#The Darkling Thrush

[theseavoices]

I leant upon a coppice gate,

When Frost was spectre-gray,

And Winter's dregs made desolate

The weakening eye of day.

[bwthornton]

The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy

#ThomasHardy #TheDarklingThrush #poetry #poetrycommunity #WritingCommmunity #photography

The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy

#ThomasHardy #TheDarklingThrush #poetry #poetrycommunity #WritingCommmunity #photography

[stastrodome]

I used to think getting fancy personalized stationary was inhibiting to productive note-writing but I guess I was wrong.

[someprettyboat]

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 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.

[reinekes-fox]

Still heartbroken I never managed to get this :(

Christmastime is the traditional time for Ghost Stories, even more, in some ways, than Halloween. In fact I find the best Christmas stories have something of the unnatural and the eerie about them, because if you take away the cold and the dread of death that winter brings, much of the celebration of Yuletide loses its balance.

This is all a long way of saying that I’m making The Darkling Thrush available again for the holidays. Written for All Hallows Read 2013, it has a lovely cover by Persisting, interior illustrations by Tselina, and is free for all of you to enjoy until December 31.

[cupofmeat]

"The Darkling Thrush", Catherine Hyde.

[modern-prometheus]

"How like a winter

hath my absence been From thee, the pleasure of the fleeting year! What freezings have I felt, what dark days seen! What old December's bareness everywhere! [...]" - William Shakespeare, Sonnet 97

- Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Hunters in the Snow

"The cold earth slept below;           Above the cold sky shone;                 And all around,                 With a chilling sound, From caves of ice and fields of snow The breath of night like death did flow                 Beneath the sinking moon [...]" - Percy Bysshe Shelley, The cold earth slept below

- Ivan Aivazovsky, Moscow from Sparrow Hills

"And then she saw that there was a light ahead of her; not a few inches away where the back of the wardrobe ought to have been, but a long way off. Something cold and soft was falling on her. A moment later she found that she was standing in the middle of a wood at night-time with snow under her feet and snowflakes falling through the air." - C. S. Lewis, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe

- Vincent van Gogh, Landscape with Snow

"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. [...]" - Thomas Hardy, The Darkling Thrush

- Walter Moras, Snowy Forest Landscape

Snow, However Cold - still winter

[darkling-illustration]

"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 Darkling Thrush, Thomas Hardy

Decided to get out my camera on a snow day and capture the darkness of a cold English day. Made me think of the above poem.

[g-raynard]

The darkling thrush

~Catherine Hyde

[dabiconcordia]

"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 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. By Thomas Hardy

[worldsandemanations]

“The Darkling Thrush”, Catherine Hyde.

[godzilla-reads]

Hope is the Thing with Feathers

Hope is the Thing with feathers by Emily Dickinson

To a Skylark by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Ode to a Nightingale by John Keats

Hummingbirds by Mary Oliver

The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy

Wild Swans by Edna St. Vincent Millay

The Flight of Birds by Margaret Cortes

The Raven by Edgar Allan Poe

Dreams by Langston Hughes

[calligraphy-creature]

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.

“The Darkling Thrush” by Thomas Hardy

Link to this poem read aloud

[sohcah--toa]

ORIGINAL POEM: The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy

[assesofparnassus]

Winging It

Albatross, ovenbird, John Keats’s nightingale, Skylark, a sparrow in Nemerov’s zoo,

Ornithological Poetry murmurates, Raven to darkling thrush, Swan to cuckoo.

--Chris O'Carroll