Eric's Beijing Diary

Passing of the year. Well, we are four days into the new year…the old year is gone and another has begun. Once more the transition brings to mind the words of Thomas Hardy:


The Darkling Thrush
Thomas Hardy

31 December 1900

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;
And 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.



In spite of inevitable uncertainly about the future, it is the voice of the Aged Thrush which encourages me not only to move on, but to continue on with a renewed sense of optimism, putting my hope in that which I cannot see, but dare to believe.