from The University of Chicago "The Darkling Thrush" by Thomas Hardy I leant upon a coppice gate   When Frost was specter-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 fullhearted 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 troubled through   His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew   And I was unaware.         December 31, 1900.

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