The weakening eye of day

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.

The land’s sharp features seemed to me
The Century’s corpse outleant,
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 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,
With 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.

- Thomas Hardy

Midwinter, the Shortest Day, the Longest Night, Dongzhi, Makara Sankranti, Yaldā, Yule - it's the Winter Solstice! Look on the bright side - it's all uphill from now on, and Spring will be here before we know it...

The dark time of the year

Midwinter spring is its own season
Sempiternal though sodden towards sundown,
Suspended in time, between pole and tropic.
When the short day is brightest, with frost and fire,
The brief sun flames the ice, on pond and ditches,
In windless cold that is the heart’s heat,
Reflecting in a watery mirror
A glare that is blindness in the early afternoon.
And glow more intense than blaze of branch, or brazier,
Stirs the dumb spirit: no wind, but pentecostal fire
In the dark time of the year.
- T.S. Eliot, Little Gidding

Montol, Brumalia, Lohri, Yalda, Koliada, Dongzhi, Mid-winter's Day, whatever you call it, the Winter Solstice - the longest night - is today.

Roll on Spring...

Icy spears

I have remembered when the winter came,
High in my chamber in the frosty nights,
When in the still light of the cheerful moon,
On the every twig and rail and jutting spout,
The icy spears were adding to their length
Against the arrows of the coming sun

- from Winter Memories by Henry David Thoreau.

Yes, it's Midwinter's Day, the Winter Solstice, the longest night... everything gets better and brighter from this point on.

Or so they say.

Look at winter with winter eyes

Winter Eyes
by Douglas Florian

Look at winter
With winter eyes
As smoke curls from rooftops
To clear cobalt skies.

Breathe in winter
Past winter nose:
The sweet scent of black birch
Where velvet moss grows.
Walk through winter
With winter feet
On crackling ice
Or sloshy wet sleet.

Look at winter
With winter eyes:
The rustling of oak leaves
As spring slowly nears.

Oh, how I love that last thought - for today is indeed the nadir of the year; the longest night - and everything from here on in will be getting lighter again...

Midwinter's Day aka the Winter Solstice.

The breath of night like death did flow beneath the sinking moon

Lines: The cold earth slept below
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The cold earth slept below;
Above the cold sky shone;
And all around,
With a chilling sound,
From caves of ice and fields of snow
The breath of night like death did flow
Beneath the sinking moon.

The wintry hedge was black;
The green grass was not seen;
The birds did rest
On the bare thorn’s breast,
Whose roots, beside the pathway track,
Had bound their folds o’er many a crack
Which the frost had made between.

Thine eyes glow’d in the glare
Of the moon’s dying light;
As a fen-fire’s beam
On a sluggish stream
Gleams dimly - so the moon shone there,
And it yellow’d the strings of thy tangled hair,
That shook in the wind of night.

The moon made thy lips pale, beloved;
The wind made thy bosom chill;
The night did shed
On thy dear head
Its frozen dew, and thou didst lie
Where the bitter breath of the naked sky
Might visit thee at will.

It's Midwinter's Day again. The longest night of them all.

However, that means that it is uphill all the way from here on - and Spring will be here before we know it...

A magical thing

"I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December
A magical thing
And sweet to remember.

'We are nearer to Spring
Than we were in September,'
I heard a bird sing
In the dark of December."
- Oliver Herford

It's Midwinter's Day, folks - the solstice, the shortest day.

Spring is indeed just around the corner; from tomorrow the days get longer...

Sing, heigh-ho!

Blow, blow, thou winter wind
by William Shakespeare

Blow, blow, thou winter wind,
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

Freeze, freeze, thou bitter sky,
That does not bite so nigh
As benefits forgot:
Though thou the waters warp,
Thy sting is not so sharp
As friend remembered not.

Heigh-ho! sing, heigh-ho! unto the green holly:
Most friendship is feigning, most loving mere folly:
Then, heigh-ho, the holly!
This life is most jolly.

It is Midwinter's Day; the Winter solstice; the longest night.

It all gets better from here. Spring is just around the corner...

Light squibs

The sun is spent, and now his flasks
Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;
The world's whole sap is sunk;
The general balm th' hydroptic earth hath drunk,
Whither, as to the bed's feet, life is shrunk,
Dead and interr'd; yet all these seem to laugh,
Compar'd with me, who am their epitaph.
- John Donne

Winter Solstice - the longest night - is today.

Roll on Spring...

See our little lives go past

The Longest Night Of The Year
Mary Chapin Carpenter
They say that spring will come again--
No one knows exactly when.
Still the sun's a long lost friend
On the longest night of the year.

We stare into the firelight
While December beats outside
Where the darkest hearts reside
On the longest night of the year

So keep me safe and hold me tight
Let the candle burn all night
Tomorrow welcome back the night
It was longest night of the year

I used to think the world was small
Bright and shining like a ball
Seems I don't know much at all
On the longest night of the year

We press our faces to the glass
And see our little lives go past
Wave to shadows that we cast
On the longest night of the year

...It's uphill from here on!*

Winter Solstice

*From 4.38am tomorrow, to be precise

The sun a spark

"The days are short,
The sun a spark,
Hung thin between
The dark and dark."
- John Updike

“And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive."
- Susan Cooper

Midwinter's Day or Yule.

It gets better from now on...

The wintry sun a-bed

Late lies the wintry sun a-bed,
A frosty, fiery sleepy-head;
Blinks but an hour or two; and then,
A blood-red orange, sets again.
[from Winter-Time by Robert Louis Stevenson]

It's Mid-Winter's Day. The Winter Solstice. The Shortest Day.

It's all uphill from here...