Dark

And here, by way of counterweight to the International Day of Light, is a poem by Edward Thomas. As with the Donald Justice, it is one of his last and most beautiful (and untitled), written on his last Christmas at home with his family. A few months later, on Easter Monday 1917, Thomas was killed in action at Arras, shot through the chest. Out in the dark over the snowThe fallow fawns invisible goWith the fallow doe ;And the winds blowFast as the stars are slow. Stealthily the dark haunts roundAnd, when the lamp goes, without soundAt a swifter boundThan the swiftest hound,Arrives, and all else is drowned ; And star and I and wind and deer,Are in the dark together, – near,Yet far, – and fearDrums on my earIn that sage company drear. How weak and little is the light,All the universe of sight,Love and delight,Before the might,If you love it not, of night.