December

An old man’s life, dim, colorless and cold,
Is like the earth and sky December shows.
The barest joys of sense are all he knows:
Hope that erewhile made their fruition bold,
Now soars beyond. If one sun-glint of gold,
Rifts in the dense grey firmament disclose,
Earth has enough. ‘Mid purple mist upthrows
The birch her silver; the larch may hold
With fragile needles yet its amber cone,
Tho’ other trees be dark: the pine alone,
Like memory, lingers green, till over all,
Death-like, the snow doth cast its gentle pall.
Child-month and Mother-year in death are one:
The winds of midnight moan memorial.