Winter Mask

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.