“The Darkling Thrush,” by Thomas Hardy

This one arose among the bleak twigs overhead in a full-hearted evensong.

Announcement!  Invitation! I’m one of the entertainments at Pioneer Village’s “Old-Fashioned Christmas” tonight and tomorrow night in Worthington, MN.  I’ll be reading a half-hour’s worth of bleak winter and warm Christmas poems each evening from 6.30-7 in the Small Church.  (Click here for directions to Pioneer Village and an interactive map of the village.)  I hope you’ll come.

“The Darkling Thrush” is, of course, in Hardy’s Complete Poems.  I found and read it using the Poetry Tool on the Poetry Foundation website.