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Always the
same, when on a fated night
At last the gathered snow
lets down as white
As may be in dark woods, and with
a song
It shall not make again all winter long
Of
hissing on the yet uncovered ground,
I almost stumble
looking up and round,
As one who overtaken by the end
Gives up his errand, and lets death descend
Upon him
where he is, with nothing done
To evil, no important
triumph won,
More than if life had never been begun.
Yet all the precedent is on my side:
I know that
winter death has never tried
The earth but it has
failed: the snow may heap
In long storms an undrifted
four feet deep
As measured again maple, birch, and
oak,
It cannot check the peeper's silver croak;
And I shall see the snow all go down hill
In water of
a slender April rill
That flashes tail through last
year's withered brake
And dead weeds, like a
disappearing snake.
Nothing will be left white but
here a birch,
And there a clump of houses with a
church.
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