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