some blessed Hope

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.

(Thomas Hardy, The Darkling Thrush)

Tonight is given to poetry. For imagery, for the power of hope in a dying world, this is sheer delight.