Speyer turns a snowy landscape into a quiet caravan. The hills are imagined as kneeling camels, their backs loaded with snow, waiting out winter with patient endurance. The speaker watches them across the long, desert-like stretch of dark winter days and nights. In her mind they are not frozen solid at all; they seem to be moving, step by step, through the mist toward something better.
There is a gentle, dreamlike quality to this vision. The mood is calm and hopeful rather than bleak. Winter becomes a slow journey, and the earth itself seems patient and resilient. The speaker feels a quiet wonder at the way the land holds on, as if spring is a green country the hills can already glimpse ahead of them.