Winter solitude –
in a world of one colour
the sound of wind.

Matsuo Basho

It is growing cold. Winter is putting footsteps in the meadow. What whiteness boasts that sun that comes into this wood! One would say milk-colored maidens are dancing on the petals of orchids. How coldly burns our sun! One would say its rays of light are shards of snow, one imagines the sun lives upon a snow crested peak on this day. One would say she is a woman who wears a gown of winter frost that blinds the eyes. Helplessness has weakened me. Wandering has wearied my legs.

Roman Payne

The colour of springtime is in the flowers, the colour of winter is in the imagination.

Terri Guillemets

Let us walk in the white snow
In a soundless space;
With footsteps quiet and slow,
At a tranquil pace,
Under veils of white lace.

I shall go shod in silk,
And you in wool,
White as a white cow's milk,
More beautiful
Than the breast of a gull.

We shall walk through the still town
In a windless peace;
We shall step upon white down,
Upon silver fleece,
Upon softer than these.

We shall walk in velvet shoes:
Wherever we go
Silence will fall like dews
On white silence below.
We shall walk in the snow.

Elinor Wylie

The snow filled the air with a soft grey-blue mist, softening the wind, bringing the earth and sky together into one swaying blur.

Vasily Grossman

Winters are a desolate time where all senses are wiped away. All smells are sucked clean from the air, leaving only a harsh, icy crispness. Colours are stripped away, leaving a stark white landscape, a sky which stays black at night and gray in the day, a world of only three shades. Stay outside too long, and your hands will get so cold that they’ll go numb and turn red, like the claws of a lobster. During a whiteout, even sight itself is reduced to nothingness.

Rebecca McNutt

Snow is diamonds for a faery's feet;
Blithely and bonnily she trips along,
Her lips a-carol with a merry song,
And in her eyes the meaning... Life is sweet!

Ruby Archer

The sound we hear when it snows is the soft song of the white beauty!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

All the complicated details
of the attiring and
the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon
moves gently among
the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds
against a sure winter
the wise trees
stand sleeping in the cold.

William Carlos Williams

I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields, that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, “Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again."

Lewis Carroll

Are you the ghosts of fallen leaves, O flakes of snow, For which, through naked trees, the winds a-mourning go?

John B. Tabb

The sky was becoming iron, and the trees seemed to rustle uneasily at an unfelt wind, murmuring to one another, Weather is coming.

Tanith Lee

In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan;
Earth stood hard as iron,
Water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow,
Snow on snow,
In the bleak mid-winter
Long ago

Christina Rossetti

It sifts from leaden sieves,
It powders all the wood,
It fills with alabaster wool
The wrinkles of the road.

It makes an even face
Of mountain and of plain, —
Unbroken forehead from the east
Unto the east again.

It reaches to the fence,
It wraps it, rail by rail,
Till it is lost in fleeces;
It flings a crystal veil

On stump and stack and stem, —
The summer’s empty room,
Acres of seams where harvests were,
Recordless, but for them.

It ruffles wrists of posts,
As ankles of a queen, —
Then stills its artisans like ghosts,
Denying they have been.

Emily Dickinson

Song falls silent, music is dumb,
But the air burns with their fragrance,
And white winter, on its knees,
Observes everything with reverent attention.

Anna Akhmatova

It is deep winter with shivering cold air, but my heart is dancing with joy and spring flowers.

Debasish Mridha