ch.14, v.1-26 (winter?)

In that winter that was the winter of certainty,
The raiment of season adorned the earth thickly,
Making upon her soil a coat rich and luminous.

Like palisades of ice upon a frozen coast,
It lighted the way of our perambulation.
It made our path a narrow and a certain path,
And I kept its way closely, straying neither to the left,
Nay, nor wandering either to the right.





Yea, tho' we did burst upon at times the open field,
And I did plunge the whole of my dogness free upon that bright surface,
It did buoy me up as a joyous fowl upon the pond of jamaica
And also on its open page, inscribe the path of my paws for all to read.






This season the earth seems to know not which way is her own way.
This season is a befuddled season, deciding neither
That it shall don its winter raiment, nay, nor the green coat of summer.



Is this the winter of our indirection, my companion?
On this stark and dry hide of the earth,
Bereft alike of her coat of ice and also that of leaf,
Naked as like unto the mutated-ness of the cat,
How can the sight of our eye, or the receptor of our nose,
Find the one path excavated for our perambulation?

Nay, we know not in what manner to prepare ourselves upon each break of the day.
Shall we walk out into a frozen landscape of poopsicles and micicles,
And shall the air of arctica invigorate my limbs with puppiness?
Or shall a sultry air of summer weigh upon my furred hide
And encumber with the heaviness of age
The movements of joints of my quarters both fore and aft?