A HARDY SAMPLER

THE DARKLING THRUSH

I leant upon a coppice gate

When Frost was spectre-gray,

And Winter's dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day.

The tangled vine-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.

IN CHURCH "And now to God the Father," he ends, And his voice thrills up to the topmost tiles: Each listener chokes as he bows and bends, And emotion pervades the crowded aisles. Then the preacher glides to the vestry-door, And shuts it, and thinks he is seen no more.

The door swings softly ajar meanwhile,

And a pupil of his in the Bible class,

Who adores him as one without gloss or gurle,

Sees her idol stand with a satisfied smile

And re-enact at the vestry-glass

Each pulpit gesture in deft dumb-show

That had moved the congregation so.

IN TIME OF "THE BREAKING OF NATIONS''

Only a man harrowing clods

In a slow silent walk With an old horse that stumbles and nods

Half asleep as they stalk.

Only thin smoke without flame From the heaps of couch-grass;

Yet this will go onward the same Though Dynasties pass.

Yonder a maid and her wight

Come whispering by: War's annals will fade into night

Ere their story die.

--Collected Poems of Thomat Hardy; Macmillan (1946).

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