The winter window gathers all outside-
A wideness reaching to the winter sea.
Failing in rows, the sapless oaks would slide
Within a room. Salt cries from each tree
‘Death of the heart and whitens where it dried.
The rocks show blackest farthest in the lee.
This weather beckons with a thousand glances-
A dazzle of snow and sea that shatters glass,
And death shows loveliest of mortal chances
Sacred outside the window glazed in ice:
In soft unsounding fall, the avalanches
Poured from the boughs seem promise to possess.
Not of this sea born, never on any shell
Of this shore naked, never rosy dame
Flesh, Aphrodite rippling on the swell
And on her mollusc melting, hither came:
Desire of minds, wrapt in a soother spell
Than bears a goddess here, fed forth such flame.
We trap our fire in rock. Why should we lure
A goddess to a net, love out to die?
Fix us a polestar, glittered cynosure
Of ice beyond all heat, that we may lie
With essence naked, with the zero pure,
The goddess death, our petrifact of sky.
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