598. The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy
b"Thomas Hardy read by Classic Poetry Aloud\\n\\nwww.classicpoetryaloud.com\\nTwitter: @classicpoetry\\nFacebook: www.facebook.com/poetryaloud\\n\\nGiving voice to the poetry of the past.\\n\\n--------------------------------------\\n\\nThe Darkling Thrush\\n\\nby Thomas Hardy (1840 \\u2013 1928) \\n \\nI leant upon a coppice gate\\n When Frost was spectre-gray,\\nAnd Winter\\u2019s dregs made desolate\\n The weakening eye of day.\\nThe tangled bine-stems scored the sky\\n Like strings of broken lyres,\\nAnd all mankind that haunted nigh\\n Had sought their household fires.\\n\\nThe land\\u2019s sharp features seem\\u2019d to be\\n The Century\\u2019s corpse outleant,\\nHis crypt the cloudy canopy,\\n The wind his death-lament.\\nThe ancient pulse of germ and birth\\n Was shrunken hard and dry,\\nAnd every spirit upon earth\\n Seem'd fervourless as I.\\n\\nAt once a voice arose among\\n The bleak twigs overhead\\nIn a full-hearted evensong\\n Of joy illimited;\\nAn aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,\\n In blast-beruffled plume,\\nHad chosen thus to fling his soul\\n Upon the growing gloom.\\n\\nSo little cause for carollings\\n Of such ecstatic sound\\nWas written on terrestrial things\\n Afar or nigh around,\\nThat I could think there trembled through\\n His happy good-night air\\nSome bless\\xe8d Hope, whereof he knew\\n And I was unaware.\\n \\n\\nReading \\xa9 Classic Poetry Aloud 2007."