Algy leaned back on a bed of dry grasses and low heather, and gazed out across the low-lying peat bogs to the rocky ridges with their wee caps of snow. The wind was still horribly cold, but Algy knew that the year had turned and, before very long, the larks would start to sing over the bogs and the moorland again. As he soaked up the golden February sunshine, Algy thought of a poem which he often remembered at this time of year:

           The winter moon has such a quiet car
           That all the winter nights are dumb with rest.
           She drives the gradual dark with drooping crest,
           And dreams go wandering from her drowsy star.
           Because the nights are silent, do not wake:
           But there shall tremble through the general earth,
           And over you, a quickening and a birth.
           The sun is near the hill-tops for your sake.

           The latest born of all the days shall creep
           To kiss the tender eyelids of the year;
           And you shall wake, grown young with perfect sleep,
           And smile at the new world, and make it dear
           With living murmurs more than dreams are deep.
           Silence is dead, my Dawn; the morning’s here.

[Algy is quoting the poem February by the early 20th century Anglo-French writer Hilaire Belloc.]

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The wind had died down and the world was still again – at least, for the time being…

Algy found himself a snug perch in the crook of an old oak tree, where a comfortably broad branch was covered with a soft cushion of lichen and moss. Although the day was dull and grey, Algy was feeling in excellent spirits in the calm that followed the storm, so he decided to recite a selection of light verse for the benefit of anyone who might happen to pass by on the old track below. He commenced with this edifying rhyme:

          Be kind and tender to the Frog,
             And do not call him names,
          As ‘Slimy skin,’ or ‘Polly-wog,’
             Or likewise ‘Ugly James,’
          Or ‘Gape-a-grin,’ or ‘Toad-gone-wrong,’  
             Or ‘Billy Bandy-knees’:
          The Frog is justly sensitive
             To epithets like these.
          No animal will more repay
             A treatment kind and fair;
          At least so lonely people say
          Who keep a frog (and, by the way,  
          They are extremely rare).

This post is a contribution to “No Edit Friday”, run each week by Algy’s hardworking friends at PWS photosworthseeing 🙂

[Algy is quoting the poem The Frog by the 20th century Anglo-French writer Hilaire Belloc.]

Snow rarely lasts very long on the west coast of the Scottish Highlands, so Algy was not surprised to find that it was soon followed by rain, and before long the landscape had been transformed again.

When he woke up the next day, Algy immediately detected a subtle change, almost as though spring might be hiding somewhere just around the corner. He found himself a bright spot beneath an isolated gorse bush on the hill, covered his legs with dry bracken to keep himself warm, and sat there in the cool morning sunshine, letting the stiff breeze blow-dry his feathers until they felt all fluffy again. There was definitely a sense of something new in the light and in the air, and Algy remembered a poem by Hilaire Belloc:

          The winter moon has such a quiet car
          That all the winter nights are dumb with rest.
          She drives the gradual dark with drooping crest,
          And dreams go wandering from her drowsy star.
          Because the nights are silent, do not wake:
          But there shall tremble through the general earth,
          And over you, a quickening and a birth.
          The sun is near the hill-tops for your sake.

          The latest born of all the days shall creep
          To kiss the tender eyelids of the year;
          And you shall wake, grown young with perfect sleep,
          And smile at the new world, and make it dear
          With living murmurs more than dreams are deep.
          Silence is dead, my Dawn; the morning’s here.

[Algy is quoting the poem February by the early 20th century Anglo-French writer Hilaire Belloc.]