Quatrain 65
Quatrain 65 of 75
“Then said another with a long-drawn Sigh,
"My Clay with long oblivion is gone dry:
But, fill me with the old familiar Juice,
Methinks I might recover by-and-bye!"”
Reflection · Winter
My Clay with long oblivion is gone dry — this is the winter verse, the verse of the pot that has been waiting through the dark months. Fill me with the old familiar Juice — in winter this request is addressed to the spring that is not yet here. Methinks I might recover by-and-bye — the conditional is everything. Might. By and bye. Not now. Not certainly. But perhaps.
This is winter's specific hope: not the triumphant hope of spring or the confident hope of summer. The tentative hope of a dry pot that knows it has been filled before and believes, carefully, that it might be filled again.