I cry to you as I pass your windows in the dusk;

Ye have built you unmysterious homes and ways in the
wood

where of old ye went with sudden eyes to the right and
left;

and your going was now made safe and your staying
comforted,

for the forest edge itself, holding old savagery

in unsearch’d glooms, was your houses’ friendly barrier.

And now that the year goes winterward, ye thought to
hide

behind your gleaming panes, and where the hearth sings
merrily

make cheer with meat and wine, and sleep in the long
night,

and the uncared wastes might be a crying unhappiness.

But I, who have come from the outer night, I say to you

the winds are up and terribly will they shake the dry
wood:

the woods shall awake, hearing them, shall awake to be
toss’d and riven,

and make a cry and a parting in your sleep all night

as the wither’d leaves go whirling all night along all
ways.

And when ye come forth at dawn, uncomforted by sleep,

ye shall stand at amaze, beholding all the ways over-
hidden

with worthless drift of the dead and all your broken world:

and ye shall not know whence the winds have come, nor
shall ye know

whither the yesterdays have fled, or if they were.