The Darkling Thrush
Sunday, April 09, 2006
The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy, 31 December 1900
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 fervourless as I.
At once a voice rose 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.
I think this poem's fantastically beautiful, and I like its meaning too.
Published at the turn of the century, it was meant to show the uncertainty at what the next century would bring, after all that Victorian certainty.
And I think the poem reflects what I think very often, of what the future could possibly bring, and whether there is hope or not.
The sun's setting on the old, and dawning on the new, and the past is past and gone forever, and it can't be revived in its old glory again. It's all so true.
Thomas Hardy was standing at the brink of the 19th century, looking into the 20th, and wondering what things would be like. And I'm standing at the brink of adulthood, looking into it and wondering what it might possibly bring.
Maybe I think too much.
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 fervourless as I.
At once a voice rose 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.
I think this poem's fantastically beautiful, and I like its meaning too.
Published at the turn of the century, it was meant to show the uncertainty at what the next century would bring, after all that Victorian certainty.
And I think the poem reflects what I think very often, of what the future could possibly bring, and whether there is hope or not.
The sun's setting on the old, and dawning on the new, and the past is past and gone forever, and it can't be revived in its old glory again. It's all so true.
Thomas Hardy was standing at the brink of the 19th century, looking into the 20th, and wondering what things would be like. And I'm standing at the brink of adulthood, looking into it and wondering what it might possibly bring.
Maybe I think too much.
