To the memory of W.
B.
Towards nightfall when the
Tries the eaves and casements(A winter wind of the
Long gathering its will)I lay the mind's
Bare, as upon a table,
And ask, in a time of war,
Whether there is
To a mind frivolously
Anything worth living for.
If I am meek and
And a poor
Of perverse will to
The act from the attempt,
Just look into damned
And give the returning glare;
For the damned like it, the
Damnation is
From what would save its
With a thing worth living for.
The poisoned rat in the
Cuts through the wall like a knife,
Then blind, drying, and
And driven to cold water,
Dies of the water of life:
Both damned in eternal ice,
The traitor become the
Who had led his friend to slaughter,
Now bites his head not nice,
The food that he lives for.
VI supposed two scenes of hell,
Two human bestiaries,
Might uncommonly
Convey the doom I thought;
But lest the horror
The gentler estimationI go to the sylvan
Where nature has been
In rational
As a thing worth living for.
Should the buyer have been beware?
It is an uneven
For man has wet his
Under the winter
With only fog for shade:
His mouth a bracketed
Picked by the crows that
Nature to their hanged brother,
Who rattles against the
The thing that he lived for.
II asked the master
Whose great style could not
Why it is man
His own salvati6n,
Prefers the way to hell,
And finds his last
In the self-made curse that
Him towards damnation:
The drowned undrowned by the
The sea worth living for.
