Brueghel's Winter Walter de la Mare Jagg'd mountain peaks and skies ice-green
Wall in the wild, cold scene below.
Churches, farms, bare copse, the sea
In freezing quiet of winter show;
Where ink-black shapes on fields in flood
Curling, skating, and sliding go.
To left, a gabled tavern; a blaze;
Peasants; a watching child; and lo,
Muffled, mutebeneath naked trees
In sharp perspective set a-row
Trudge huntsmen, sinister spears aslant, Dogs snuffling behind them in the snow; And arrowlike, lean, athwart the air Swoops into space a crow. But flame, nor ice, nor piercing rock, Nor silence, as of a frozen sea, Nor that slant inward infinite line Of signboard, bird, and hill, and tree, Give more than subtle hint of him Who squandered here life's mystery. Pieter Brueghel, Hunters in the Snow Oil on canvas, 46 inches x 63.75 inches. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Return to the Poem Index See also: John Berryman's "Winter Landscape" Joseph Langland's "Hunters in the Snow: Brueghel" William Carlos Williams' "Hunters in the Snow" Return to the Poem Index | |
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