Think, love, how when a starry night of frost

Is ended, and the small pale winter sun

Shines on the garden trellis, ice-embossed,

And the stiff frozen flower-stalks, every one;

And turns their fine embroideries of ice

Into a loosening silver, skein by skein,

Warming cold leaves and stones, till, in a trice,

The garden smiles, and breathes, and lives again;

And further think, how the poor frozen snail

Creeps out with trembling horn to feel that heat,

And thaws the snowy mildew from his mail,

And stretches with all his length from his retreat:

Will he not praise, with his whole heart, the sun?

Then think, at last, I too am such an one.