Snow By Louis MacNeice

The room was suddenly rich and the great bay-window was

Spawning snow and pink roses against it

Soundlessly collateral and incompatible:

World is suddener than we fancy it.

World is crazier and more of it than we think,

Incorrigibly plural. I peel and portion

A tangerine and spit the pips and feel

The drunkenness of things being various.

And the fire flames with a bubbling sound for world

Is more spiteful and gay than one supposes--

On the tongue on the eyes on the ears in the palms of one’s hands--

There is more than glass between the snow and the huge roses.

From “The Oxford Book of English Verse,” edited by Christopher Ricks (Oxford University Press: 800 pp., $39.95)