Anytime at All

By Thomas Hardy

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I leant upon a coppice gate

When Frost was spectre-grey,

And Winter's dregs made desolate

The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

Like strings of broken lyres,

And all mankind that haunted nigh

Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be

The Century's corpse outleant,

His crypt the cloudy canopy,

The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

Was shrunken hard and dry,

And every spirit upon earth

Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among

The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

Of joy illimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

In blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings

Of such ecstatic sound

Was written on terrestrial things

Afar or nigh around,

That I could think there trembled through

His happy good-night air

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

She burst out of the room and ran down the corridor screaming.

An older doctor stopped her and asked what the problem was; after listening to her story, he calmed her down and sat her in another room.

Then the doctor marched down the hallway to the first doctor's room.

"Whats wrong with you?" he demanded. This woman is 63 years old, she has two grown children and several grandchildren, and you told her she was pregnant?!!"

The new doctor continued to write on his clipboard and without looking up said: