The Darkling Thrush

This poem by Thomas Hardy is the perfect one for New Year's Eve. I usually offer it every year as a reminder that there is always hope. Written on New Year's Eve 1899, as the world faced impending wars and a century of tumult and catastrophe, Hardy, like many other poets and philosophers, feared what lay ahead. But in this bleak poem, Hardy allows a glimmer of hope to which we too can hold. Listen this day for the voice of the darkling thrush in your part of the world and share in the hope that creation offers even when human hope seems all for naught.

Enjoy listening to the inimitable Malcolm Guite read The Darkling Thrush.

Listen to the audio - 3988047-the-darkling-thrush.mp3

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.

Image by Linda Richardson