track name

The Darkling Thrush

album and band name

from by Jennifer Crook

The Darkling Thrush Cover Art
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about
One of my all-time favourite poems by Thomas Hardy, written on 31st December 1900. Bleak, but wonderfully hopeful. The arrangement just fell together - a great full band track.
lyrics
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.


Words by by Thomas Hardy
credits
from Black Fly EP, released 22 February 2010
tags
tags: acoustic folk singer songwriter. Bath
license
All rights reserved
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