All out of doors looked darkly in at him <br />Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars, <br />That gathers on the pane in empty rooms. <br />What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze <br />Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand. <br />What kept him from remembering what it was <br />That brought him to that creaking room was age. <br />He stood with barrels round him -- at a loss. <br />And having scared the cellar under him <br />In clomping there, he scared it once again <br />In clomping off; -- and scared the outer night, <br />Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar <br />Of trees and crack of branches, common things, <br />But nothing so like beating on a box. <br />A light he was to no one but himself <br />Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what, <br />A quiet light, and then not even that. <br />He consigned to the moon, such as she was, <br />So late-arising, to the broken moon <br />As better than the sun in any case <br />For such a charge, his snow upon the roof, <br />His icicles along the wall to keep; <br />And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt <br />Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted, <br />And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept. <br />One aged man -- one man -- can't keep a house, <br />A farm, a countryside, or if he can, <br />It's thus he does it of a winter night.<br /><br />Robert Lee Frost<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-old-man-s-winter-night-2/
