I leant upon a coppice gate, When Frost was specter-gray, And Winder's dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lures, The land's sharp features seemed to me The Century's corpse outlearnt, Its crypt the cloudy canopy, The wind it's 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, graunt and small, With blast-be ruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom.