To a Snowflake

What heart could have thought you? -
Past our devisal
(O filigree petal!)
Fashioned so purely,
Fragilely, surely,
From what Paradisal
Imagineless metal,
Too costly for cost?
Who hammered you, wrought you,
From argentine vapour? -

"God was my shaper,
Passing surmisal.
He hammered. He wrought me.
From curled silver vapour,
To lust of His mind: -
Thou could´st not have thought me!
So purely, so palely,
Tinely. surely,,
Mightily, frailly,
Insculped and embossed,
With his hammer of wind
And His graver of frost"

Francis Thompson (1859 - 1907), English Catholic poet