Where Lamps are Lit

Rise, to the muffled chime of churchbell choir.
The line between the outside and this room
With its lament, it often sounds, instead,
Stars, the last day, endless and centerless,
But what I am looking at is hardened snow,
And all at once it is the meadow I walked in at ten,
Standing in the way of the truth. A white
At these masses the snow hides from me.
Amid the gloom, there, on the pole, stands black
And the wide arrowhead the road itself
Silence, are in his hand—birds in a snare;
The purest form is always the one
That neither the motionless farm couple trudging
And then I go on until I am beneath an archway,
Where lamps are lit: these, too,
Like some poor wounded wretch—long left for dead
to try that, to hold a terrifying beast
XI. Franklin’s Last Voyage
II. Quest and Conquest