Desert Places

This one is for my sister...

Snow falling and night falling fast, oh, fast
In a field I looked into going past,

And the ground almost covered smooth in snow,
But a few weeds and stubble showing last.

The woods around it have it - it is theirs.
All animals are smothered in their lairs,

I am too absent-spirited to count;
The loneliness includes me unawares.

And lonely as it is, that loneliness
Will be more lonely ere it will be less -

A blanker whiteness of benighted snow
With no expression, nothing to express.

They cannot scare me with their empty spaces

Between stars - on stars where no human race is.

I have it in me so much nearer home

To scare myself with my own desert places.

-Robert Frost 1936