From the pen of Thomas Hardy 109 years ago today, and by way of my dear friend John Malone, here is a beautiful piece of moving prose to usher in your new year.
Whether it evokes thoughts of January 20th, or simply your own life, please read, and feel the glimmer and promise of a new day and a new horizon of hope.
Peace to all. Happy new year.
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 fervorless 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 growling gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or night around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air,
Some blessed HOPE from whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
-Thomas Hardy, December 31st, 1900