THE WINDS OF WINTER
Christmas 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