An oldie but a goodie

Tim Woodcock writes: It’s an oldie but a goodie. Here is Thomas Hardy’s poem “The Darkling Thrush,” which was written to mark not just the end of the year but also the end of the century (the 1800s): it’s an accumulation of darkness, counteracted by a glimmer of hope at the end. I remember first being introduced to it in high school but I hadn’t seen enough of life to really appreciate it back then.

The Darkling Thrush

by Thomas Hardy

 

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

      And I was unaware.

 

The Poetry Foundation has a good collection of winter poems, “perfect for snowy days and long nights by the fire,” here.