Today, I would like to share a poem about the weather titled (aptly), “Cold” by Madison Cawein, who was a Kentucky-born poet. Cawein’s poetry, and his own poem “The Waste Land,” may have inspired T.S. Eliot’s own “The Waste Land” poem, which is now immortal in literary canon.
In “Cold,” Cawein addresses the hostile nature of the cold, in this case “The face of Winter” who “sits and dreams / Of Desolation and / Despair.” Cawein’s poem reminds me of the the short story The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen if only in desperation. When the poor and the needy can only watch the windows gleam in light and comfort and wish for that pleasantness during a time of woe and suffering.
While it is a sad poem, it addresses the misery we often overlook in our times of comfort, as I believe we tend to forget that the cold is terrible enemy to those without shelter.
“Cold” by Madison Julius Cawein
A mist that froze beneath the moon and shook
Minutest frosty fire in the air.
All night the wind was still as lonely Care
Who sighs before her shivering ingle-nook.
The face of Winter wore a crueler look
Than when he shakes the icicles from his hair,
And, in the boisterous pauses, lets his stare
Freeze through the forest, fettering bough and brook.
He is the despot now who sits and dreams
Of Desolation and Despair, and smiles
At Poverty, who hath no place to rest,
Who wanders o’er Life’s snow-made pathless miles,
And sees the Home-of-Comfort’s window gleams,
And hugs her rag-wrapped baby to her breast.
Works Cited
Cawein, Madison. “Cold.” Internet Poem.com Web. https://internetpoem.com/madison-julius-cawein/cold-poem/
