Over my window in pencillings white,
    Stealthily traced in the silence of night - 
    Traced with a pencil as viewless as air,
    By an artist unseen, when the star-beams were fair,
    Came wonderful pictures, so life-like and true
    That I'm filled with amaze as the marvel I view.

        Like, and yet unlike the things I have seen, - 
    Feathery ferns in the forest-depths green,
    Delicate mosses that hide from the light,
    Snow-drops, and lilies, and hyacinths white,
    Fringes, and feathers, and half-opened flowers,
    Closely-twined branches of dim, cedar bowers - 
    Strange, that one hand should so deftly combine
    Such numberless charms in so quaint a design!

        O wondrous creations of silence and night!
    I watch as ye fade in the clear morning light, - 
    As ye melt into tear-drops and trickle away
    From the keen, searching eyes of inquisitive Day.
    While I gaze ye are gone, and I see you depart
    With a wistful regret lying deep in my heart, - 
    A longing for something that will not decay,
    Or melt like these frost-flowers in tear-drops away, - 
    A passionate yearning of heart for that shore
    Where beauty unfading shall last evermore;
    Nor, e'en as we gaze, from our vision be lost
    Like the beautiful things that are pencilled in frost!

More information on Pamelia Sarah Vining