Terra Cognita

The New York Times yesterday ran a nice piece by Oliver Morton of the journal Nature; amid the perennial alarm about the imminent demise of life on Earth, it usefully reminds us of our planet's astonishing antiquity and the indefatigable resilience of life, broadly construed anyway. That may not say much about the longevity of human life, which is very likely to be far more ephemeral, but it is perversely reassuring to know that in the cosmic sense we really can't do much damage (I do rather hope the big cats outlast us by a few million years at least).

I will indulge in another favorite poem, this time by the renegade Victorian Thomas Hardy, dated December 31, 1900 and apparently reflecting on the final day of that nineteenth century. Hardy had a long and well-placed lifespan (1840-1928), reaching from the wane of agrarian Olde England well into the mechanized age. What would he say today, I wonder? His image of defiant avian transcendence is positively Dickinsonian.

"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 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 night around,

That I could think there trembled through

His happy good-night air

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

And I was unaware.