ANOTHER seasonal piece from the Scottish cleric-poet Andrew Young.
As ever, the naturalist in him views the country scene with the keenest of eyes while the poet offers his usual ingenious rhymes. The "reptilian growth" hanging in "decaying sloth" is a startling image. Young's Selected Poems are published by Carcanet at £9.95.
FEBRUARY
So thick a mist darkened the day
Not two trees distant flew my friend, the jay,
To keep love's angry tryst
Somewhere in the damp mist,
And as I brushed each bush
Rain-buds fell in a rush,
One might have said it rained,
While green buds on the barer boughs remained.
But where with looped and twisted twine
Wild clematis, bryony and woodbine
And such reptilian growth
Hung in decaying sloth,
I stood still thinking how
Two months or three from now
The green buds would not tarry
More than those flashing drops of February.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article