The Darkling Thrush
Thomas Hardy
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 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.
The landscape and all other creation is without joy and hope, in parallel with the writer, who has lost all fervor. Gloom hangs heavy upon all the land and its inhabitants. However, the hearer of glorious birdsong possesses the innate capacity to recognize the personification of happiness as it pierces the night air and awakens within him renewed hope for a languishing spirit.
Perhaps this simple yet eloquent piece would not allow for an application of anthropomorphic characterization and analysis. Nevertheless, fully aware of his humble yet meaningful gift of song, our thrush wisely recognizes the incongruity that exists between the largeness of his vocal package and the tiny parcel of flesh and feather that houses it and rises to the doleful occasion by revivifying his community, animate and inanimate, thereby awakening them to the importance of each one's using one's gift in a manner beneficent to all.
The lesson is clear: the thrush's wake-up call of inordinately larger-than-life proportions reaffirms that the salvation of the world may well lie in the "hands" of earth's most humble creature.
Commentary by Andrew J. Vincent