Whether in fire or ice, Frost wondered how
It all would end. I’ve often asked the same;
I know the rising morning sun is somewhere
Sinking, that spring must burn and freeze before
It comes again, and so the circle goes.
Some say our end is evidenced each day;
They map their lives declining West, they chart
Their course out for the sunset land, espy
Heaven in clouds of flame; ethereal,
Intangible, it blazes and it fades.
As for me, I must admit I fear the night;
But here, at winter’s edge, the earth is waking.
I kneel before the dawn and think here might
Draw near time’s rolling end: renewal of
The old, fresh promise of the new, as how
In death, Donne wrote of East and West made one:
A brush of sunset and the dawn inside
His very self; and in search of agéd men
Lewis sent sailors East. I remember now
That it was there they found the flat world’s end.