My favorite poem, which we send out every several years. Hasn't been as long this time, but I thought the poem beautifully illustrates what we wrote about this morning regarding Mr. James, "The Songbird."
"The Darkling Thrush"
Thomas Hardy
(December 31, 1900)
I leant upon a coppice gate
when Frost was specter-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 fervorless 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.
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