This night! what sights you, heart, saw ways you went!Īnd more must, in yet longer light’s delay …

What hours, O what black hours we have spent I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day. Gerard Manley Hopkins, ‘ I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day’. (Such a religiously inflected analysis of Hardy’s poem is reinforced by ‘carolings’ in the next stanza.)Ħ. In the third stanza, when the thrush of the title appears (‘darkling’ is an old poetic word for ‘in darkness’ – it also, incidentally, echoes Matthew Arnold‘s use of the word in his famous poem about declining faith, ‘Dover Beach’, published in 1867), its song is described as ‘evensong’, suggesting the church service, while the use of the word ‘soul’ also suggests the spiritual. In ‘The Darkling Thrush’ itself we are given clues that religion is on the speaker’s mind. Hardy hears a thrush singing, and wonders whether the thrush is aware of some reason to be hopeful for the coming new year, some reason of which Hardy himself is unaware.

It should be out there.This classic Hardy poem captures the mood of a winter evening as the sun, ‘the weakening eye of day’, sets below the horizon and gives way to dusk on New Year’s Eve. I have an mp3 of it saved and am going ro put it to a video and then up on my SKZX rumble channel. There were a few dozen songs including sonofabush, 10secondfreefall, whatwouldyoudo, bushkilla, the best mix ever of 'message from sponsor' (Jello Biafra) aka 'Martial Law' - 'This territory is now under MARTIAL LAW ' - it was a hard rock mix, but not the Black Sabbath or the Ice T one. I tried internet archive using key song titles oof other songs there as they were spelled after downloads - but nothing. There was a site I visited in the mid 2000s that had all sorts of free downloadable protest/resistance/truth songs where I dl'd it. It's not the band FEAR's song made famous in RepoMan. dum duh dum dum.Let's have a war, it doesn t matter if we're wrong or if we're right.I've got a feelin, it could happen pretty soon now.it could happen any day now.' Looked forever for a song: cheap drum machine, fuzz guitar : 'Lets have a war, it doesn't matter what we're fighting for.

Lyrics it goes dark darker still