Darkling Thrush – Carol Barnett

Composer: Carol Barnett

Text by: Thomas Hardy

Instrumentation: SATB divisi, string quartet

Duration: Approx. 8 minutes

Date Written:  2017

Composer’s note: Hardy’s poem captures so well the gloomy thoughts of late winter, when everything is grey and all nature seems dead. But little incongruities catch our attention and lift our spirits. The tiny thrush, with its bedraggled appearance and joyous song, won’t banish seasonal affective disorder, but perhaps coaxes forth a gentle smile. The Darkling Thrush was commissioned by New Amsterdam Singers in honor of its founder and Music Director Clara Longstreth, on the occasion of the chorus's 50th Anniversary

text

The Darkling Thrush 

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 - 1900