I saw the city's towers on a luminous pale-gray sky; 
 Beyond them a hill of the softest mistiest green, 
 With naught but frost and the coming of night between, 
 And a long thin cloud above the colour of August rye.
 I sat in the midst of a plain on my snowshoes with bended knee 
 Where the thin wind stung my cheeks, 
 And the hard snow ran in little ripples and peaks, 
 Like the fretted floor of a white and petrified sea.
 And a strange peace gathered about my soul and shone, 
 As I sat reflecting there, 
 In a world so mystically fair, 
 So deathly silent--I so utterly alone.