Always the same, when on a fated night <br />At last the gathered snow lets down as white <br />As may be in dark woods, and with a song <br />It shall not make again all winter long <br />Of hissing on the yet uncovered ground, <br />I almost stumble looking up and round, <br />As one who overtaken by the end <br />Gives up his errand, and lets death descend <br />Upon him where he is, with nothing done <br />To evil, no important triumph won, <br />More than if life had never been begun. <br /> <br />Yet all the precedent is on my side: <br />I know that winter death has never tried <br />The earth but it has failed: the snow may heap <br />In long storms an undrifted four feet deep <br />As measured again maple, birch, and oak, <br />It cannot check the peeper's silver croak; <br />And I shall see the snow all go down hill <br />In water of a slender April rill <br />That flashes tail through last year's withered brake <br />And dead weeds, like a disappearing snake. <br />Nothing will be left white but here a birch, <br />And there a clump of houses with a church.<br /><br />Robert Lee Frost<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/onset-the/
