A Hard Frost

Claude Monet

A Hard Frost

A frost came in the night and stole my world

And left this changeling for it - a precocious

Image of spring, too brilliant to be true:

White lilac on the window-pane, each grass-blade

Furred like a catkin, maydrift loading the hedge.

The elms behind the house are elms no longer

But blossomers in crystal, stems of the mist

That hangs yet in the valley below, amorphous

As the blind tissue whence creation formed.

The sun looks out and the fields blaze with diamonds

Mockery spring, to lend this bridal gear

For a few hours to a raw country maid,

Then leave her all disconsolate with old fairings

Of aconite and snowdrop! No, not here

Amid this flounce and filigree of death

Is the real transformation scene in progress,

But deep below where frost

Worrying the stiff clods unclenches their

Grip on the seed and lets

the future breathe.

C. Day Lewis

 "But deep below..." How wonderful, the description of frost, the crust of iridescence like a cruelly beautiful shell, "but deep below", in the dark and cold, life is beginning again, in spite of all appearances and obstacles.