The New Year's Light 



It leaps on us suddenly some morning in a wave 

 of brightness from the south. The crocuses that 

 have lately slipped through the mould yawn 

 suddenly to the hot buzzing of the bees ; awakened 

 butterflies dance in the corners of the lanes, where 

 real heat now gathers and strong shadows are cast 

 by the sun. Golden colt's-foot blossom stars waste 

 land and the margins of ploughed fields ; and 

 against the blue sky the boughs of the elms are seen 

 to be red with bloom. Rooks flash in the sunshine 

 as they pace in the drying river-meadows ; when 

 they strike obliquely into the rays as they take 

 wing, they sometimes look not black, but shining 

 white. They toss about their nest-tops with high 

 falsetto notes of ease and playfulness interrupting 

 their solemn caws. 



Night may return with frost or cold rain from the 

 north, checking though seldom entirely suppressing 

 the rooks' nesting, pinching the crocuses into slender 

 spires, and sending the red and yellow butterflies 

 back to sleep. But the year does not slide back to 

 the dimness of the solstice ; even if many wet and 

 sunless weeks follow, there is the light and the soft 

 colours of the light. 



