There’s no whimper in him
Old man Sam stands admist it all:

Women in Babies’ Arms
Wings on Angels’ feet
The last lost day of Forever’s Eye
Singing  Singing into the Fever of the Heart:
OLD JERUSALEM, THOU COMEST

With the waning season’s hum
Old man Sam goes shaveless 40 days,
40 nights slung down in dark dis-repair,
His infinite bushytail gone to eternal oak
His hollow men in hollow logs.
With half his sons gone over
His know-how fails ginst the boss of the sky
Everyone’s Sun now merciless with loss.
Days he calls “Time-makers, blocks
On the calendar to draw
An X across as they pass
Like faceless strangers in parade.”

Still his sabbath for Mather’s word
Said aloud for childless ladies
Though under his collar 
He sees how Eliot saw
How for the end of the world
There’s only the end of the world.

(for Sam Brevard, one of our best (nature)
writers.  Thanks Sam)