AN OLD MAN'S WINTER NIGHT
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ll out of doors looked darkly in at himThrough the thin frost, almost in separate stars,That gathers on the pane in empty rooms.What kept his eyes from giving back the gazeWas the lamp tilted near them in his hand.What kept him from remembering what it wasThat brought him to that creaking room was age.He stood with barrels round him—-at a loss.And having scared the cellar under himIn clomping there, he scared it once againIn clomping off;—-and scared the outer night,Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roarOf trees and crack of branches, common things,But nothing so like beating on a box.A light he was to no one but himselfWhere now he sat, concerned with he knew what,A quiet light, and then not even that.He consigned to the moon, such as she was,So late-arising, to the broken moonAs better than the sun in any caseFor such a charge, his snow upon the roof,His icicles along the wall to keep;And slept. The log that shifted with a joltOnce in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted,And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept.One aged man—-one man—-can't keep a house,A farm, a countryside, or if he can,It's thus he does it of a winter night.
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