The frost performs its secret ministry, Unhelped by any wind.

The Frost looked forth one still, clear night,
And he said, "Now I shall be out of sight;
So through the valley and over the height
In silence I'll take my way."

Or if the secret ministry of frost Shall hang them up in silent icicles, Quietly shining to the quiet moon.

The frost stings sweetly with a burning kiss
As intimate as love, as cold as death.

Whether the eave-drops fall Heard only in the trances of the blast, Or if the secret ministry of frost Shall hang them up in silent icicles, Quietly shining to the quiet moon.

Their words were spoken to the breezes nor swayed appointed fate.

His cold remains all naked to the sky,
On distant shores unwept, unburied lie.

It sleeps among the thousand hills Where no man ever trod,
And only nature's music fills The silences of God.

The leafless orchard
Is alone day and night
With his pure and sad silence.

It is deep January. The sky is hard.
The stalks are firmly rooted in ice.

It is in this solitude, a syllable,
Out of these gawky flitterings,

Intones its single emptiness,
The savagest hollow of winter-sound.

The grandest operations, both in nature and in grace, are the most silent and imperceptible. The shallow brook babbles or. its passage, and is heard by every one; but the coming on of the seasons is silent and unseen. The storm rages and alarms; but its fury is soon exhausted, and its effects are partial and soon remedied; but the dew, though gentle and unheard, is immense in quantity, and the very life of large portions of the earth. And these are pictures of the operations of grace in the church and in the soul.

There was no wind, in a human sense; but a steady stertorous breathing from the fir-trees showed that, now as always, there was movement in apparent stagnation.

Hung from the underbelly of the Earth
While the stars skid away below
Gormless and brakeless; gravel-loose
Falling silent as gavels in the snow.

No hammers fell, no ponderous axes rung,
Like some tall palm the mystic fabric sprung.
Majestic silence.