Broken Lyrics

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