Happy Post #3
I leant upon a coppice gate
when Frost was spectre-grey
and Winter's dregs made desolate
the weakening eye of day.
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 seemed to be
this Century's corpse outleant
his crypt the cloudy canopy
the wind-- his death lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
had shrunken hard and dry
and every spirit upon earth seemed
fevourless as I.
At once a voice arose among the
bleak twigs overhead;
in a full-hearted evensong
of joy Illimited--
and aged thrush: frail, gaunt, and small
in blast-beruffled plume
and chosen thus to fling his soul
upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
of such estatic sound
was written on terrestrial things
afar or nigh around.
That I could think there trembled through
his happy goodnight air--
some Blessed Hope,
whereof he knew--
and I was unaware.
when Frost was spectre-grey
and Winter's dregs made desolate
the weakening eye of day.
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 seemed to be
this Century's corpse outleant
his crypt the cloudy canopy
the wind-- his death lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
had shrunken hard and dry
and every spirit upon earth seemed
fevourless as I.
At once a voice arose among the
bleak twigs overhead;
in a full-hearted evensong
of joy Illimited--
and aged thrush: frail, gaunt, and small
in blast-beruffled plume
and chosen thus to fling his soul
upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
of such estatic sound
was written on terrestrial things
afar or nigh around.
That I could think there trembled through
his happy goodnight air--
some Blessed Hope,
whereof he knew--
and I was unaware.