I lent opon a coppice gate
When frost was specter gray,
And winter's dregs made desolate
The weekening eye of day.
The tangled vine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyers,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought there household fires.
The land's sharp features seemed to be
The century's corpse outlent,
His
cript the cloudy canopy,
The wind his
death-lament.
The ancint pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And
spirit opon the earth
Seemed fevorless
as I >
At once a voice arose among,
The bleak twigs overhead
In
full-harted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush,frail, gaunt, and small,
In a blast-beruffled plume,
Had thus >
to fling his soul
Upon the growing
gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such extactic 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, wereof he knew
And I was
unaware