season starts this December 21 and ends on March 20, 2022, three months long.
On this day, one of the Earth’s pole moves away from the sun at its maximum distance. As a result, the sun travels the shortest path, while the day receives the least amount of sunlight and the night is the longest.
Hints Of life celebrates the shortest day of the year with 7 beautiful winter poems. Every year, spellbounding elements of winter fills our heart with warmth and happiness. The view of the frozen world renders the soul.
Let’s laud and revere nature through these 7 beautiful poems.
The Snow Fairy
I Throughout the afternoon I watched them there, Snow-fairies falling, falling from the sky, Whirling fantastic in the misty air, Contending fierce for space supremacy. And they flew down a mightier force at night, As though in heaven there was revolt and riot, And they, frail things had taken panic flight Down to the calm earth seeking peace and quiet. I went to bed and rose at early dawn To see them huddled together in a heap, Each merged into the other upon the lawn, Worn out by the sharp struggle, fast asleep. The sun shone brightly on them half the day, By night they stealthily had stol’n away. II And suddenly my thoughts then turned to you Who came to me upon a winter’s night, When snow-sprites round my attic window flew, Your hair disheveled, eyes aglow with light. My heart was like the weather when you came, The wanton winds were blowing loud and long; But you, with joy and passion all aflame, You danced and sang a lilting summer song. I made room for you in my little bed, Took covers from the closet fresh and warm, A downful pillow for your scented head, And lay down with you resting in my arm. You went with Dawn. You left me ere the day, The lonely actor of a dreamy play.
Frozen Life
By Scardez Lisa
Spirals of frozen pieces in air Flakes of crystal falling in pair Ground laying with fair icy sand December welcomes a paradise land Peaks meeting sky comes down To wear a white, shiny crown Cap of snow on trees stuns the sight Night glitters with Crystal Lake's light Solid dew pearls ornament the leaves Shivering winter pushes sun into sleeves Moon glances through the icy blizzard Bearing it as a brave wizard Sky waters the land with frozen rain Earth kisses it with pleasing pain Grass sleeps under the shimmering cushion Waiting to rise, holding spring's vision Snow fairies in myth seem alive When the shed trees breathe to life No color but white around Yet nature appears like heaven ground Signature of life, when the lips smile We can see the faces zest up with life Months of frozen days bring happiness Mashed up with a little laziness
Spellbound
By Emily Brontë
The night is darkening round me, The wild winds coldly blow; But a tyrant spell has bound me And I cannot, cannot go. The giant trees are bending Their bare boughs weighed with snow. And the storm is fast descending, And yet I cannot go. Clouds beyond clouds above me, Wastes beyond wastes below; But nothing drear can move me; I will not, cannot go.
Snow
The dreamed Christmas, flakes shaken out of silences so far and starry we can’t sleep for listening for papery rustles out there in the night and wake to find our ceiling glimmering, the day a psaltery of light. So we’re out over the snow fields before it’s all seen off with a salt-lick of Atlantic air, then home at dusk, snow-blind from following chains of fox and crow and hare, to a fire, a roasting bird, a ringing phone, and voices wondering where we are. A day foretold by images of glassy pond, peasant and snowy roof over the holy child iconed in gold. Or women shawled against the goosedown air pleading with soldiers at a shifting frontier in the snows of television, while in the secret dark a fresh snow falls filling our tracks with stars.
At the Solstice
We say Next time we’ll go away, But then the winter happens, like a secret We’ve to keep yet never understand As daylight turns to cinema once more: A lustrous darkness deep in ice-age cold, And the print in need of restoration Starting to consume itself With snowfall where no snow is falling now. Or could it be a cloud of sparrows, dancing In the bare hedge that this gale of light Is seeking to uproot? Let it be sparrows, then, Still dancing in the blazing hedge, Their tender fury and their fall, Because it snows, because it burns.
The Bells
Hear the sledges with the bells --
Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
In the icy air of night!
While the stars that oversprinkle
All the heavens, seem to twinkle
With a crystalline delight;
Keeping time, time, time,
In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells --
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.
The Dipper
It was winter, near freezing, I'd walked through a forest of firs when I saw issue out of the waterfall a solitary bird. It lit on a damp rock, and, as water swept stupidly on, wrung from its own throat supple, undammable song. It isn't mine to give. I can't coax this bird to my hand that knows the depth of the river yet sings of it on land.
Hints Of Life wishes all its readers Happy Holidays!
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All the seven poems were brilliant and fantastic, Simer. Interesting to know on the Solstice. Never heard about it. Thanks.
Thank you for stopping by Kamal. Much appreciated!! 😊