Elinor Wylie’s speaker begins in a bitter winter landscape where even a wooden heel clicks like stone and frozen fields crack like flawed iron. The cold feels old and cruel, and she longs to escape it. But unlike the bright birds flying south to the Argentine and the Gulf of Mexico, she doesn’t want to chase the sun. Instead, she imagines curling up in the hidden nests of squirrels, moles, and mice—dens lined with thistledown, feathers, balsam, and juniper beneath the frozen ground. The poem creates a mood of cozy, almost enchanted secrecy, contrasting the harsh world above with the warm, dark, soft shelter below. What she craves is not travel or warmth in the usual sense, but a deep, still hibernation—a chance to sleep through the cold, hidden and safe.
Winter Sleep — Summary
When against earth a wooden heel Clicks as loud as stone and steel, When snow turns flour instead of flakes, And frost bakes clay as fire bakes, When the hard-bitten fields at last Crack like iron flawed in the cast, When the world is wicked and cross and old, I long to be quit of the cruel cold.
Little birds like bubbles of glass Fly to other Americas, Birds as bright as sparkles of wine Fly in the night to the Argentine, Birds of azure and flame-birds go To the tropical Gulf of Mexico: They chase the sun, they follow the heat, It is sweet in their bones, O sweet, sweet, sweet! It's not with them that I'd love to be, But under the roots of the balsam tree.
Just as the spiniest chestnut-burr Is lined within with the finest fur, So the stony-walled, snow-roofed house Of every squirrel and mole and mouse Is lined with thistledown, sea-gull's feather, Velvet mullein-leaf, heaped together With balsam and juniper, dry and curled, Sweeter than anything else in the world. O what a warm and darksome nest Where the wildest things are hidden to rest! It's there that I'd love to lie and sleep, Soft, soft, soft, and deep, deep, deep!