A Darkling Thrush and the Beginning of Winter

For me, Winter officially begins today. Yes, the calendar tells us we've been at it for awhile, but it has been masked by the wonder of Christmas and New Year. Snow in December brought joy and the hopes of a white Christmas, the snow of January and February bring grumblings and the hopes of an early Spring. Gazing out my office window I see the skeleton of dormant trees, gray skies, dead grass and lifeless shrubs. I dread the next 9 weeks.

In that light, I've posted a poem by my favorite author, Thomas Hardy, to help make it through the first of many dark winter days...

I leant upon a Coppice Gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seem’d to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seem'd fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carollings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,

That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessèd Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.