Friday, January 12, 2024

To a Snowflake

Poem for the week’ — “To a Snowflake”:


What heart could have thought you?—

Past our devisal

(O filigree petal!)

Fashioned so purely,

Fragilely, surely,

From what Paradisal

Imagineless metal,

Too costly for cost?

Who hammered you, wrought you,

From argentine vapour?—

“God was my shaper.

Passing surmisal,

He hammered, He wrought me,

From curled silver vapour,

To lust of His mind;—

Thou could’st not have thought me!

So purely, so palely,

Tinily, surely,

Mightily, frailly,

Insculped and embossed,

With His hammer of wind,

And His graver of frost.”

-- Francis Thompson