The Darkling Thrush

Written: 1900 • Published: 1900

lyric hope despair nature faith renewal nineteenth-century melancholic desolate hopeful reflective

Public Domain

This poem is in the public domain and may be freely reproduced.

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.

Curator's Note

Written on December 31, 1900, as the 19th century literally died, Hardy's poem presents a landscape as bleak as a corpse—until an aged thrush bursts into song. Hardy, the great pessimist, couldn't explain the bird's joy but acknowledged it might know 'some blessed Hope, whereof he knew / And I was unaware.' This moment of uncertainty from a doubter is more powerful than any believer's certainty. The thrush's 'full-hearted evensong' at century's end became an accidental prophecy of the tumultuous 20th century to come.