I agree with Matthew, though it also seems it wouldn't hurt a thing for this all to be on one big thread or two, since everyone's cross-referencing. And also that there's not another sonnet-maker I'd rather read.

It's interesting that Keats has his thrush tell us twice, "o fret not after knowledge -- I have none," as if to make it quite clear that the singer in question knows quite a bit, though believe he does not. This paradox -- the wisdom that resides in not claiming knowledge -- perhaps makes us likelier, as 21st century readers, to trust this bird over Hardy's, who knows that hope with an undeniable certainty.

But then maybe that's something of what it is to be a bird, or a body: a physically experienced faith in a future.