These be Three silent things: The falling snow...the hour Before the dawn...the mouth of one Just dead.

The old Old winds that blew When chaos was, what do They tell the clattered trees that I Should weep?

Listen. With faint dry sound, Like steps of passing ghosts, The leaves, frost-crisp'd, break from the trees And fall.

I know Not these my hands And yet I think there was A woman like me once had hands Like these.

I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - The Stillness in the Room Was like the Stillness in the Air - Between the Heaves of Storm -

They darted down and rose up like a wave Or buzzed impetuously as before; One would have thought the corpse was held a slave To living by the life it bore!

And there, a field rat, startled, squealing bleeds, His belly close to ground. I see the blade, Blood-stained, continue cutting weeds and shade