The Darkling Thrush

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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.
To an unborn Pauper Child -Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

Breathe not, hid Heart: cease silently,

And though thy birth-hour beckons thee,
Sleep the long sleep:
The Doomsters heap
Travails and teens around us here,
And Time-wraiths turn our songsingings to fear.

Hark, how the peoples surge and sigh,

And laughters fail, and greetings die:
Hopes dwindle; yea,
Faiths waste away,
Affections and enthusiasms numb:
Thou canst not mend these things if thou dost come.

Had I the ear of wombèd souls

Ere their terrestrial chart unrolls,
And thou wert free
To cease, or be,
Then would I tell thee all I know,
And put it to thee: Wilt thou take Life so?

Vain vow! No hint of mine may hence

To theeward fly: to thy locked sense
Explain none can
Life’s pending plan:
Thou wilt thy ignorant entry make
Though skies spout fire and blood and nations quake.

Fain would I, dear, find some shut plot

Of earth’s wide wold for thee, where not
One tear, one qualm,
Should break the calm.
But I am weak as thou and bare;
No man can change the common lot to rare.

Must come and bide. And such are we—

Unreasoning, sanguine, visionary—
That I can hope
Health, love, friends, scope
In full for thee; can dream thou wilt find
Joys seldom yet attained by humankind!

Backward Spring and Afterwards

 During Wind and Rain

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BY THOMAS HARDY
They sing their dearest songs—
He, she, all of them—yea,
Treble and tenor and bass,
And one to play;
With the candles mooning each face. . . .
Ah, no; the years O!
How the sick leaves reel down in throngs!

They clear the creeping moss—

Elders and juniors—aye,
Making the pathways neat
And the garden gay;
And they build a shady seat. . . .
Ah, no; the years, the years,
See, the white storm-birds wing across.

They are blithely breakfasting all—

Men and maidens—yea,
Under the summer tree,
With a glimpse of the bay,
While pet fowl come to the knee. . . .
Ah, no; the years O!
And the rotten rose is ript from the wall.

They change to a high new house,

He, she, all of them—aye,
Clocks and carpets and chairs
On the lawn all day,
And brightest things that are theirs. . . .
Ah, no; the years, the years;
Down their carved names the rain-drop ploughs.
Life and Death at Sunrise
by Thomas Hardy
(Near Dogbury Gate, 1867)

The hills uncap their tops

Of woodland, pasture, copse,

And look on the layers of mist

At their foot that still persist:

They are like awakened sleepers on one elbow lifted,

Who gaze around to learn if things during night have shifted.

A waggon creaks up from the fog

With a laboured leisurely jog;

Then a horseman from off the hill-tip

Comes clapping down into the dip;

While woodlarks, finches, sparrows, try to entune at one time,

And cocks and hens and cows and bulls take up the chime.

With a shouldered basket and flagon

A man meets the one with the waggon,

And both the men halt of long use.

" Well," the waggoner says, " what's the news?"

" — 'Tis a boy this time. You've just met the doctor trotting back.

She's doing very well. And we think we shall call him " Jack " .

" And what have you got covered there?"

He nods to the waggon and mare.

" Oh, a coffin for old John Thinn:

We are just going to put him in."

" — So he's gone at last. He always had a good constitution."

" — He was ninety-odd. He could call up the French Revolution."

 A Broken Appointment
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BY THOMAS HARDY
You did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb,-
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure lovingkindness’ sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
You did not come.

You love not me,

And love alone can lend you loyalty;
–I know and knew it. But, unto the store
Of human deeds divine in all but name,
Was it not worth a little hour or more
To add yet this: Once you, a woman, came
To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be
You love not me? (Alliteration)

Repetition of You did not come you did not come. (To show how hurt the speaker is and he is
troubled)

The more time passed the less and less his feeling for this woman decreased

The personification of time (Zooms in on how time destroyed his relationship)

 Neutral Tones
BY THOMAS HARDY
We stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod;
– They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove

Over tedious riddles of years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro
On which lost the more by our love.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing

Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a-wing….

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,

And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.
God's Education

A poem by Thomas Hardy

I saw him steal the light away
That haunted in her eye: (Life)
It went so gently none could say
More than that it was there one day
And missing by-and-by. (As time goes by this woman loses her life)

I watched her longer, and he stole

Her lily tincts and rose; (Beauty)
All her young sprightliness of soul
Next fell beneath his cold control,
And disappeared like those.

I asked: "Why do you serve her so?

Do you, for some glad day,
Hoard these her sweets - ?" He said, "O no,( Asking why does he take
away her lily tinct and rose)
They charm not me; I bid Time throw (time is to blame) (Personifying time
giving the ability to throw away her beauty) (The speaker is alluding that
time is a very cold and uncareing person who does respect status and
relationship)(Time becomes the embodiment of heartess affection)
Them carelessly away."

Said I: "We call that cruelty –

We, your poor mortal kind."
He mused. "The thought is new to me.
Forsooth, though I men's master be,
Theirs is the teaching mind!" (Learning from motal other than the
opposite)
 Time is like a dark person who has no regard for the woman

Hap
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BY THOMAS HARDY
If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!”

Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,

Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,

And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
—Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . .
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.