GREETING 2009 WITH “JOY ILLIMITED”

The first day of 2009 was a gloomy one in Cleveland. I said “Happy New Year” to relatives and friends and to participants at the morning Mass at Saint Malachi, but the truth is that my heart was not really in it even if the Christmas ornaments in our living room seemed to announce that it was.

I like the Feast of Christmas but I do not have the same feeling about New Year’s Day, maybe because I see promises I made and left unkept. This year I thought about the friends and relatives who have died during the past year whom I will never see again. I thought about the new President Barack Obama and wondered whether this man of immense talent and ability can do something about the dismal mess he has inherited, including two wars his party did not start but unfortunately did support. I thought about people who have lost their homes, their jobs, and their health benefits. I thought about the young whose education has been jeopardized by Wall Street greed.

But life goes on and I needed to do the postings for the Eppley Files for Thursday, January 8, so I turned on the computer, opened a link on Slate and found a poem called the “Darkling Thrush” that was written more than a century ago by Thomas Hardy. I could immediately identify with it. Read it or listen to Robert Pinsky reading it and you will see why:

"The Darkling Thrush"

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 fervorless 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.

31 December 1900
………… ................……—Thomas Hardy

I listened to Robert Pinsky reading this poem over and over. Each time my heart was lifted and filled with hope for this new year. If “An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small” can sing with “joy illimited,” why can’t I?

If you would like to hear the poem read by Robert Pinsky, turn on your sound and --

1. Go to http://www.slate.com
2. Scroll down to PODCASTS AND VIDEOS
3. Scroll down to SEE ALL PODCASTS AND VIDEOS
4. Scroll down to ARTS
5. Scroll down to REINTRODUCING THOMAS HARDY’S “THE DARKLING THRUSH”

It’s worth the effort!

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