Dec 7

Today’s tea was high mountain darjeeling. It had much more body to it than the last darjeeling – perfect for a pot of tea.

We drank it while reading a book for book club. There’s all of two of us in this book club, and lots of people make fun of it. But 100% of the book club shows up 100% of the time when we meet. We love it. And the books have never been bad.

Because of that we didn’t have loads of spare time to think about poems, so you’re getting one of our emergency ones. Not to worry, it’s a staple of this calendar for a reason.

The Darkling Thrush
Thomas Hardy

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 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.