Winter Ballad

The winter comes on lazy wings and brings us frost and cold,
While autumn beat retreat with care, grown brown, and bent and old.
Though winter likes to come each year with laugh as cold as ice,
It chuckled softly in this year in repentance of all vice.

But maybe yet its cold will burn the lingering grasses green
And leave the earth all brown and bare with no light in between.
Perhaps despite its gentle start, it never once repented--
Not wholly of its cruelties, nor of its bite relented.

Deceptive is the winter mild that bows the autumn out
With gentlemanly courtesy. He soon shall turn about
and crack the earth and beat it bare, turned frosty, cold, and dark;
Oh winter, thou unkindest wind, blow out all lasting spark.