What fever is
Burning under the shrunk turf of our days?
The sky is dark with winter, but what rises
Smokily from the heap distinctly says:
Here is fire: and yet a thousand ways
Promises chill.
A vast uneasiness shifts in the air.
No one can name it, and whatever ill
It brings forebodingly cannot declare
Itself. Is then nothing but nothing there?
Nothing perhaps
Is what it is. Evil walks up and down,
Prince of this world, emptying the future’s paps.
What drains the mind will soon empty the town.
The smiling earth now shrivels to a frown.
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