The Darkling Thrush

Last year, I began this blog with Emily Dickinson's famous poem on hope entitled "Hope is the Thing with Feathers".  Continuing on the theme of hope, I am sharing Thomas Hardy's poem on the subject of hope entitled "The Darkling Thrush".  Both poets use the symbols of birds to convey themes of hope. Both contrast hope with darkness and gloom. Hardy wrote his poem in 1900 at the turn of the century.

In Hardy's poem the thrush seems to be able to access a hope, in particular, a blessed hope that he, the observer, was unaware.

Thanks to Slate Magazine for the audio of the poem and the text.

I leant upon a coppice gate
    When Frost was spectre-gray,
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 fervorless 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.

31 December 1900