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All out of
doors looked darkly in at him
Through the thin frost,
almost in separate stars,
That gathers on the pane in
empty rooms.
What kept his eyes from giving back the
gaze
Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand.
What kept him from remembering what it was
That
brought him to that creaking room was age.
He stood
with barrels round him-at a loss.
And having scared
the cellar under him
In clomping there, he scared it
once again
In clomping off;-and scared the outer
night,
Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar
Of trees and crack of branches, common things,
But
nothing so like beating on a box.
A light he was to
no one but himself
Where 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 moon
As better than the
sun in any case
For such a charge, his snow upon the
roof,
His icicles along the wall to keep;
And
slept. The log that shifted with a jolt
Once in the
stove, disturbed him and he shifted,
And eased his
heavy breathing, but still slept.
One aged man-one
man-can't fill a house,
A farm, a countryside, or if
he can,
It's thus he does it of a winter night.
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