It is the sea that whitens the roof. The sea drifts through the winter air. It is the sea that the north wind makes. The sea is in the falling snow.
The consolations of space are nameless things. It was after the neurosis of winter. It was In the genius of summer that they blew up The statue of Jove among the boomy clouds. It took all day to quieten the sky And then to refill its emptiness again....
It was evening all afternoon. It was snowing And it was going to snow. The blackbird sat In the cedar-limbs.
The winter is made and you have to bear it, The winter web, the winter woven, wind and wind, For all the thoughts of summer that go with it In the mind, pupa of straw, moppet of rags....
One must have a mind of winter To regard the frost and the boughs Of the pine-trees crusted with snow
Cold is our element and winter's air Brings voices as of lions coming down.
Day after day, throughout the winter, We hardened ourselves to live by bluest reason In a world of wind and frost....
The leaves hop, scraping on the ground. It is deep January. The sky is hard. The stalks are firmly rooted in ice. It is in this solitude, a syllable, Out of these gawky flitterings, Intones its single emptiness, The savagest hollow of winter-sound.
The mind is the great poem of winter, the man, Who, to find what will suffice, Destroys romantic tenements Of rose and ice....