Authors:
  • The snow has left the cottage top;
    The thatch moss grows in brighter green;
    And eaves in quick succession drop,
    Where grinning icicles have been,
    Pit-patting with a pleasant noise
    In tubs set by the cottage door;
    While duck and geese, with happy joys,
    Plunge in the yard pond brimming over.
    The sun peeps through the window pane:
    Which children mark with laughing eye,
    And in the wet street steal again
    To tell each other spring is night.

    John Clare (1827). “The Shepherd's Calendar: With Village Stories and Other Poems”, p.20