Quote by Thomas Hardy: “So little cause for carolings of such ecstatic sound was written on terrestrial things afar or nigh.”

The world looks bleak and exhausted, yet a bird sings with fierce joy — Hardy can find no reason for it in the landscape. This gap between the world's apparent despair and the stubborn persistence of hope is one of the most quietly devastating observations in English poetry.

The Darkling Thrush was written on the last day of the nineteenth century, December 31, 1900. Britain was at war in South Africa, Queen Victoria was dying, and the poem captures a mood of exhausted civilization standing at a threshold it cannot yet name.

English novelist and poet whose work portrayed the harsh realities of rural Victorian life with unflinching honesty. His major novels include Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Far from the Madding Crowd, and his poetry is noted for its bleak tenderness.