How strange a thing is death, bringing to his knees, bringing to his antlers
The buck in the snow…
Life, looking out attentive from the eyes of the doe.

Millay juxtaposes the abrupt finality of death with the vivid persistence of life. The buck—an emblem of strength and vitality—lies felled “in the snow,” his antlers (often a sign of virility and dominance) rendered useless as he collapses. Against this, the doe’s eyes remain “attentive,” suggesting alertness, continuity, and the instinct to endure. The strangeness is not only that death can humble the powerful, but that life continues to look on—watching, registering, and persisting in the very presence of mortality. The passage reads as a meditation on nature’s impartial cycles and the eerie coexistence of stillness (death) and awareness (life).