Great Lines: Ted Hughes

The snowdrop. A small, white, mighty sign that life begins again.

Snowdrop
by Ted Hughes

Now is the globe shrunk tight
Round the mouse’s dulled wintering heart.
Weasel and crow, as if moulded in brass,
Move through an outer darkness
Not in their right minds,
With the other deaths. She, too, pursues her ends,
Brutal as the stars of this month,
Her pale head heavy as metal.

Edward James Hughes, 1930-1998.