Frederick Philip Grove
LANDSCAPES
(IM 16-28)

---

e-Edition by Gaby Divay
© August 2007

University of Manitoba Libraries	FPG & FrL Collections	University of Manitoba Archives

FIRST SNOW [32] by Frederick Philip Grove Soft-footed, overnight, this snow stole down, Crystalline vapours of the frozen vault, And hid the earth that yesterday was brown With virgin white which knows not flaw or fault. Like a beginning lies this virgin snow In glade and wood; and boughs of spruce and pine Are bent and loaded till they touch below The very ground with branched and bristling spine. Like the beginning or an end, forsooth! For who can tell what life it had to kill, What but to bury for another youth To rise again, another spring to fill? Thus, too, when ends the day, the night begins And is itself but rest against the day; And, rhythmically, like a top, time spins And trances idle spirals on its way. And day and night and spring and winter weave The pattern of past seasons and past years While faces rise and fall and greet and leave: We smile at cradles, and we sob at biers. In Memoriam 26