The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-grey, And winter’s dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bindweed flung a shroud Over the writhing thorn, And the sad, smitten ground was bowed With the weight of its forlorn.

When I heard from an aged thrush A melancholy tune An hourly one; and, as he sang, The sorrowful moon

Grew a black cloud upon the gloom.

In spite of this, I felt, there is A joy for the world beyond his thrill; The throbbing heart both stilled and swayed, And my soul by his song lay still.

There starts through my head this strange song, A eulogy of the dust, the chill, And the determined steel to follow on.

But the thrush breaks the eternal night: A critical moment had sprung still, The heaviness gone of earth and night, And I find no time to disturb the chill.

• Thomas Hardy