Pictures in the Imagination

Thomas Nicoll Hepburn (1861–1930) writing under his pseudonym Gabriel Setoun authored the following poem beautifully describing the tracery of frost left on the Velux windows at La Basse Cour this morning as the outside temperature plunged to -3C.

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 window silver white.

He must have waited till you slept;
 And not a single word he spoke,
But pencilled o’er the panes and crept
 Away again before you woke.

And now you cannot see the hills
 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 nodding plumes 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 herds of cows and flocks of 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 lovely things you saw in dream.