The cardinal and the darkling thrush
There is a poem I somehow learnt by heart as a teenager, just by realising one day that I could recite it (and still can, to my own amazement - where is that place that things stick?), called The Darkling Thrush, by Thomas Hardy. It is also the poem with which I launched Poetry Friday on this blog, way back here.
I have always loved the poem, for what it symbolised to me, and I am fairly sure the poet intended it to be so. Then, I have already mentioned downloading the new Sara Groves CD, and on it is a song that immediately called to mind Hardy’s poem, and is now one of my favourites on the album (maybe Sara read the poem - I won't know till I get the actual CD!). I shall give you the poem, followed by the song, and I don’t think you’ll have to join many dots.
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 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.
Thomas Hardy
And the song:
From this one place
I was about to give up and that’s no lie
Cardinal landed outside my window
Threw his head back sang a song
So beautiful it made me cry
Took me back to a childhood tree
Full of birds and dreams
From this one place I can’t see very far
And this one moment I’m square in the dark
These are the things I will trust in my heart
You can see something else
Something else
I don’t know what’s making me so afraid
Tiny cloud over my head
Heavy and grey with a hint of dread
And I don’t like to feel this way
Take me back to a window seat
With clouds beneath my feet
From this one place I can’t see very far
And this one moment I’m square in the dark
These are the things I will trust in my heart
You can see something else
Something else
He just threw back his head and sang a song
It was beautiful
Sara Groves
* The top bird is not a thrush, just a bird in the snow, but the bottom one is a cardinal.