{"id":3193,"date":"2021-01-28T10:31:16","date_gmt":"2021-01-28T15:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/?p=3193"},"modified":"2021-01-28T10:31:34","modified_gmt":"2021-01-28T15:31:34","slug":"a-poem-for-a-thursday-117","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/2021\/01\/28\/a-poem-for-a-thursday-117\/","title":{"rendered":"A Poem for a Thursday #117"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Photo by Nick Fewings<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n
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Many know Thomas Hardy through his novels such as The Return of the Native <\/em>and Tess of the d’Urbervilles. <\/em>However, he also wrote huge amounts of poetry. He had about one thousand poems published in his lifetime. The biographer, Claire Tomalin, says that his poems show “the contradictions always present in Hardy, between the vulnerable, doomstruck man and the serene inhabitant of the natural world.” <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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I leant upon a coppice gate\n     When Frost was spectre-grey,\nAnd Winter's 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's sharp features seemed to be\n     The Century's 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     Seemed 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 carolings\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 blessed Hope, whereof he knew\n     And I was unaware.\n\nThe Darkling Thrush\nThomas Hardy\n<\/pre>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Many know Thomas Hardy through his novels such as The Return of the Native and Tess of the d’Urbervilles. However, he also wrote huge amounts of poetry. He had about one thousand poems published in his lifetime. The biographer, Claire Tomalin, says that his poems show “the contradictions always present in Hardy, between the vulnerable, doomstruck man and the serene inhabitant of the natural world.” 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 Thomas Hardy<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3194,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poem-for-a-thursday"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3193"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3196,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3193\/revisions\/3196"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holdsuponhappiness.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}