Michael Appelt

These are the days between Christmas and New Year, when celebration has faded, time slows, and the future has not yet begun.

In this episode of Musical Poetry, we present “The Darkling Thrush” by Thomas Hardy.

Written at the very end of 1900 and first published in 1901, the poem stands at the threshold between centuries. Hardy looks at a winter landscape that feels exhausted and silent, and then hears a small bird sing, without reason, without explanation.

This episode sets Hardy’s words against a melancholic, minimalist R&B soundscape, paired with a black-and-white animation that moves slowly, allowing silence and stillness to speak.

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.