Name: The Darkling Thrush
Duration: P00H05M21S
Description: One of my all-time favourite poems by Thomas Hardy, written on 31st December 1900. Bleak, but wonderfully hopeful. The arrangement just fell together - a great full band track.

The Darkling Thrush

from Black Fly EP by Jennifer Crook

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about

One of my all-time favourite poems by Thomas Hardy, written on 31st December 1900. Bleak, but wonderfully hopeful. The arrangement just fell together - a great full band track.

lyrics

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 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.

Words by by Thomas Hardy

credits

from Black Fly EP, released February 22, 2010

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Jennifer Crook Bath, UK

"I urge you to give this a listen. This is contemporary songwriting and performing at it's best"****Maverick

Telegraph***Best Folk Albums of 2014 (Carnforth Station)

“I’m really, really loving the new album ‘Merry-Go-Round’ - it’s beautiful” Bob Harris, BBC Radio 2

"Heart-wrenchingly gorgeous music" Roots & Fusion ... more

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