No earthly enterprise

No Earthly Enterprise
Will cloud this vision; so beware,
You whom I love, when you are weak, of seeking comfort stair by stair
Up here: which leads nowhere.

I am at home-oh, I am safe in bed and well tucked in-Despair
Put out the light beside my bed.
I smiled, and closed my eyes.
“Goodnight—goodnight,” she said.

But you, you do not like this frosty air.

Cold of the sun’s eclipse,
When cocks crow for the first time hopeless, and dogs in kennel howl,
Abandoning the richly-stinking bone,
And the star at the edge of the shamed and altered sun shivers alone,
And over the pond the bat but not the swallow dips,
And out comes the owl.