...  Pouring her silver through that barren flower Of silver frost, until it filled and whitened A room where two small children waited, frightened At the pale ghost of light that hour by hour Stared at them till though fear slept not they slept.  And when that white ghost from the window crept, And day came and they woke and saw all plain, Though still the frost-flower blinded the window-pane, And touched their mother and touched her hand in vain, And wondered why she woke not when they woke; And wondered what it was their sleep that broke
When hand in hand they stared and stared, so frightened;
They feared and waited, and waited all day long
While all the shadows went and the day brightened,
All the ill shadows but one shadow strong.

Outside were busy feet and human speech
And daily cries and horns.  Maybe they heard,
Painfully wondering still, and each to each
Leaning, and listening if their mother stirred—­
Cold, cold,
Hungering as the long slow hours grew old,
Though food within the cupboard idle lay
Beyond their thought, or but beyond their reach. 
The soft blue pigeons all the afternoon
Sunned themselves on the roof or rose at play,
Then with the shrinking light fluttered away;
And once more came the icy hearted moon,
Staring down at the frightened children there
That could but shiver and stare.

...  How many hours, how many days, who knows? 
Neighbours there were who thought they had gone away
To return some luckier or luckless day. 
No sound came from the room:  the cold air froze
The very echo of the children’s sighs. 
And what they saw within each other’s eyes,
Or heard each other’s heart say as they peered
At the dead mother lying there, and feared
That she might wake, and then might never wake,
Who knows, who knows? 
None heard a living sound their silence break.

In those cold days and nights how many birds
Flittering above the fields and streams all frozen
Watched hungrily the tended flocks and herds—­
Earth’s chosen nourished by earth’s wise self-chosen! 
How many birds suddenly stiffened and died
With no plaint cried,
The starved heart ceasing when the pale sun ceased! 
And when the new day stepped from the same cold East
The dead birds lay in the light on the snow-flecked field,
Their song and beautiful free winging stilled.

I walked under snow-sprinkled hills at night,
And starry sprinkled, skies deep blue and bright. 
The keen wind thrust with his knife against the thin
Breast of the wood as I went tingling by
And heard a weak cheep-cheep—­no more—­the cry
Of a bird that crouched the smitten wood within.... 
But no one heeded that sharp spiritual cry
Of the two children in their misery,
When in the cold and famished night death’s shade
More terrible the moon’s cold shadows made. 
How was it none could hear
That bodiless crying, birdlike, sharp and clear?