Now winter downs the dying of the year,



And night is all a settlement of snow;



From the soft street the rooms of houses show



A gathered light, a shapen atmosphere,



Like frozen-over lakes whose ice is thin



And still allows some stirring down within.







I’ve known the wind by water banks to shake



The late leaves down, which frozen where they fell



And held in ice as dancers in a spell



Fluttered all winter long into a lake;



Graved on the dark in gestures of descent,



They seemed their own most perfect monument.







There was perfection in the death of ferns



Which laid their fragile cheeks against the stone



A million years. Great mammoths overthrown



Composedly have made their long sojourns,



Like palaces of patience, in the gray



And changeless lands of ice. And at Pompeii







The little dog lay curled and did not rise



But slept the deeper as the ashes rose



And found the people incomplete, and froze



The random hands, the loose unready eyes



Of men expecting yet another sun



To do the shapely thing they had not done.







These sudden ends of time must give us pause.



We fray into the future, rarely wrought



Save in the tapestries of afterthought.



More time, more time. Barrages of applause



Come muffled from a buried radio.



The New-year bells are wrangling with the snow.





