Cold blew the freezing northern blast,
And winter sternly frowned;
The flaky snow fell thick and fast,
And clad the fields around.

Forced by the storm’s relentless power,
Emboldened by despair,
A shivering redbreast sought my door,
Some friendly warmth to share.

‘Welcome, sweet bird!’ I fondly cried,
‘No danger need’st thou fear,
Secure with me thou may’st abide,
Till warmer suns appear.

‘And when mild spring comes smiling on,
And bids the fields look gay,
Thou, with thy sweet, thy grateful song,
My kindness shalt repay.’

Mistaken thought! — But how shall I
The mournful truth display?
An envious cat, with jealous eye,
Had marked him as her prey.

Remorseless wretch! — her cruel jaws
Soon sealed her victim’s doom,
While I in silence mourn his loss,
And weep o’er robin’s tomb.

So, oft in life’s uneven way,
Some stroke may intervene;
Sweep all our fancied joys away,
And change the flattering scene.

Whitely, while benzine
Rinsings from the moon
Dissolve all but the windows of the mills
(Inside the sure machinery
Is still
And curdled only where a sill
Sluices its one unyielding smile)

Immaculate venom binds
The fox's teeth, and swart
Thorns freshen on the year's
First blood. From flanks unfended,
Twanged red perfidies of spring
Are trillion on the hill.

And the nights opening
Chant pyramids,—
Anoint with innocence,—recall
To music and retrieve what perjuries
Had galvanized the eyes.

While chime
Beneath and all around
Distilling clemencies,—worms'
Inaudible whistle, tunneling
Not penitence
But song, as these
Perpetual fountains, vines,—

Thy Nazarene and tinder eyes.

(Let sphinxes from the ripe
Borage of death have cleared my tongue
Once and again; vermin and rod
No longer bind. Some sentient cloud
Of tears flocks through the tendoned loam:
Betrayed stones slowly speak.)

Names peeling from Thine eyes
And their undimming lattices of flame,
Spell out in palm and pain
Compulsion of the year, O Nazarene.

Lean long from sable, slender boughs,
Unstanched and luminous. And as the nights
Strike from Thee perfect spheres,
Lift up in lilac-emerald breath the grail
Of earth again—

Thy face
From charred and riven stakes, O
Dionysus, Thy
Unmangled target smile.