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 bind was bleached and dry, And once more owls did cry To mimic the clouded moon, And then, a testy cry.

The poet’s note, the weary sigh, The gray-teared wind as a taut spy To measure the hours ticked by, The spectre gray, the helpless sigh.

In the center of a fading line, I heard a thrush sing near divine. And I thought of hope, of closed-eyed cheer, His song, where do we find that year?

• Thomas Hardy