At the closing of the year

The photo below was taken by Laura Erickson and is from the Crane Lake Nature blog

The year is at its end. Time is spent.  Many things said and done; so much more that could only be felt.  This week is the time-between-times, when the year turns bringing the solitude of winter months.  Those are the days and hours of introspection and germination that bring a soul's desolation or brilliance.  I am no great poet so at this low tide of season's change I will share with you the perfect words of another.  God bless.

Darkling Thrush

by Thomas Hardy

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 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 blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
    Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
    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.