Far Worse I Have Known

The day is wet and cold and windy but far worse i have known In the place where my life's early memories were sown When the weather temperatures was at zero degrees And the cold wind was soughing in the naked trees Old memories as ever are with me today Of bleak Winter days in a place far away With brown flood waters babbling loudly in every rill, river and drain And the old hills cloaked from view in the gray fogs of rain At a time of year too cold and wet for grass to grow And weather forecasts of frost, rain, storms, sleet and snow In the farm yard sheds hungry cattle were bellowing for silage or hay In the gray of the morning of a wintry day When the hungry wild birds of Nature had no songs to sing In the cold depths of Winter ten weeks from the Spring But even in the coldest and wettest and windiest time of year Every gray dawn to the Spring brings us near When the weather temperatures rise above ten degrees And the nesting birds sing on the leaf budding trees Hope springs eternal as the wise one does say And each day brought us nearer to the dawning of May These things of my past i surely do not miss I have known of far wetter and colder and windier days than this But going back the years this does seem long ago And time that rusts iron has become my foe.