For some reason his poetry never has floated my boat (I think that one reason is that he seems always to be writing about snow and forest animals, which I for purely geographic reasons cannot understand).
I found one poem I think I like, but can't quite make out:
Revelation
We make ourselves a place apart
Behind light words that tease and flout,
But oh, the agitated heart
Till someone finds us really out.
'Tis pity if the case require
(Or so we say) that in the end
We speak the literal to inspire
The understanding of a friend.
But so with all, from babes that play
At hide-and-seek to God afar,
So all who hide too well away
Must speak and tell us where they are.
And another poem that I'm slightly more sure that I understand and like:
Reluctance
Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;
I have come by the highway home,
And lo, it is ended.
The leaves are all dead on the ground,
Save those that the oak is keeping
To ravel them one by one
And let them go scraping and creeping
Out over the crusted snow,
When others are sleeping.
And the dead leaves lie huddled and still,
No longer blown hither and thither;
The last lone aster is gone;
The flowers of the witch-hazel wither;
The heart is still aching to seek,
But the feet question 'Whither?'
Ah, when to the heart of man
Was it ever less than a treason
To go with the drift of things,
To yield with a grace to reason,
And bow and accept the end
Of a love or a season?
That to say -- I'm not smitten, but I'm glad I gave him a second chance. This is good stuff.
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