MONDAY 10TH JANUARY

A Village in the Snow (artist unknown)
To enlarge, click on the painting
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Two Thomas Hardy poems with a Christmas flavour . . . .

SEEN BY THE WAITS

Through snowy woods and shady
We went to play a tune
To the lonely manor-lady
By the light of the Christmas moon.

We violed till, upward glancing
To where a mirror leaned,
It showed her airily dancing,
Deeming her movements screened.

Dancing alone in the room there,
Thin-draped in her robe of night;
Her postures, glassed in the gloom there,
Were a strange phantasmal sight.

She had learnt (we heard when homing)
That her roving spouse was dead;
Why she had danced in the gloaming
We thought, but never said.

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CHRISTMASTIDE

The rain-shafts splintered on me
As despondently I strode;
The twilight gloomed upon me
And bleared the blank high-road.
Each bush gave forth, when blown on
By gusts in shower and shower,
A sigh, as it were sown on
In handfuls by a sower.

A cheerful voice called, nigh me,
“A Merry Christmas, friend!”
There rose a figure by me,
Walking with townward trend,
A sodden tramp’s, who, breaking
Into thin song, bore straight
Ahead, direction taking
Toward the Casual’s gate.

The Casual referred to here is a 19th century lodging house where homeless people, if they were lucky, could find accommodation for the night.

This painting “The Casual Ward” by Samuel Luke Fildes shows a group waiting to be admitted.

To enlarge, click on the painting
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Thanks to http://www.dhuting.com for this video taken at the Havasupai Indian Reservation, Arizona



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My new blog THE POETRY PATH is now active at -
http://thepoetrypath.blogspot.com

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