ONCE UPON A DREAM; Jack Frost

Dancing with Jack Frost...

Jack Frost

The door was shut, as doors should be,

Before you went to bed last night;

Yet Jack Frost has got in, you see

And left your windows silver white...

And now you cannot see the trees

Nor fields that stretch beyond the lane;

But there are fairer things than these

His fingers traced on every pane.

Rocks and castles towering high,

Hills and dales, and streams and fields,

And knights in armour riding by

With plumes and spears and shining shields.

And here are little boats, and there

Big ships with sails spread to the breeze

And yonder palm trees, waving fair

On islands set in silver seas.

And butterflies with gauzy wings,

And birds and bees, and owls and sheep,

And fruit and flowers and all the things

You see when you are sound asleep.

For, creeping softly underneath

The door when all the lights are out,

Jack Frost takes every breath you breathe,

And knows the things you think about.

He paints them on the window-pane,

In fairy lines, with frozen steam;

And when you wake you see again

The wondrous things you saw in dreams.

 Anonymous; circa 19th century

 This beautiful poem is thought to have been written in Victorian times, but it was either published anonymously or the author's name is long forgotten which makes me really sad. It is such a lovely piece of work.  It is a shame that we don't know who the author was.

Perhaps it was written for the Christmas cord industry, which was a new fad back then and not expected to catch on!  I took the poem from a book called The Country Diary Christmas Book by Sarah Hollis, inspired by the famous Country Diary of Edith Holden.

I hope that you will enjoy this piece of work...whoever wrote it has been making readers smile for a very long time with this lovely ditty.
BB Marie x