A short quote from one of our favourite poems. Such an evocative picture these words paint. The poem is one of Thomas Hardy’s best known and evokes the grey stillness of a bleak landscape. Much can be said about the subtext of the poem and it’s lament for the dying (19th) century. We feel it is also to be appreciated at face value; walking through the stilness of a rural landscape in winter at near dusk where just the outline of dark shapes can be seen and the tread of one’s own footsteps on the moss and stones. Then the unexpected song of the thrush pierces our thoughts. We see the bleakness of the scene as just what it is – a grey day in winter gradually moving towards Springtime.