The blinding of birds to encourage them to sing has a long history, including Flemish ‘Vinkensport,’ a singing contest for male chaffinches which dates back to the sixteenth century and is still going blinding was banned in 1920, two years before this poem was published, following a campaign by blinded war veterans. “Who thinketh no evil, but sings?” “Who is divine?” And by way of an answer, the antiphonal voice ends the poem with a quiet simplicity wholly befitting to its subject – two small words: “This bird.”įrom The Figure of the Singer by Daniel Karlin: “Who suffereth long and is kind.” “Who hopeth, and endureth all things?” calls the biblical questioner – now unstoppable.

In a rhetorical monologue, the biblical voice of outrage cries, “Who hath Charity?” “This bird,” comes the rejoinder, in psalmic style. Instead, “Blinded ere yet a-wing / By the red-hot needle” (gouged as a fledgling), the poem turns and throws every thinkable Christian tenet back at speaker and reader alike. Hardy’s intensely committed, lifelong compassion for nature’s creatures could have made this a poem of ghastly brutality, of unspeakable loathing for humankind’s inhumanity to the innocent and defenseless. “The Blinded Bird” – yet more horrifying – provides an appalling reminder of the eye gouging of caged songbirds so they could not tell night from day and would thus sing continuously.

A Christian response to the poem will remember that no bird falls to the ground, let alone endures a cruel surgery, apart from the Father ( Matthew 10:29) if He cares for the minutiae of creation, we should as well.įrom Student Companion to Thomas Hardy by Rosemarie Morgan: Here, the bird is an emblem of dignified suffering, an analogy to the singing bard, and an apology for tragic art. While there are any number of his poems that I could isolate for attention, this one is especially dear to me because I share Hardy’s affection for birds.

Where does Thomas Hardy, a would-be Christian, find the divine? The poem below is his answer. Agar was a British painter and photographer associated with the Surrealist movement. Eileen Agar, “The caged bird sings” (1956).

Tom hardy flipping the bird