The poem begins with an unknown, abstract observer, "one" who regards the winter landscape. In it are trees roughly covered by snow and ice: pines, junipers, and spruces that glitter in the January sun.
The speaker explains that "One must have a mind of winter" to see this landscape and not to think of misery while listening to the wind and sparse leaves blowing across the barren land. If someone listening in the snow can truly see the world through the perspective of winter, he will see that he, and the landscape, are "nothing." He will know this, both by the blankness of what is present in the scene, and by everything that is not present.
