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At the end of a cold gray day in December 1899, British author Thomas Hardy wrote his most paradoxical poem, The Darkling Thrush. Known for his realistic, if not downright pessimistic, worldview, Hardy captured the tension of living in a dying world with unexpected hope.

A prodigious walker and environmentalist, he would often trek out across the southwest English downs towards the sea in search of an inspirational landscape. On this particular day, Hardy found a small copse of trees covered in frost to contemplate the death of the only world he knew (Victorian England) with the rise of the world that was rushing to replace it (Modernism). Hardy’s idyllic England was giving way to industrialization, militarization, and modernity. With the prophetic eye of a poet, Hardy glimpsed what the 20th century would bring: a brave new world of war, genocide, and anxiety.

Yet, upon this bleak scene a small bird arrives, offering hope and a new perspective—a hope of which Hardy, in his pessimism, was completely unaware. It seems even Hardy finally realizes the necessity of entering fully into the darkness in order to find hope.

Like the poet at the turn of the 19th century, we too are living under the weight of perilous times, marked by the specter of death. What will the new year bring? More death? More uncertainty? It is easy to despair. But as George Bernard Shaw wrote, “He who has never hoped can never despair.” So hope we must.

As you read Hardy’s poem below, notice how it opens with endings. The end of a year, the end of a day, the end of a century. But every ending births a new beginning, a fresh start full of hopeful expectation.

The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy

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.

Episode 3 of Holy Heretics is now live!

“American Christianity’s Unholy Trinity: Purity (pt. 1)” is a timely and much-needed conversation about purity culture and human sexuality. If you grew up impacted by the purity industry of the 1990s and early 2000s, you will find freedom in the first part of this heartfelt conversation about how purity culture unintentionally harmed an entire generation of young Christians to believe their highest worth as human beings was their virginity. Plus, we uncover how purity culture is tied directly to patriarchy in an attempt to control and objectify the female body. Click here to listen and subscribe today!

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Melanie