"The Darkling Thrush"

Photograph by iStockphoto.

Hope is not an easy word to use well, in poetry or out of it. Evoking hope too easily can feel kind of glib or damp; saying there is none, though the opposite, can feel sentimental in a similar way. The right shade of belief and doubt can seem impossible to express.

In his great poem for a new year, ?The Darkling Thrush,? Thomas Hardy gets that kind of meaning right, I think. Hardy says he ?could think? of a ?blessed hope? of which he is ?unaware.?

The moving precision of those qualifications would not be enough in itself: The formulations gain conviction from the presence of the thrush?possibly the most charming bird ever described in words.

As with Hardy's ?The Oxen? for Christmas, in a Slate tradition here is Hardy's poem?which he dated Dec. 31, 1900?reflecting on the turning of a century, as well as a year.

Click the arrow on the audio player to?hear?Robert Pinsky?read this poem. You can also download the recording or subscribe to Slate's Poetry Podcast on iTunes.

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 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.

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=08825c341194706ed5b0ff311003144d

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