What I would like it to be is "--He, too, the shadow
of some waxwing slain."  This strikes me as out of
character for Shade, though.  He praises pity, but
I don't remember seeing him thinking sympathetically
about someone whose feelings weren't called to his
attention.

My theory is that the last line was one of the things
Shade still needed to settle, because no variation
of the first quite worked--while he was alive.

If we take the character of Shade seriously, what the
heck does he mean in the first four lines of the poem?
Why identify with either the waxwing's body or, um,
the surviving reflection?

Jerry Friedman apologizes if any of this has been said
during the first round of the contest, which he missed.