Recent Stars
May. 28th, 2006 05:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rejectomorphVery like a winter night's, the sky was patchwork stars and clouds. Showers and soft mists came, and the trees dripped, but all the chill, dark hours the crickets sang of spring, however slow their beat.
Morning comes early, and a parted mass of brightened cloud passes shafts of light to kindle treetops where crows perch. Damp, the lawns, yet in shade, are deep green plush, their rising grassy scent rooted in the danker smell of soil.
Sunday morning quiet rules deserted streets, and all the silent houses await that light which now descends the trees branch by branch. Piping birds and I have the daylight world to ourselves for a while. I barely miss the night.
Sunday Verse
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 vine-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 me
The Century's corpse outleant,
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 earth
Seemed fervorless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead,
In a full-throated evensong
Of joy illimited.
An ancient thrush, frail, gaunt and small,
With 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.
Bonus Sunday Verse:
In A Museum
by Thomas Hardy
I
Here's the mould of a musical bird long passed from light,
Which over the earth before man came was winging;
There's a contralto voice I heard last night,
That lodges in me still with its sweet singing.
II
Such a dream is Time that the coo of this ancient bird
Has perished not, but is blent, or will be blending
Mid visionless wilds of space with the voice that I heard,
In the full-fugued song of the universe unending.
Morning comes early, and a parted mass of brightened cloud passes shafts of light to kindle treetops where crows perch. Damp, the lawns, yet in shade, are deep green plush, their rising grassy scent rooted in the danker smell of soil.
Sunday morning quiet rules deserted streets, and all the silent houses await that light which now descends the trees branch by branch. Piping birds and I have the daylight world to ourselves for a while. I barely miss the night.
Sunday Verse
The 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 vine-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 me
The Century's corpse outleant,
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 earth
Seemed fervorless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead,
In a full-throated evensong
Of joy illimited.
An ancient thrush, frail, gaunt and small,
With 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.
Bonus Sunday Verse:
In A Museum
by Thomas Hardy
I
Here's the mould of a musical bird long passed from light,
Which over the earth before man came was winging;
There's a contralto voice I heard last night,
That lodges in me still with its sweet singing.
II
Such a dream is Time that the coo of this ancient bird
Has perished not, but is blent, or will be blending
Mid visionless wilds of space with the voice that I heard,
In the full-fugued song of the universe unending.
