What the thrush said
As I was travelling home not long ago this poem popped into my head and kept playing. The poem prepared me for a disappointment and reassured me that in spite of this there were great things to come, as indeed it turned out. I reproduce it here.
O thou whose face hath felt the Winter’s wind,
Whose eye hath seen the snow clouds hung in mist,
And the black elm tops ’mong the freezing stars,
To thee the spring will be a harvest time.
O thou, whose only book has been the light
Of supreme darkness which thou feddest on
Night after night when Phoebus was away,
To thee the spring shall be a triple morn.
O fret not after knowledge -- I have none,
And yet my song comes native with the warmth.
O fret not after knowledge -- I have none,
And yet the Evening listens. He who saddens
At thought of idleness cannot be idle,
And he’s awake who thinks himself asleep.
John Keats
