Tangled bine-stems

I was reminded of the Thomas Hardy poem The Darkling Thrush as I was out and about today:

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.

I’ve always loved how Hardy made up his own words to describe what he saw; you don’t know how many times I had to fight with predictive text when typing in the one verse above! It’s cold enough here that I have sought my household fire, but unfortunately it’s too windy to light it! An extra jumper it is, then....

Coming back to that darkling thrush, Hardy writes of the ’ecstatic sound’ of the small, gaunt bird, and concludes:

That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.


And I have just realised that this is my 1000th blip! Thank you to you lovely blippers who visit my journal and make this such a lovely (an excellent!) community to belong to. May we all experience some blessed Hope. that makes us sing!