Thomas Hardy - The Thrush

Thomas Hardy had no particular religious faith. He was raised in the Church of England and went through an evangelical phase in hs youth but later his rational mind rejected Christian dogma. However, in the heart of his emotions he was still drawn to some unknown and unknowable other. His early allegiance and knowledge of the bible surface in both his novels and poems.

These two poems feature the thrush. 

In Reminder, Hardy in the midst of his Christmas warmth and plenty sees a thrush out in the frost desperately searching for food. His conscience is jerked awake. He feels guilty. How many are cold and hungry while he enjoys his Christmas? Perhaps the story Jesus told of the rich man enjoying plenty while a beggar starves at his gate comes to Hardy's mind. 

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The Reminder

While I watch the Christmas blaze

Paint the room with ruddy rays,

Something makes my vision glide

To the frosty scene outside.

There, to reach a rotting berry,

Toils a thrush, -- constrained to very

Dregs of food by sharp distress,

Taking such with thankfulness.

Why, O starving bird, when I

One day's joy would justify,

And put misery out of view,

Do you make me notice you!

The Darkling Thrush, one of his best known poems is an inverse of The Reminder. Now it is the man who is out in the cold, seeing a bleak winter landscape before him. The 19th century is over like a dead corpse, the future seems shrunken hard and dry. He has lost hope. Then a thrush bursts into "full hearted evensong". Hardy is thinking of the church service and perhaps the words of the Nunc Dimittis:

Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace 

according to thy word.

For mine eyes have seen thy salvation;

The thrush in the simplicity of its nature sings out a "blessed hope". Winter will pass, Spring will come and with it new life.

For, lo, the winter is past, the rain is over and gone;

The flowers appear on the earth; 

the time of the singing of birds is come, 

and the voice of the turtledove is heard in our land;

(Song of Solomon 12:11-12)

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.

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Poems referenced by The Painted Veil.

 Lift Not The Painted Veil by Percy Bysshe Shelley

Lift not the painted veil which those who live
Call Life: though unreal shapes be pictured there,
And it but mimic all we would believe
With colours idly spread,—behind, lurk Fear
And Hope, twin Destinies; who ever weave
Their shadows, o'er the chasm, sightless and drear.
I knew one who had lifted it—he sought,
For his lost heart was tender, things to love,
But found them not, alas! nor was there aught
The world contains, the which he could approve.
Through the unheeding many he did move,
A splendour among shadows, a bright blot
Upon this gloomy scene, a Spirit that strove
For truth, and like the Preacher found it not.

An Elegy On The Death Of A Mad Dog by Oliver Goldsmith

Good people all, of every sort,
Give ear unto my song;
And if you find it wondrous short,
It cannot hold you long.

In Islington there was a man
Of whom the world might say,
That still a godly race he ran—
Whene'er he went to pray.

A kind and gentle heart he had,
To comfort friends and foes;
The naked every day he clad—
When he put on his clothes.

And in that town a dog was found,
As many dogs there be,
Both mongrel, puppy, whelp, and hound,
And curs of low degree.

This dog and man at first were friends;
But when a pique began,
The dog, to gain some private ends,
Went mad, and bit the man.

Around from all the neighbouring streets
The wond'ring neighbours ran,
And swore the dog had lost its wits
To bite so good a man.

The wound it seemed both sore and sad
To every Christian eye;
And while they swore the dog was mad,
They swore the man would die.

But soon a wonder came to light
That showed the rogues they lied,—
The man recovered of the bite,
The dog it was that died!

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John Donne Sermon

They shall awake as Jacob did, and say as Jacob said, 

Surely the Lord is in this place, 

and this is no other but the house of God, and the gate of heaven, 

and into that gate they shall enter, 

and in that house they shall dwell, 

where there shall be no cloud nor sun, no darkness nor dazzling, 

but one equal light, 

no noise nor silence,

but one equal music, 

no fears nor hopes, 

but one equal possession, 

no foes nor friends, 

but an equal communion and identity, 

no ends nor beginnings, 

but one equal eternity.

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The month of June:13 1⁄2 By Sharon Olds

As my daughter approaches graduation 

and puberty at the same time, 

At her own calm deliberate serious rate,
She begins to kick up her heels, 

jazz out her hands, thrust out her hip bones, 

chant I'm great! I'm great! 

She feels 8th grade coming open around her, 

a chrysalis cracking and letting her out,

it falls behind her and joins the other husks on the ground,
7th grade, 6th grade, 

the purple rind of 5th grade, 

the hard jacket of 4th when she had so much pain,

3rd grade, 2nd, 

The dim cocoon of 1st grade 

back there somewhere on the path, 

and kindergarten like a strip of thumb-suck blanket 

taken from the actual blanket they wrapped her in at birth.
The whole school is coming off her shoulders 

like a cloak unclasped, 

and she dances forth in her jerky sexy child’s 

joke dance of self, self, 

her throat tight and a hard new song coming out of it, 

while her two dark eyes shine above her body 

like a good mother and a good father 

who looked down and love everything their baby does, 

the way she lives their love.

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