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| A MAN may think wild things under the moon— | |
| In March when there is a tapping in the pails | |
| Hung breast-high on the maples. Though you sink | |
| To boot-tops only in the uncrusted snow, | |
| And feel last autumn’s leaves a short foot down, | 5 |
| There will be one among the men you meet | |
| To say the snow lies six feet level there. | |
| “Not here!” you say; and he says, “In the woods”— | |
| Implying woods that he knows where to find. | |
| Well, such a moon may be miraculous, | 10 |
| And if it has the power to make one man | |
| Believe a common February snow | |
| The great storm-wonder he would talk about | |
| For years if once he saw it, there may be | |
| In the same shimmering sickle over the hill | 15 |
| Vision of other things for other men. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | |
| The moon again! | |
| Playing tonight with vapors that go up | |
| And out into the silver. The brown sap works | |
| Its foamy bulk over the great log fire. | 20 |
| Colors of flame light up a man, who kneels | |
| With sticks upon his arm, and in his face | |
| A grimace of resistance to the glow. | |
| All that is burning is not under here | |
| Boiling the early sap—I wonder why. | 25 |
| It is as calm as a dream of paradise | |
| Out there among the trees, where runnels make | |
| The only music heard above the sway | |
| Of branches fingering the leaning moon. | |
| And yet a man must go, when the sap has thickened, | 30 |
| Up and away to sleep a tired sleep, | |
| And dream of dripping from a rotting roof | |
| Back into sap that once was rid of him. | |
| I wonder why, I wonder why, I wonder … . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . | |
| Close the iron doors and let the fire die, | 35 |
| And the faint night-wind blow through the broken walls. | |
| The sugar thickens, and the moon is gone, | |
| And frost threads up the singing rivulets. | |
| I am going up the mountain toward the stars, | |
| But I should like to lie near earth tonight— | 40 |
| Earth that has borne the furious grip of winter | |
| And given a kind of birth to beauty at last. | |
| Look!—the old breath thrills through her once again | |
| And there will be passion soon, shaking her veins | |
| And driving her spirit upward till the buds | 45 |
| Burst overhead, and swallows find the eaves | |
| Of the sugar-house untroubled by the talk | |
| Of men gone off with teams to mend the roads. | |
| I think I shall throw myself down here in the snow | |
| So to be very near her when she stirs. | 50 |
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