O to be a burning auburn log in belly of the swan!
All decked about with feathered snow, the fast enfolding storm.
The trees in ferment thrusting up as if to be newborn
and me dissolving in it all, all golden red and warm.

O to be the cloud in breakage through the sun's fierce rage to die,
all bruisèd blue and green above the smothered winter sky.
O to be that silvered smear of light! to greet the growing night!
I'd change my words for thunder and I never more would cry.

O to be the icy helmet on the soft head of a hill
when rears the sun to rend the white, the land's deep thirst to fill.
O to be the first point of the thaw, to seep - perchance, to spill
and, out of my hard body then, to trickle at my will.

O to be the moon eclipsed in joy as she goes eager by,
all gibbous in her going, in her glowing lust to hide.
O to be so sure of being, when so hidden from the eye!
O sister moon, that you could make your dissolution mine!

Threes

Undue approach: hey there, no!
A stumble out, a turn to go.
Undue approach and all is blown.

Finite ends. The gyro spins,
a drunken top in sober hands.
Finite and expiring ends.

Guilty ghost: the miser's mien
lights the mirror inbetween.
The guilty ghost goes grovelling.

Working eye, a sleeping head
lays in the reeds and makes it wet.
The working eye is drowned and dead.

Cooling wind that cannot breathe
makes no ruffles in my sea.
A cooling wind that cools no heat.

Misty mind, it cannot mend
when all within is mist and sand.
Misty mind that cannot bend.