Lizzard Crick In Winter

The crick is frozen over, and the water’s dark and still,

Beneath the fish lie sluggish from the winter’s sudden blast;

Mt. Tom stands fierce and ghostly, with its summit white and  chill,

A silent sentinel to guard the cold and icy past.

Adown the Narrows sweeps the gale, disporting like a sprite,

By Otter Point and Wheeler’s Swamp whose branches bend and sway;

Down, down across the level of the Crick now clothed in white,

A message from the frozen North a thousand miles away.

Inside the Bend, where shattered from the wind that whistles o’er,

A line of smoke is curling slowly up behind the hill;

A fire is cracking briskly made from driftwood on the shore,

And fishermen are holding up bright trophies of their skill.

The Crick is frozen over with its bridge of ice and snow,

And fair as any picture that my longing eyes have seen;

Its joys are everlasting, and it glads my heart I know,

When clothed in spotless grandeur, or in folds of blue and green.

Jan. 21, 1900