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Out alone in
the winter rain,
Intent on giving and taking pain.
But never was I far out of sight
Of a certain
upper-window light.
The light was what it was all
about:
I would not go in till the light went out;
It would not go out till I came in.
Well, we should
wee which one would win,
We should see which one
would be first to yield.
The world was black
invisible field.
The rain by rights was snow for
cold.
The wind was another layer of mold.
But the
strangest thing: in the thick old thatch,
Where
summer birds had been given hatch,
had fed in chorus,
and lived to fledge,
Some still were living in
hermitage.
And as I passed along the eaves,
So low
I brushed the straw with my sleeves,
I flushed birds
out of hole after hole,
Into the darkness. It grieved
my soul,
It started a grief within a grief,
To
think their case was beyond relief--
They could not
go flying about in search
Of their nest again, nor
find a perch.
They must brood where they fell in
mulch and mire,
Trusting feathers and inward fire
Till daylight made it safe for a flyer.
My greater
grief was by so much reduced
As I though of them
without nest or roost.
That was how that grief
started to melt.
They tell me the cottage where we
dwelt,
Its wind-torn thatch goes now unmended;
Its
life of hundred of years has ended
By letting the
rain I knew outdoors
In on to the upper chamber
floors.
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