i leant upon a coppice gate when frost was spectre-grey, 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 seemed 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 seemed 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 bla…