[Vision2020] Less Hopeful Fiber?

[Tbertruss at aol.com]

Melynda et. al.

I read this poem once, twice and again and again.  It is most hopeful, it 
seems to me!  Were you being ironic?  It is hopeful for the inspiration that a 
single tiny living being living a wild life can inspire in the heart of one 
human being.  Did I miss something, or read something into the poem not really 
there?  Or do you mean that "if we're of less hopeful fiber" we need the message 
in this poem, if you want to call it that?

Ted Moffett

or, if we're of less hopeful fiber, we might try Thomas Hardy:

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 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. 

Poetically yours,

Melynda Huskey
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