---

I leant upon a coppice gate,
When Frost was specter-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,

The land's sharp features seemed to me
The Century's corpse outlearnt,
Its crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind its death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon the Earth
Seemed fervor less as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead.

So little cause for caroling
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 blessed Hope, whereof he knew,
And I was unaware.


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

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