Naked December have I curtained out/ Charles Leonard Moore

I

Naked December have I curtained out,
Its cobweb branches crossing the cold sky;
Dead am I to the hurrying flakes about,
Dead and close-tombed in Eastern luxury:
But not the fire's rich rapture with itself,
The carpet's glow, the painted air above,
The gleam of rich-clad volumes from the shelf,
The stained chessman or yon shadowy glove,
The mantel's romance of bronze-mailed knights,
The sometime showing fresco pastoral,
The curtains closing me with these delights
Deep, deep, unfathomably out of call,
     Not these, but dreams and reveries allowed
     Make me o'er all Time's empty triumphs proud. 

~~
Charles Leonard Moore (1854-1928)
from Book of Day-Dreams, 1888

[Poem is in the public domain in Canada, the United States, and the European Union]

Charles Leonard Moore biography