Hope and Advent

One of members of the little prayer group to which I belong reminded us of this poem by Thomas Hardy called The Darkling Thrush. It is a wintery poem - both of the season and of the heart, but it is also about hope - however fragile. I also think it is about the season of Advent whose second week we are entering. I mean by this, that I see Jesus these days, almost as the voice of the thrush in a world that is weary and dark. There is hope in what he came to tell us all and light and like the song of the thrush it warms our hearts.

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 me
The Century's corpse outleant,    
Its crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind its death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth      
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervorless 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,
With 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.