when the rain

​When the rain is glinting on the stones
Men are absent from the gleaming night,
Wind that winds its unobstructed course
Twinned with damp that chills the sleeping boy

That wakes him from his dream, that licks the panes,
That plays a plume of steam, a misty scroll,
A scarf, across the hilly ridge, and in its sleepy tail
Wraps up the town and plaits a bridge with misty pylons

To ride into the dawn. The moon is panicked, lost
Behind the thickset clouds whose grayness carries frost,
All motion seems to want to cease, all movement to decline,
To sink beneath an airy quilt, maroon as drifting wine.