Two evils, monstrous either one apart, <br />Possessed me, and were long and loath at going: <br />A cry of Absence, Absence, in the heart, <br />And in the wood the furious winter blowing. <br /> <br />Think not, when fire was bright upon my bricks, <br />And past the tight boards hardly a wind could enter, <br />I glowed like them, the simple burning sticks, <br />Far from my cause, my proper heat and center. <br /> <br />Better to walk forth in the frozen air <br />And wash my wound in the snows; that would be healing; <br />Because my heart would throb less painful there, <br />Being caked with cold, and past the smart of feeling. <br /> <br />And where I walked, the murderous winter blast <br />Would have this body bowed, these eyeballs streaming, <br />And though I think this heart's blood froze not fast <br />It ran too small to spare one drop for dreaming. <br /> <br />Dear love, these fingers that had known your touch, <br />And tied our separate forces first together, <br />Were ten poor idiot fingers not worth much, <br />Ten frozen parsnips hanging in the weather.<br /><br />John Crowe Ransom<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/winter-remembered/
