Songs of the Winter Nights: I

Back shining from the pane, the fire
Seems outside in the snow:
So love set free from love's desire
Lights grief of long ago.

The dark is thinned with snow-sheen fine,
The earth bedecked with moon;
Out on the worlds we surely shine
More radiant than in June!

In the white garden lies a heap
As brown as deep-dug mould:
A hundred partridges that keep
Each other from the cold.

My father gives them sheaves of corn,
For shelter both and food:
High hope in me was early born,
My father was so good.