The Darkling Thrush

 

Hermit Thrush - USFWS Photo

We leave you on the last day of the first decade of the 21st Century in the capable hands of Thomas Hardy and the poem he wrote on the eve of the 20th Century. Nothing could be better than ringing in a new year with the sound of a thrush’s song.

 

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.

Hardy Crows

We’re sorry that today’s post is short: We’re hard at work finishing our new novel, Far from the Madding Crow. We know you can hardly wait. It’s the sequel to our best-selling – and boring – novel, Thrush of the d’Urbervilles.

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The photo of the crow, corvus corone, was taken by Jans Canon at Southend-on-Sea, England.