Winter Gales
Those galling gales, which in rough Winter rush
Across bald-headed mountaintops exposed
To their wild buffetings as captives to
Some hateful prison-master’s vicious scourge:
Over the cringing, wooded-hillsides’ slopes
They violently hasten with rude roars,
Like raging sea-surges pounding rock shores
Intemperately.
All the laggard leaves
They lash from fear-chilled branches tossed in fright
At such loud-voiced disparagement. Down through
Lush valleys’ huddling fields they storm towards
Wide-open plains impatiently, flogging
Fast-fading petals from the latest flowers
Which dare to flaunt their lingering delights
In wanton display; whipping thin hedgerows
With undisguised chagrin to find them still
Dissenting from predestined dominance.
Swift scurriers of ice-eyed Winter’s cold
Autocracy, bearing its messages
Of glacial control, their frenzied zeal
In executing such commissions seems
Immoderate.
Although we know that Spring
Could not revivify the world without
This purging of degeneration’s dross,
Each Winter gale resembles, in its force,
That bigot passion which, unbridled, drives
Through ruthless human hearts when they pursue
The hapless victims of some demagogue;
Or implement, for personal reward,
Dark deeds of wickedness by others schemed.
It is the fate of sycophants to be
Reviled for acts their masters urge them to:
But those who serve a tyrant’s will or whim
Deserve their disrepute, however grim.
