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High coin of vantage from the castle’s keep:
All Palatines!
thus round her ramparts steep
parish parks, and fields, and plains of wintering sheep;
borough hamlets, townships’ county bounds
beyond the distant reach!
Now winter breezes stroke its stony brow
and spiral steeps descend its naked crown
and from the ramparts wondering, lingering now
I see or hear all that the day has dun?
Sheen of satin-silks wrap wintered barks
and black-as-coal tits flit through naked twigs,
an earnest note, the coming Spring-tide harks
and brumal shine gives up its laurel cloak!
Foreboding ghosts, dark corvine shadows, pass
but from a stump of velveteen-like moss
a Jenny, twitching there, no shadow casts
and in her criss-cross camouflage is ‘lost’!
The sun-anointing gloams in piquant hues,
tinctures the damp the dun-tide darklings made,
revives again a long-forgotten tune:
a Dunnock set-a-perch the winter stage;
How bright this note amidst the ‘circling gloom
Betrays his living hope, “spring’s coming soon.”