The Darkling Thrush.

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 me The Century's corpse outleant,
Its crypt the cloudy canopy, *
The wind its 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, With 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

By Thomas Hardy