THE WINDS OF WINTER

THE WINDS OF WINTERChristmas gone and the new year upon us, I’m sitting here gazing out the window at the rough sea crashing against the shore, a fierce storm, here in Brighton. I am reading some poems by Wilfred Owen, who is regarded by many as the greatest poet of the First World War. I love this chilly poem, Winter Song, of spiritual transformation and I love, too, this beautiful painting of a monastery ruins in the snow (1819) by Caspar David Friedrich. Love Susie. x


Winter Song


The browns, the olives, and the yellows died,

And were swept up to heaven; where they glowed

Each dawn and set of sun till Christmastide,

And when the land lay pale for them, pale- snowed,

Fell back, and down the snow-drifts flamed and flowed.


From off your face, into the winds of winter,

The sun-brown and the summer-gold are blowing;

But they shall gleam with spiritual glinter,

When paler beauty on your brows falls snowing,

And through those snows my looks shall be soft-going.


Wilfred Owen 1893 –1918