The Darkling Thrush and Other Poems

FIRST EDITION. 1985 Select Editions oblong hardcover, British import. Thomas Hardy. “The Darkling Thrush” is a poem by the English poet and novelist Thomas Hardy. The poem describes a desolate world, which the poem’s speaker takes as cause for despair and hopelessness. However, a bird (the “thrush”) bursts onto the scene, singing a beautiful and hopeful song—so hopeful that the speaker wonders whether the bird knows something that the speaker doesn’t. -