When against earth a wooden heel <br />Clicks as loud as stone on steel, <br />When stone turns flour instead of flakes, <br />And frost bakes clay as fire bakes, <br />When the hard-bitten fields at last <br />Crack like iron flawed in the cast, <br />When the world is wicked and cross and old, <br />I long to be quit of the cruel cold. <br /> <br />Little birds like bubbles of glass <br />Fly to other Americas, <br />Birds as bright as sparkles of wine <br />Fly in the nite to the Argentine, <br />Birds of azure and flame-birds go <br />To the tropical Gulf of Mexico: <br />They chase the sun, they follow the heat, <br />It is sweet in their bones, O sweet, sweet, sweet! <br />It's not with them that I'd love to be, <br />But under the roots of the balsam tree. <br /> <br />Just as the spiniest chestnut-burr <br />Is lined within with the finest fur, <br />So the stoney-walled, snow-roofed house <br />Of every squirrel and mole and mouse <br />Is lined with thistledown, sea-gull's feather, <br />Velvet mullein-leaf, heaped together <br />With balsam and juniper, dry and curled, <br />Sweeter than anything else in the world. <br /> <br />O what a warm and darksome nest <br />Where the wildest things are hidden to rest! <br />It's there that I'd love to lie and sleep, <br />Soft, soft, soft, and deep, deep, deep!<br /><br />Elinor Morton Wylie<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/winter-sleep/
