Haunted by the road not taken, compassioned for roots of fluttering trees and the restlessness of both, observer of happy peril in a runaway colt, finder of gloom in “easy wind and downy flake,” dramatizer of a hired man’s death, of five hundred dollars for a pair of lost feet. Through poems, if not his life, love is agony, life’s a trial, expectation bows to reality, bitter binds to every sweet. Despair wed to fortitude, endless bearing up —- for gifts like these they call him dark.