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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy, the son of a stonemason, was born in Dorsetshire, England,...
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FURTHER READING
Poems About New Year's
In Memoriam, [Ring out, wild bells]
by Lord Alfred Tennyson
A Good Year Down
by Jeni Olin
A New Law
by Greg Delanty
A Song for New Year's Eve
by William Cullen Bryant
At the Entering of the New Year
by Thomas Hardy
Fragments for the End of the Year
by Jennifer K. Sweeney
Heavy Snowfall in A Year Gone Past
by Laura Jensen
In Tenebris
by Ford Madox Ford
Letter to GC
by Dana Levin
Meditations on the Fall and Winter Holidays
by Charles Reznikoff
New Year's Morning
by Helen Hunt Jackson
New years' morning
by Carl Adamshick
Te Deum
by Charles Reznikoff
The Call of the Open
by Percy Bysshe Shelley
The Darkling Thrush
by Thomas Hardy
The Garden Year
by Sara Coleridge
The New Year
by Emma Lazarus
The Old Year
by John Clare
The Passing of the Year
by Robert W. Service
The Year
by Ella Wheeler Wilcox
Written in the Beginning of the Year 1746
by William Collins
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The Year's Awakening

 
by Thomas Hardy

How do you know that the pilgrim track
Along the belting zodiac
Swept by the sun in his seeming rounds
Is traced by now to the Fishes’ bounds
And into the Ram, when weeks of cloud
Have wrapt the sky in a clammy shroud,
And never as yet a tinct of spring
Has shown in the Earth’s apparelling;
     O vespering bird, how do you know,
          How do you know?

How do you know, deep underground,
Hid in your bed from sight and sound,
Without a turn in temperature,
With weather life can scarce endure,
That light has won a fraction’s strength,
And day put on some moments’ length,
Whereof in merest rote will come,
Weeks hence, mild airs that do not numb;
     O crocus root, how do you know,
          How do you know?






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