Poem of the Day: ‘The Darkling Thrush’

Our poetry week, which began with Sara Teasdale’s “A Winter Blue Jay,” closes with another bird poem, another epiphany in which joy is witnessed, if (this time) not also experienced. Over the course of a long life, Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) was first a novelist, then a poet so prolific that, as has been pointed out here before, the reader is constantly discovering a hitherto-unknown Hardy poem. In this way, as on every other level, his body of work is a continual epiphany. Yet “The Darkling Thrush” is, for most readers, the Hardy poem. “The Darkling Thrush” looks back on a Romantic world in which nature resonates with a life larger than itself. At the same time, it sets its face for an era in which man exists in isolation in a dark cosmos, and in imprisonment in himself. In common-meter octets with a simple abab rhyme scheme, the poem sketches the sort of scene, with its brightness and its undercutting darkness, that we recognize in later poets like Robert Frost: an observer in nature whose mood is at one with the landscape, until some epiphanic encounter. Think, for example, of Frost’s brief “Dust of Snow” — but imagine a speaker whose regretted day can’t be saved, in any part, by the action of a bird. Hardy’s speaker witnesses the ancient thrush as it sings what might plausibly be its last song, in the shadow of death. He recognizes the “joy illimited” in that song, and even the “Hope” that illuminates it. In the words of the Greek Kontakion for the Dead, “even at the grave,” this creature at home in the natural world makes its alleluia. But the poem’s speaker sees, hears, and recognizes this song as one in exile, locked out of the joy and hope beyond the surfaces of the world he apprehends, but also insensible of them, “unaware.” The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy 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. ___________________________________________ With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.

Poem of the Day: ‘The Darkling Thrush’

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