Thomas Hardy Quote

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 Darkling Thrush" (1900), lines 1-8, from Poems of the Past and Present (1901)