Winter

I think I have spoken before of Thomas Hardy’s beautiful, if dark, poem ‘The Darkling Thrush’. For me, it speaks about the possibility of hope and the power of life in the midst of a long, burdensome winter.

Hardy starts by saying that this moment came to him as he ‘leant upon a coppice gate, when frost was spectre-gray, and winter’s dregs made desolate, the weakening eye of day’. This is an amazing poetic painting of what winter and, by extension, the wintry season of the soul feels like. Then, as he speaks further about the evening drawing in before him, he says that  ‘at once a voice arose among the bleak twigs overhead in full-hearted evensong of joy illimited; an aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, in blast-beruffled plume, had chosen thus to fling its soul upon the growing gloom’.
                     

Then Hardy goes on to try to make some sense of what this can be about because : ‘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 its happy good night air some blessed hope whereof it knew and I was unaware’.

This beautiful poem is an incredibly creative vision of winter and too, the wintry season of our lives. It moved me deeply as I thought of the courage of the little bird in its blast-beruffled plume, to sing and hope when all around seems cold and dark. That the thrush is alive as we ourselves are in the wintry moments of our lives, with a beautiful courageous hope that Spring will come; light will come. The gloomy darkness and cold will pass.

But too, this is an aged thrush. It has lived other winters and so have we. But is it not sometimes true that the more winters we live, the longer they often seem? And though we know that Spring will come it seems the longer in coming. Think of how we feel in February when there comes, almost it seems as a gift to us, a warm and sunny day. Our hearts burst and we think of the Spring not too far away; Spring, the very epitome of life. Spring that sends our spirits soaring. Hardy said earlier in the poem, that he heard the thrush just at a time ‘when every spirit upon the earth seemed fervourless as I’ so the thrush touched his heart just as for us the sun and the warmth awaken in our hearts that spark of hope and joy. 

I think Hardy’s thrush is not just hope but courage. It hangs on as we hang on because we trust that the light will come and life will blossom. But as we grow older we also grow in our awareness that hope will not be found just in waiting for Spring or Summer but in the life that is this very moment. I think this awareness deepens our joy . Life in winter is, in its own way not despair or darkness though there may be that too, but it is a time also to hear the thrush and join in its song.