Winter only has a few more weeks left.  The cold is almost over, and it certainly feels like its over here, with our 80 degree weather.  We had to turn the air conditioners back on today.  I dread the heat.  I always love the fall and the winter because we have a respite from the oppressive heat and humidity of the Deep South.  So before winter ends, I have to add one of my favorite winter poems:
Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
by Robert Frost (1923)
Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

Walk in the Woods  by Shyaners

Walking through
the trees with
no where to go.

Seeing all of the
animals scurrying
to and fro.

Thinking about
all that has happened
through my life.

Who has come in and
who has gone out.

Having doubts about
my beauty, doubts
about my soul.

Doubts about my
happiness, doubts
about my whole.

Knowing that at
any second it could
all be over and done.

No way to go back and
redo what I regret.

No way to go back and
change the many times
I fret.

All I know is that I can
only live one day at a
time.

Leaving people who
get into my way
sadly behind.

I found this poem when trying to find one that would go with the picture above.  When I came across this poem, I fell in love with.  It is perfect simplicity at its finest.

Frost at Midnight by Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1798)
The Frost performs its secret ministry,
Unhelped by any wind. The owlet’s cry
Came loud–and hark, again! loud as before.
The inmates of my cottage, all at rest,
Have left me to that solitude, which suits
Abstruser musings: save that at my side
My cradled infant slumbers peacefully.
’Tis calm indeed! so calm, that it disturbs
And vexes meditation with its strange
And extreme silentness. Sea, hill, and wood,
This populous village! Sea, and hill, and wood,
With all the numberless goings-on of life,
Inaudible as dreams! the thin blue flame
Lies on my low-burnt fire, and quivers not;
Only that film, which fluttered on the grate,
Still flutters there, the sole unquiet thing.
Methinks, its motion in this hush of nature
Gives it dim sympathies with me who live,
Making it a companionable form,
Whose puny flaps and freaks the idling Spirit
By its own moods interprets, every where
Echo or mirror seeking of itself,
And makes a toy of Thought.

                  But O! how oft,
How oft, at school, with most believing mind,
Presageful, have I gazed upon the bars,
To watch that fluttering stranger! and as oft
With unclosed lids, already had I dreamt
Of my sweet birth-place, and the old church-tower,
Whose bells, the poor man’s only music, rang
From morn to evening, all the hot Fair-day,
So sweetly, that they stirred and haunted me
With a wild pleasure, falling on mine ear
Most like articulate sounds of things to come!
So gazed I, till the soothing things, I dreamt,
Lulled me to sleep, and sleep prolonged my dreams!
And so I brooded all the following morn,
Awed by the stern preceptor’s face, mine eye
Fixed with mock study on my swimming book:
Save if the door half opened, and I snatched
A hasty glance, and still my heart leaped up,
For still I hoped to see the stranger’s face,
Townsman, or aunt, or sister more beloved,
My play-mate when we both were clothed alike!

    Dear Babe, that sleepest cradled by my side,
Whose gentle breathings, heard in this deep calm,
Fill up the intersperséd vacancies
And momentary pauses of the thought!
My babe so beautiful! it thrills my heart
With tender gladness, thus to look at thee,
And think that thou shalt learn far other lore,
And in far other scenes! For I was reared
In the great city, pent ’mid cloisters dim,
And saw nought lovely but the sky and stars.
But thou, my babe! shalt wander like a breeze
By lakes and sandy shores, beneath the crags
Of ancient mountain, and beneath the clouds,
Which image in their bulk both lakes and shores
And mountain crags: so shalt thou see and hear
The lovely shapes and sounds intelligible
Of that eternal language, which thy God
Utters, who from eternity doth teach
Himself in all, and all things in himself.
Great universal Teacher! he shall mould
Thy spirit, and by giving make it ask.

    Therefore all seasons shall be sweet to thee,
Whether the summer clothe the general earth
With greenness, or the redbreast sit and sing
Betwixt the tufts of snow on the bare branch
Of mossy apple-tree, while the nigh thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw; 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.

• Born: 21 October 1772
• Birthplace: Devonshire, England
• Died: 25 July 1834 (heart attack)
• Best Known As: The author of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

Samuel Taylor Coleridge was famous for dreamy and somewhat creepy poems like The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Christabel and Kubla Khan (the last of which he allegedly wrote subconsciously during a fever dream). Coleridge and poet William Wordsworth were close pals and their collection of poetry titled Lyrical Ballads (1798) was an early pillar of what became known as the Romantic movement in poetry and art. Coleridge is probably best known for a poem from that collection, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which describes a sailor who curses himself and his ship by killing an albatross. Coleridge is also remembered for his turbulent personal life, especially his decades-long addiction to opium.

Where Go The Boats? by Robert Louis Stevenson

Dark brown is the river,
Golden is the sand
It flows along forever,
With trees on either hand.

Green leaves a-floating,
Castles of the foam,
Boats of mine a-boating
Where with all come home?

On goes the river
And out past the mill,
Away down the valley,
Away down the hill.

Away down the river,
A hundred miles or more,
Other little children
Shall bring my boats ashore

Dust of Snow

by Robert Frost (1923)

The way a crow
Shook down on me
The dust of snow
From a hemlock tree

Has given my heart
A change of mood
And saved some part
Of a day I had rued.

• Born: 31 October 1795
• Birthplace: Near London, England
• Died: 23 February 1821 (tuberculosis)
• Place of Death:  Rome, Papal State

John Keats is considered one of the greatest English poets of the 19th century, the author of Romantic classics such as “Endymion” and “Ode to a Nightingale.” Keats began his career as a surgeon’s apprentice, but gave up medicine for literary pursuits in 1814. With the help of Percy Shelley, Keats published his first collection in 1817. His productive years between 1818 and 1820 yielded some of his best-known poems, including “Lamia,” “the Eve of St. Agnes” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” In 1821 he left England and went to Italy for health reasons, but died a few months later, leaving his epic poem “Hyperion” unfinished. In his short life he influenced many English poets, and his vivid imagery and sensual style later had an impact on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of painters that included Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/john-keats#ixzz1BuooYhgG

Thomas Campion or Campian, 1567-1620, English poet, composer, and lutenist, a physician by profession. Campion wrote lyric poems that he and other composers set to music. His graceful, simple lute songs were published in five Books of Airs (1601-1617). He wrote a treatise on English poetry, condemning the use of rhyme, but he used rhyme freely in his own poems. His treatise A New Way of Making Fowre Parts in Counterpoint (1613) has often been republished.

Read more: http://www.answers.com/topic/thomas-campion#ixzz1AZthbnq6

Now Winter Nights Enlarge

by Thomas Campion (1617)

Now winter nights enlarge
The number of their hours,
And clouds their storms discharge
Upon the airy towers.
Let now the chimneys blaze,
And cups o’erflow with wine;
Let well-tuned words amaze
With harmony divine.
Now yellow waxen lights
Shall wait on honey love,
While youthful revels, masques, and courtly sights
Sleep’s leaden spells remove.

This time doth well dispense
With lovers’ long discourse;
Much speech hath some defence,
Though beauty no remorse.
All do not all things well;
Some measures comely tread,
Some knotted riddles tell,
Some poems smoothly read.
The summer hath his joys
And winter his delights;
Though love and all his pleasures are but toys,
They shorten tedious nights.

Blow, Blow, Thou Winter Wind

Act II, Scene 7 from As You Like It by William Shakespeare (1600)

Blow, blow, thou winter wind.
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.
Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.
Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
That dost not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friend remember’d not.
Heigh-ho! sing, &c.

“The Death of the Old Year” by Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1842)
Full knee-deep lies the winter snow,
And the winter winds are wearily sighing:
Toll ye the church bell sad and slow,
And tread softly and speak low,
For the old year lies a-dying.
    Old year you must not die;
    You came to us so readily,
    You lived with us so steadily,
    Old year you shall not die.

He lieth still: he doth not move:
He will not see the dawn of day.
He hath no other life above.
He gave me a friend and a true truelove
And the New-year will take ’em away.
    Old year you must not go;
    So long you have been with us,
    Such joy as you have seen with us,
    Old year, you shall not go.

He froth’d his bumpers to the brim;
A jollier year we shall not see.
But tho’ his eyes are waxing dim,
And tho’ his foes speak ill of him,
He was a friend to me.
    Old year, you shall not die;
    We did so laugh and cry with you,
    I’ve half a mind to die with you,
    Old year, if you must die.

He was full of joke and jest,
But all his merry quips are o’er.
To see him die across the waste
His son and heir doth ride post-haste,
But he’ll be dead before.
    Every one for his own.
    The night is starry and cold, my friend,
    And the New-year blithe and bold, my friend,
    Comes up to take his own.

How hard he breathes! over the snow
I heard just now the crowing cock.
The shadows flicker to and fro:
The cricket chirps: the light burns low:
’Tis nearly twelve o’clock.
    Shake hands, before you die.
    Old year, we’ll dearly rue for you:
    What is it we can do for you?
    Speak out before you die.

His face is growing sharp and thin.
Alack! our friend is gone,
Close up his eyes: tie up his chin:
Step from the corpse, and let him in
That standeth there alone,
    And waiteth at the door.
    There’s a new foot on the floor, my friend,
    And a new face at the door, my friend,
    A new face at the door.