A Patch of Old Snow There’s a patch of old snow in a corner That I should have looked in before. But the buyer that I am today can see The way the old snow lies-covered there,
As though it were pregnant past two lives, And smoothed by a moon of coming rain.

It’s an end I hold without regret, And I’ve lost my memory of what came before, Of old paths and drifts, like mounds of waves; So plaited and weathered like a dream,
Like whispering myth, where the wild wind stirs Through every hair—that chorus gone, still held— This snow’s the past that I can remember now.

How solemn and solemn shall it be:
My light shall keep unfolding on another screen. To pass along a lifted brow
See only beauty in this cleftspring world’s ways,
With joy till all ends ignite the breeze, And gather every answer in its reach; That this patch of old snow written deep
Springs back to anything; all the past
Recreates its life in me. There, diminutive illumination holds! There’s wisdom in nothing—
I breathe and watch the snow light workings of beauty. Why, it’s lovely:
That somewhere lives the old snow still behind In corners waiting for light’s embrace to bring us cleavy, Ciphers gone from moon’s sweet coronations of dust.

• Robert Frost