but name, Was it not worth a little hour or more To add yet this: Once you, a woman, came
15 To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be You love not me?
1901
Drummer Hodge
They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest Uncoffined?just as found: His landmark is a kopje-crest That breaks the veldt1 around; 5 And foreign constellations2 west0 set Each night above his mound.
2
Young Hodge the Drummer never knew? Fresh from his Wessex home? The meaning of the broad Karoo,1 io The Rush,4 the dusty loam, And why uprose to nightly view Strange stars amid the gloam.
3
Yet portion of that unknown plain Will Hodge for ever be; 15 His homely Northern breast and brain
1. South African Dutch (Afrikaans) word for a 3. A dry tableland region in South Africa (usually plain or prairie. 'Kopje-crest': Afrikaans for a small spelled 'Karroo').
hill. The poem is a lament for an English soldier 4. British colonial word for an uncleared area of
killed in the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902). land.
2. Those visible only in the Southern Hemisphere.
.
THE DARKLING THRUSH / 1871
Grow to some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellations reign
His stars eternally.
1899,1901
The Darkling1 Thrush
I leant upon a coppice gate2
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
5 The tangled bine-stems3 scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh0 near Had sought their household fires.
The land's sharp features seemed to be
io The Century's corpse outleant,4
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
is And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I. At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
20 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. 25 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
30 His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
