Beech trees

“The ten hours' light is abating,
And a late bird flies across,
Where the pines, like waltzers waiting,
Give their black heads a toss.

Beech leaves, that yellow the noon-time,
Float past like specks in the eye;
I set every tree in my June time,
And now they obscure the sky.

And the children who ramble through here
Conceive that there never has been
A time when no tall trees grew here,
A time when none will be seen.’’

— “At Day-Close in November,’’ by Thomas Hardy

'Some blessed hope'

A song thrush, a species that's  common in Europe.

"I leant upon a coppice gate
    When Frost was spectre-gray, 
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 be
    The Century's corpse outleant, 
His crypt the cloudy canopy, 
    The wind his 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, 
    In 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, "A Darkling Thrush''
 

An organic orgy

"It was that period in the vernal quarter when we may suppose the Dryads to be waking for the season. The vegetable world begins to move and swell and the saps to rise, till in the completest silence of lone gardens and trackless plantations, where everything seems helpless and still after the bond and slavery of frost, there are bustlings, strainings, united thrusts, and pulls-all-together, in comparison with which the powerful tugs of cranes and pulleys in a noisy city are but pigmy efforts."

--  Thomas Hardy