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Editor's Selection of Poems
An Old Man's Winter Night

by Robert Frost

       All out of doors looked darkly in at him 
       Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars, 
       That gathers on the pane in empty rooms. 
       What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze 
       Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand. 
       What kept him from remembering what it was 
       That brought him to that creaking room was age. 
       He stood with barrels round him - at a loss. 
       And having scared the cellar under him 
       In clomping there, he scared it once again 
       In clomping off; - and scared the outer night, 
       Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar 
       Of trees and crack of branches, common things, 
       But nothing so like beating on a box. 
       A light he was to no one but himself 
       Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what, 
       A quiet light, and then not even that. 
       He consigned to the moon, such as she was, 
       So late-arising, to the broken moon 
       As better than the sun in any case 
       For such a charge, his snow upon the roof, 
       His icicles along the wall to keep; 
       And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt 
       Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted, 
       And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept. 
       One aged man - one man - can't keep a house, 
       A farm, a countryside, or if he can, 
       It's thus he does it of a winter night.
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