Areopagus Volume XXVII

Seven short lessons every someday.

Welcome one and all to the twenty seventh volume of Areopagus. Although it's not yet true winter, which begins on the 21st, the world has certainly become a wintry place. It's been below zero for a few days where I am, and each morning the fields have been glowing white with frost. A beautiful time of the year. Made me think of a poem by Thomas Hardy, The Darkling Thrush. Here is its opening verse:

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.

And from one prelude to another, on with the Areopagus...