...ascribing ecstasy anthropomorphically to the bird: "So little cause for carolings/ Of such ecstatic sound I Was written on terrestrial things / Afar or nigh around / That I could think. ..." By this acknowledgement, he admits the possibility of a fundamental difference between himself...

...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...Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware. I Look Into My Glass I look into my glass, And view my wasting skin, And say, "Would God it came to...

...to some kind of higher meaning, it never lets Hardy in on its secret: So little cause for carolings Of such ecstatic sound, Was written on terrestrial...good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware.6 Hardy, unlike Auden, does not refer directly to Keats' nightingale; nevertheless, the bird...

...the best even within the context of a profound conviction of the worst: So little cause for carolings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial...good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware.74 21 Pessimistic Meliorist REVIEWERS of Wessex Poems, echoing the reception of Hardy's later...

...blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom. 215 THE DARKLING THRUSH So little cause for carollings Of such ecstatic sound...That I could think there trembled through His happy good- night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware. December 1900. THE COMET AT YALBURY...

...afternoon, shrivelled hedge plants and bare twigs from which comes the voice of the bird, so ecstatic That I could think there trembled through His happy...Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware. 19. Cat, Bird, Eagle, Sphinx When Queen Victoria died in January 1901, a short poem by Hardy saluted...