A Wintry Gift

According to Leigh Fermor, Keats was found
In rooms filled up with antlers in a schloss
Which Patrick visited.  A Horace bound
In gilding and in green he took across
The continent—a sixteen hundreds book.
It was a baron’s volume handed to
The Englishman because a German took
His few belongings in a theft.  The view
Presented of that Germany of long
Ago is mixed.  The Nazis soon began
Their burning down of culture, but the strong
Oblation from each ordinary man
Leigh Fermor notes is friendly Bruderschaft.
He found iced Deutschland loving, warm and soft.