An old man moves alone through a farmhouse at night. Darkness and frost outside seem to press in through the window, but age keeps him from remembering why he came to the creaking room. His clomping footsteps scare the cellar and the outer night, whose familiar sounds—trees roaring, branches cracking—are nothing like his own noise. For a while he is a quiet lamp-light to no one but himself, then not even that. He leaves the moon to look after snow and icicles and falls asleep by the stove, shifting only when a log jolts. The speaker’s tone is quiet and tender, never sentimental, and the mood is one of deep but familiar loneliness. The final image widens it: one old man cannot fill a house, a farm, a countryside—or if he can, it is only in this worn, half-ghostly way, on a winter night.
An Old Man's Winter Night — Summary
All out of doors looked darkly in at him Through the thin frost, almost in separate stars, That gathers on the pane in empty rooms. What kept his eyes from giving back the gaze Was the lamp tilted near them in his hand. What kept him from remembering the need That brought him to that creaking room was age. He stood with barrels round him--at a loss. And having scared the cellar under him In clomping there, he scared it once again In clomping off;--and scared the outer night, Which has its sounds, familiar, like the roar Of trees and crack of branches, common things, But nothing so like beating on a box. A light he was to no one but himself Where now he sat, concerned with he knew what, A quiet light, and then not even that. He consigned to the moon, such as she was, So late-arising, to the broken moon As better than the sun in any case For such a charge, his snow upon the roof, His icicles along the wall to keep; And slept. The log that shifted with a jolt Once in the stove, disturbed him and he shifted, And eased his heavy breathing, but still slept. One aged man--one man--can’t fill a house, A farm, a countryside, or if he can, It’s thus he does it of a winter night.