[611] Winter

When icicles hang by the wall
  And Dick the shepherd blows his nail
And Tom bears logs into the hall
  And milk comes frozen home in pail,
When blood is nipp'd and ways be foul,
  Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-whit;
     Tu-who, a merry note,
  While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

When all aloud the wind doth blow
  And coughing drowns the parson's saw
And birds sit brooding in the snow
  And Marian's nose looks red and raw,
When roasted crabs hiss in the bowl,
  Then nightly sings the staring owl, Tu-whit;
     Tu-who, a merry note,
While greasy Joan doth keel the pot.

      -- William Shakespeare

 From "Love's Labours Lost", Act V, Scene ii.

 The weather has suddenly taken a turn for the colder here in Tokyo; also,
just yesterday I was watching the Elizabethan series of Blackadder [1]. The
combination made the choice of today's poem irresistible...

thomas.

[1] "For many people under 35, their most vivid glimpses of Britain's
illustrious history have been through the Blackadder chronicles which
brightened television screens from 1983 to 1989. Their constantly reborn
protagonist, Edmund Blackadder, flounced through a bloody Middle Ages, a
campy Elizabethan court, even camper Regency revels, and the rat-infested
trenches of the Great War, armed with only his repulsive servant Baldrick,
and a fine line in complex insults [2]."
     -- http://home.clara.net/paulm/blackadder.html

[2] For example: "you would bore the leggings off a village idiot" and "he's
got a brain the size of a weasel's wedding tackle"; a complete set of
Blackadder transcripts is available at
http://www.xmission.com/~tchansen/blackadder/bl-scripts.htm