The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy: Summary

The Darkling Thrush: About the poem

Published in December 1900, at the end of the
19th century, ‘The Darkling Thrush’ symbolically
mourns the passing of an era. In that respect, it is
an elegy — a mournful poem that deals with death
— here, the death of the century. As a matter
of fact, the poem was originally called ‘The
Century’s End, 1900’. But it was also the dawn of
the 20th century. Probably giving way to his guarded
optimism about what the new age would bring,
Hardy renamed the piece to the more cheery title as
we know today — The Darkling Thrush.
‘The Darkling Thrush’ is rich in metaphor.
‘Darkling’ means ‘of the darkness’, and conveys an
‘end of days’ metaphor. Here the dusk doesn’t just
refer to the dimming of light. On a deeper level, we
deal with despair and death of the century. Add the
winter landscape to this, and things get more dismal.
Thankfully not all is doom and gloom. There is
another focal point to this poem — the Thrush. A
complete antithesis (contrast) to what everything
else in the poem represents, the bird speaks of
Hope, Joy and Change. This play of light and shade
called chiaroscuro effect is treated equally in the
poem. All these are lofty concepts that go beyond
our five senses. Such poems based on abstract
ideas are called abstractions.
Change is never easy. More often than not, we do
not have a choice but to accept it. ‘The Darkling
Thrush’ is about one person’s reaction to this
change. It is about hope in the face of despair,
about endings and cautious beginnings, about
courage when all seems lost, depending on the way
you look at it.
Form and language of the poem
Hardy does not bring any drama with the structure
and wordplay in the poem. He was seeing enough of
that in real life. Rather the poet chose to bring
symmetry to the poem. He neatly divides the poem
in two halves, allocating 2 of the 4 stanzas for his
two main subjects — the winter evening, then the
thrush. Each stanza is an octet — i.e. it comprises
of 8 lines. Hardy even coined his own words —
outleant, blast-beruffled, spectre-grey, contributing
to the ordered meter/ rhythm of the poem. These
words don’t occur anywhere else in the English
language and are called nonce words (Have fun
coming up with your own).
We have an ababcdcd rhyme scheme; each stanza
repeats the same pattern but with a different end
rhyme. The other sound devices used in the poem
are:
Assonance: Repetition of similar vowel sounds.
At once a voice arose among (O and A sounds-
Line 17)
Consonance: Repetition of similar consonant
sounds in neighboring words.
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day (Lines 4-5)
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom. (Lines 24-28)
Alliteration: Repetition of initial consonant sounds.
That I could think there trembled through (Line 29)
His crypt the cloudy canopy, (Line 11)
Alliteration is a type of consonance. Here is an
instance where the two overlapped:

In blast-beruffled plume (Line 25)

Consonance (L sound) + Alliteration (B sound)
The Darkling Thrush: Line by Line Explanation
First Stanza
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The poet paints a somber picture of the world. The
mood feels lonely and meditative, the speaker
watching as a silent bystander leaning upon the
coppice gate — a gate that opens onto the woods.
In his loneliness, the poet has personified Winter
and Frost. Frost is described as ‘specter–grey’ or
ghost-like grey. The Winter’s dregs — the fallen
snow and heavy fog — are making the twilight/ dusk
(the weakening eye of day) look desolate. So, as
you can see, the Winter and the Frost are bleak
company — they cannot arouse any sense of
cheerfulness.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires
Climbing plants, dead for winter, have left behind
only their climbing stems or bine stems. They add to
the gloominess as the poem compares them to
the simile of strings of broken lyres (a musical
instrument) notching the sky. This comparison is
also important in suggesting the lack of music or
happiness for that matter.
Even people seem listless and haunting, instead of
living their lives. Then people going home and
seeking their household fires add to the image of the
gloomy end of the day. There is no vibrancy in life or
color.
Second Stanza
The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
Winter in the Northern Hemisphere is also the end of
the year. Here it becomes even more meaningful,
as the end of the year in this case also marks the
end of the century. This is why the century
is personified as a corpse; the harsh winter
landscape defining its wasted body. The ‘cloudy
canopy’ or sky covers the century’s tomb and the
sad wind becomes a song of death.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.
In winter, Nature is generally at a standstill. Life’s
vibrancy (ancient pulse of germ and birth) seems to
have stopped (shrunken hard and dry). The dormant
environment feeds the poet’s brooding frame of
mind. The scale of his pessimism increases. Dull
observations escalate to a despairing mindset and
the poet only sees a world without promise or future.
Third Stanza
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
Suddenly, like the proverbial silver lining to dark
clouds, a joyful song breaks into the poet’s
despairing outlook from among the frosty twigs
overhead. The poet calls the thrush’s melody a ‘full-
hearted evensong’ — prayers sung at the end of the
day, in the evening. The song was coming out of
boundless joy. Look at the use of word ‘illimited’,
suggesting something uncommon.
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
But who was it singing? It was an old thrush bird —
feeble, lean and small, with its feathers disarranged
by the wind (blast-beruffled). Though the thrush’s
appearance does not arouse any hope, heedless of
the oppressive environment and the growing
darkness — the mark of struggling to survive in
winter — the thrush sings. The bird puts his soul into
his voice as he belts out a happy tune to no one but
the Eternal Listener (Remember the word
‘evensong’, a prayer?).
Though the title of the poem suggested that it was
all about a thrush, it took two and a half stanzas to
get to the first mention of the bird. But still, the
thrush and its song seem to overcome the initial
melancholy that the atmosphere brought even to the
readers.

Fourth Stanza
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
No one knows what inspires the darkling thrush
singing (compared to singing Christmas carols). The
‘ecstatic sound’ of the thrush is in complete contrast
to such a hopeless situation. The poet cannot think
of any earthly event or cause, near or far away that
could be responsible.

That I could think there trembled through

His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
The thrush’s song is an enigma, and the poet
marvels at the blessed Hope or knowledge the bird
has. There are no straight answers. Does the thrush
sing a song of farewell — a hymn of gratitude for the
good things that have been? Or does he sing a song
of hope — a reassurance of good things that are to
come? Like the poet, we can only wonder, keep our
hearts open and just be glad that there is a reason
to be happy at all.
The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy is reputed to have written The Darkling
Thrush on New Year’s Eve, 1900, at the dawn of a new
century. It commences in the personal, subjective mode,
but the poet’s feelings and mood are suggested by his
observations of nature, rather than by direct statements.
The poem, The Darkling Thrush, is written in the form of
a an ode, conventionally a lyric poem in the form of an
address to a particular subject, often written in a lofty,
elevated style giving it a formal tone. However, odes can
be written in a more private, personal vein, as in the
reflective way that Thomas Hardy writes this one.

The Darkling Thrush

The title of a poem speaks volumes about it, because
through it, the poem must convey the mood and tone of
the poem in a very precise and economic way.
For The Darkling Thrush, Thomas Hardy chose a word
with tremendous history in poetry. ‘Darkling’ means in
darkness, or becoming dark, for Hardy can still see the
landscape, and the sun is ‘weakening’ but not completely
set. The word itself goes back to the mid fifteenth century.
Milton, in Paradise Lost Book III describes the
nightingale: ‘the wakeful Bird / Sings darkling, and in
shadiest Covert hid / Tunes her nocturnal Note …’ Keats
famously uses the word in his ‘Ode to a Nightingale’:
‘Darkling, I listen …’. Matthew Arnold, in ‘Dover Beach’
writes about the ‘darkling plain’.
In other words, this title gives the poem a resonance of
past poets and their thoughts and feelings on a similar
subject; it makes specific allusions to these poets and
poems; their echoes become a part of its tradition.

The Darkling Thrush Analysis

Stanza 1
In the first stanza, we are introduced to the poet, in the
first person, ‘I’. He is leaning on a gate in a little wood –
it’s traditionally a thinking pose, and the poem conveys
his thoughts and feelings. The bitter hopelessness of a
cold winter’s evening are stressed by the imagery: ‘Frost’,
‘spectre-gray’, ‘dregs’, desolate’, ‘weakening’, ‘broken’
and ‘haunted’ are unified and strengthened by their
suggestions of cold, weakness, and death or ghostliness.
There are plenty of heavy, gloomy ‘g’ sounds: ‘gate’,
‘gray’, ‘dregs’, and equally heavy ‘d’ sounds: ‘dregs’,
‘desolate’ and ‘day’. Even day, which might be cheering,
is described as ‘desolate’ and having a ‘weakening eye’.
The only colour left in the ‘darkling’ daylight is gray.
There is a tiny whisper of sound in the repeated slight ‘s’
sounds of coppice, spectre, dregs and desolate. ‘Frost’ and
‘Winter’ have capital letters, as if their presence is the
most important.
The ‘strings of broken lyres’ is a classic image of
disharmony, and perhaps points to a lack of joy in the
poet’s vision of life. Even the people who have gone
home to the warmth of their fires seem to have assumed a
ghostly quality, ‘all mankind that haunted nigh’.
Stanza 2
The second stanza continues the model of the former, if
anything in even stronger terms. The whole past century
is a ‘corpse’, the cloudy sky its tomb and the winter wind
like the century’s death song. The personification of the
century intensifies one’s feeling that it is a real presence.
The imagery in this stanza continues and enlarges on the
motif of death contained in the first. Despite the personal,
subjective start of the poem, by the end of the second
stanza Hardy has made his mood an emblem for all life
upon earth, and he even suggests that they very life force
is ‘shrunken hard and dry’, that life itself is near to
exhaustion and death. This is achieved in an undramatic,
almost quiet, manner with a slow build-up to a terrifying
vision of death, driven largely by natural images.
The alliteration in this stanza intensifies the atmosphere of
gloom and death. Repeated cs link ‘century’s corpse’,
‘crypt’ and ‘cloudy canopy’. The rhymes of ‘birth’ and
‘earth’ are negated by ‘dry’ and ‘I’. Everything is seen in
terms of death: ‘sharp features’ (of a dead body),
‘century’s corpse’, ‘crypt’, ‘death-lament’, ‘shrunken hard
and dry’, ‘fervourless’. It seems that it is not just the death
of the old century that Hardy is describing, but the death
of the pulse of life that vitalizes and energizes him and
other people, the death of hope.
Stanza 3
In the third stanza, at the nadir of the poem, the sudden
hurling out of its song by a thrush might be seen as the
injection of a rather fatuous optimism into the poem. The
‘full-hearted evensong/Of joy illimited’ is certainly a
cause for hope.
The choice of bird here is what makes Hardy one of the
finest poets: He chooses a an old, frail, thin, scruffy-
looking thrush, not the nightingale of Miltonic and
Romantic tradition. It is an ordinary indigenous song-
thrush, but one that is ‘blast-beruffled’: it has survived the
strong winter winds, that the poet had hitherto painted as
brutal and uncooperative. The ‘aged’ and ‘frail’ thrush is,
perhaps facing its own imminent end, and yet it flings it
soul ecstatically upon the darkening evening.The resultant
picture of an ordinary, weather-beaten, thrush rising from
the depths of the winter winds with their ‘death
lament’ singing a beautiful song, is one of hope.
Three run-on lines take us at full tilt to its message: ‘joy
illimited’ (unlimited). The very words with which Hardy
introduces the song are lyrical, rhythmic, repetitive, like
the thrush’s song: ‘At once a voice arose among/The
bleak twigs overhead.’ In perfect iambics, each prefaced
by the vowel ‘a’, Hardy echoes the sound of the thrush’s
song: ‘at once a voice arose among…’
Stanza 4
In the final stanza, the idea of religious faith is conveyed
through the thrush’s ‘carolings’, reminiscent of Christmas
carols, and the ‘blessed Hope’ – hope being one of the
three great Christian virtues, faith, hope and charity
(love).
Hardy is careful not to be sentimental about the thrush.
Hardy can see no cause for joy, but he can hope, that the
thrush can see something he himself is unable to
perceive. The Darkling Thrush is thus finely balanced. It
suggests there may be hope, and the very sound of the
thrush and its defiance of the prevailing moods shows at
the very least the existence of a tragic hope; life maybe
threatened, its physical existence at risk, but its spirit is
indomitable and cannot be crushed.

Overall Poetic Form

The overall rhythm of the poem is regular iambic
tetrameter alternated with iambic trimeter (8 syllables in a
line, with the second line in each case having just 6
syllables); it’s a ballad stanza rhythm. This regular
rhythm, seems to have a slow, joyless effect and makes
the pace slow. The tight rhyming gives strength and
authority to the poem, but the metre is more relaxed,
giving a natural and free-flowing feeling to the lines.
A Final Note
The Darkling Thrush is typical of Hardy’s work in that it
shows life on Earth, human as well as animal, existing
under the iron grip of an unsympathetic force, in this case,
Nature. In praising defiance and the unconquerable spirit,
it is also typical, and in its firm unwillingness to state a
clear conclusion, balancing hope and pessimism, it could
stand for Hardy’s poems and novels. The musing tone,
use of natural imagery to create and represent human
moods and feelings and the simple rhyme scheme are
unobtrusive and powerful.

Plot Description
Spoiler warning! Klausner is a man obsessed
with sound. He has a theory that there are many,
many sounds in the world that humans are just
unable to hear due to their high frequencies. He
explains to his doctor that he has invented a machine
that will allow him to tune in to those frequencies
and convert those pitches into audible sound. The
first time he tries it out in his yard, he hears
shrieking in his headphones as his neighbor cuts
roses from her garden. Each time a flower is cut, he
hears a shriek. The next day, he tries a bigger
experiment. He takes an axe and swings it into a
large beech tree. He is horrified to hear the deep and
pathetic moan that the tree makes in response.
Klausner rushes back to the house and calls his
doctor. “Please come. Come quickly. I want someone
to hear it. It’s driving me mad!” he says. The doctor
agrees to come over and listen to the headphones,
but just as Klausner takes a second swing at the tree
a large branch crashes down between them and
destroys the machine. Klausner is deeply shaken and
asks the doctor to paint the tree’s cuts with iodine.
The doctor claims not to have heard anything, but he
agrees to Klausner’s demands and dresses the
wounds.

Reviews
B. Wordsworth by V.S. Naipaul
26 JUL 2018 DERMOT ECHOES CITE POST

In B. Wordsworth by V. S.
Naipaul we have the theme of admiration, identity,
curiosity, friendship, control, freedom, uncertainty
and coming of age. Narrated in the first person by
an unnamed male the story is a memory piece and
after reading the story the reader realises that
Naipaul may be exploring the theme of admiration.
If anything the narrator appears to admire
Wordsworth though the reality may be that
Wordsworth may not necessarily be who he says he
is. He suggests that he is writing a poem that will be
the greatest poem in the world however as the story
progresses Wordsworth admits to the narrator that
there is no poem. However it might also be
significant that Wordsworth denies the story about
the girl poet as the reality may be the girl poet may
have been Wordsworth’s wife and the sudden loss of
her is something that Wordsworth may have never
overcome. Wordsworth was a young man at the
time and had the future in front of him. However his
life appears to have become one of loneliness since
the girl poet’s death. If anything Wordsworth’s wife
may have been his inspiration and it is possible he
has not written any poetry since her death.
Wordsworth is also a curiosity to the narrator. If
anything the narrator is intrigued by the life that
Wordsworth lives and it is a life that is completely
different to the one that the narrator lives. The
narrator’s life is being controlled by his mother yet
when he is with Wordsworth he feels free.
Wordsworth’s instruction to the narrator to drop the
pin in the water might also be symbolically
important. The narrator expects the pin to float
however it is clear to the reader that it will sink. It is
possible that Naipaul by introducing the pin into the
story is highlighting the uncertainty that comes with
life and the fact that nobody really knows what will
happen. It is as though the narrator is being taught
to learn by his mistakes. The fact that the narrator
also notices that Wordsworth’s home has been
demolished after he has died and that the garden is
no longer there, having been replaced by concrete,
could be Naipaul’s way of highlighting the
importance of nature in a person’s life. How an
individual might need to take some time out from
life and enjoy the natural world around them. Just
as Wordsworth and the narrator manage to do. It is
also possible that by telling the narrator that he is
the greatest poet in the world and that the narrator
is a poet too. Wordsworth is attempting to instil
confidence into the narrator. To allow him to think
that anything is possible.
If anything Wordsworth acts as a role model to the
narrator. He guides him to the best of his ability
through life allowing him to make mistakes and to
learn at the same time. Something that does not
occur when it comes to the narrator’s mother’s
influence over the narrator. Where she may
represent the conflict that exists in the narrator’s
life. Wordsworth on the other hand has a positive
impact on the narrator. Opening the narrator’s eyes
to the benefits of nature. Prior to Wordsworth
meeting the narrator there is no suggestion that the
narrator may have appreciated the beauty of nature.
It may also be a case that just as Naipaul is
suggesting that nature is often under appreciated.
So too may poets be. Wordsworth is an educated
man. Something that is noticeable by the way that
he speaks. However when he tries to sell a poem.
The narrator’s mother doesn’t want to buy it. It is as
though Wordsworth (or all poets) are disconnected
from those around them due to their occupation.
When the reality is a poet may be more connected
to the world than the average person.
The end of the story is also interesting as it appears
as though the narrator comes of age when
Wordsworth dies. He has lost what some critics
might suggest has been his best teacher and he
knows that life may never be the same again. No
longer does he have the opportunity to hear the life
lessons that Wordsworth might teach him. Instead
there is a sense that the narrator is returning to a
life that is not as attractive to him. However what is
clear to the reader is that the narrator has never
forgotten Wordsworth. He may have forgotten some
of the constellations with the exception of Orion but
he has never forgotten Wordsworth. The reader left
suspecting that the narrator’s time with Wordsworth
has been time well spent. Even if Wordsworth did
confuse the narrator before he died and told him
that there was no poem nor was there a girl poet. If
anything Wordsworth has made an impression on
the narrator and at the same time taught him to
appreciate nature and to be confident within
himself.

ntroduction to the Analysis of "Desiderata" by

Max Ehrmann
If you are unfamiliar with prose poetry you may want
to spend a couple of minutes reading the sections
below that describe the characteristics of prose
poetry. You will then have an idea of what to expect
and be able to pick out the defining features
in Desiderata.
What is a Prose Poem and What are its Defining
Features?
A prose poem may not look like poetry at first
glance. It usually has neither the shape nor the
rhythms or rhymes that are often regarded as the
distinctive features of poetry. A prose poem is
exactly what it says on the tin - it is prose. But it is
prose with a difference:
A prose poem includes one or more of the following
-
 Heightened imagery, organic or subjective
imagery, which may include emotions
 Parataxis - a literary technique of short simple

sentences with phrases linked by coordinating

conjunctions.
 Emotional effects

You will note when reading Desiderata that the

many repetitions of the coordinating
conjunction 'and' is one of the poems distinctive
features.
Definition of a Coordinating Conjunction
 A coordinating conjunction links words, phrases,
or clauses.
 It is used when the writer wants to give equal
importance to the phrases or clauses that it
connects.
 There are seven coordinating conjunctions - and,
but, for, or, nor, yet, so
 The mnemonic FANBOYS might help you to
remember them.

Desideratum, plural Desiderata (Latin) - something

that is needed or wanted
—
https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/desiderat
um
Desiderata
Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and
remember what peace there may be in silence.
As far as possible, without surrender, be on good
terms with all persons.
Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to
others,
even to the dull and ignorant; they too have their
story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are

vexations to the spirit.
If you compare yourself with others, you may
become vain and bitter,
for always there will be greater and lesser persons
than yourself.
Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however

humble;
it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of
time.
Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the
world is full of trickery.
But let this not blind you to what virtue there is;
many persons strive for high ideals,
and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially do not feign affection.

Neither be cynical about love;
for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is
as perennial as the grass.
Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully
surrendering the things of youth.
Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden
misfortune.
But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.
Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.
Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with
yourself.
You are a child of the universe no less than the trees
and the stars;
you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is
clear to you,
no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you

conceive Him to be.
And whatever your labors and aspirations, in the
noisy confusion of life,
keep peace with your soul. With all its sham,
drudgery and broken dreams,
it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be
happy.
Bronze statue of Max Ehrmann at Terre Haute,
Indiana 'Desiderata' is engraved on a plaque next to
the statue and words from the poem are embedded
in the walkway
The Tone of "Desiderata"
Desiderata is a didactic ie. morally instructional
prose poem. The pace is measured and calm,
emphasizing the advice contained within the lines to
be calmly assertive, respectful of others, non-
confrontational, diligent, emotionally strong,
principled and to cultivate a clear conscience.
Desiderata is a wonderful poem for contemplation
and mindfulness practice. In my youth, I had a
framed poster on my bedroom wall. It has long been
lost. Revisiting the poem prompted me to find a
replacement for my study. I like the artwork on the
one that I have picked out.
The Form of "Desiderata"
 The poem twenty-eight lines divided into six
paragraphs/stanzas
 The first two and last two stanzas each have four

lines. The third and fourth stanzas each have six

lines
 There is no pattern to the length of the lines

 There is no rhyme within or at the end of the lines

 There is not a conventional rhythm to the lines -

the rhythm is conversational but not the iambic

pentameter that is said to relate most closely to
the normal rhythm of speech.
The Features of "Desiderata" That Qualify it as a
Poem
 There is a liberal sprinkling of the coordinating
conjunction and in Desiderata.
As explained above, a coordinating conjunction is
used to give equal weight or importance to
words/phrases within sentences. For example,
line one suggests that it is equally important to be
placid and to find peace in silence.
 The three adverbs in the first stanza - placidly,

quietly, clearly - provide end rhymes and

emphasise the calm tone of the poem.
 Note the repeated uses of the words your,

yourself, and you. One or more of them appear in

each stanza, emphasizing the personal nature of
the poem, which may be regarded as a direct
address to the reader.
Summary and Paraphrase of the Stanzas of
"Desiderata"
Desiderata can be read as a blend of practical
advice, moral and religious philosophy, and ethics.
The poem starts with day to day practicalities of
dealing with a world that is sometimes unequal or
harsh, moving on to the power of human love, and
ending with an injunction to be at peace with
God and with your soul (which I interpret as
maintaining a clear conscience).
Stanza 1
Advice to remain calm amongst the bustle of
everyday life and to practice silence. Be on good
terms with people without giving up personal values
and assertiveness. Do not be argumentative but
remain calm in interactions with others, to whom you
should be respectful and attentive, even if you
consider a person to be dull or ignorant. Everyone
has a right to be heard.
Stanza 2
Avoid people who are loud and aggressive, as they
may upset your equilibrium. It is unproductive to
compare yourself to other people as there will
always be those higher and lower in the pecking
order/moral stakes. Any such comparisons are
therefore likely to lead to vanity or bitterness. Simply
enjoy your own achievements in life and any plans
that you may have for furthering your own personal
development.
Stanza 3
Whatever your occupation, treasure it and do your
best, as it is better to be employed, however humble
the work might be, than to be unemployed. Be
grateful that you have employment. Be cautious
when conducting financial transactions because
many people will attempt to dupe you. But despite
the fact that there are many fraudsters and con-men
don't become blind to the fact that there are also
many good people, who have high moral standards.
There are heroes in every walk of life.
Stanza 4
Don't pretend to be the type of person that you are
not, or to have feelings that you do not have. Most of
all do not pretend to love a person when there is no
love in your heart. But do not underestimate the
power of love, which survives in the most terrible of
circumstances. Defer to the wisdom of the older
generation. Develop a strong character that will help
you to survive misfortune, but don't imagine bad
things that may never happen - you may be thinking
of such things because you are tired or lonely.
Stanza 5
Don't be overly self-critical.You are part of an all-
encompassing universe and no less important than
any other component within it. You may not realise
this, but there is a pre-determined and right path that
the universe is following.
Stanza 6
Accept of the reality of God, or a greater power than
human, whatever you imagine 'Him' to be. Maintain
a clear conscience. Despite all of the dreadful things
that happen, the world is still beautiful. Remain
 cheerful and, most of all, put your best efforts into
being happy.
Helpful 200
 Question:
Is the word "desiderata" Latin or Spanish?
Answer:
The word "desiderata" is Latin. It is the plural of the
word "desideratum," as shown in the callout box in
the article.
Helpful 137
 Question:
Of what significance is the perennial grass
mentioned in the fourth stanza of the poem
"Desiderata"?
Answer:
The reference to grass uses the literary device of
simile (drawing comparisons to show similarities
between different things). I suppose that Ehrmann is
suggesting that just as grass is green throughout the
year in a temperate climate love is
perpetual/undying/fresh. Personally, I don't find it a
particularly effective choice of simile (especially as
 much of the grass here in England died back during
the recent drought). What do you think?
Helpful 125
 Question:
What is the title of "Desiderata"?
Answer:
The title is "Desiderata"!
Helpful 79
 Question:
In what ways did Ehrmann take a formalistic
approach to Desiderata?
Answer:
Desiderata is written as a prose poem. The principal
approach that Ehrmann has taken to form is the use
of parataxis, an explanation of which in this article.
He has given equal importance to each point of
advice that he has given by using the coordinating
conjunction ‘and’ to link clauses in the poem.
We are the Music Makers: About the poem
The Ode, popularly known by its first line ‘We are the
music makers’ is the first poem in the
collection Music and Moonlight (1874) by Arthur
O’Shaughnessy. This ode is a treatise to artists
across different realms. It uses various euphemisms
like “music-makers”, “dreamers of dreams”, “movers
and shakers” to implore the artists and serenade
their achievements. It describes the life of an artist,
the beauty of their artworks and their impact on their
surroundings and on the world outside.
This poem is the origin of the popular phrase
‘movers and shakers’. Although the original
version has nine stanzas in total, it is believed only
to be three stanzas long due to the abridgment in
Palgrave’s collection.
The Ode is alluded to in a range of artistic
expressions including orchestras, feature films, rock
and pop bands. Even the line ‘We are the music-
makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams’ was
played at the 89th Academy Awards in Memoriam
Section.
Ode by Arthur O’Shaughnessy: form and
language
The Ode, We are the Music Makers is written in
stanza form in sprung rhythm where seven and eight
syllable lines alternate. The rhyme scheme is
abababab with a variation in the second stanza:
aabbcdcd. The odd-numbered lines have feminine
rhyme while the even-numbered lines have
masculine rhyme, giving them a greater emphasis.
Most of the lines start with either a conjunction or a
preposition to give the poem a forwarding
impetus. The use of alliteration in the first stanza
(music makers, dreamers of dreams) further
enhances the musical effect.
We are the Music Makers: Line by Line Analysis
First Stanza
We are the music-makers,
And we are the dreamers of dreams,
The poem makes a straightforward appeal to the
artists across different realms. Calls them ‘the
music-makers’, and ‘dreamers of dreams’. Since it
avoids mention of a particular art-form, it applies
equally to artists across the globe, across different
segments. And, thus the massive appeal ! So, this
poem gives art an encompassing definition.
Wandering by lone sea-breakers
And sitting by desolate streams;
In these lines, the poet describes the artists and
their soul-searching. How they wander alone by sea-
breakers, and sit by the desolate streams. The poet
tries to focus on the desolation of spirits of these
artists, an ache in their hearts that actually shapes
up their creativity which is worth such admiration.

World losers and world forsakers,

On whom the pale moon gleams;
O’Shaughnessy now builds upon the travails that these
artists go through. He calls them ‘World losers’ and
‘world forsakers’. This highlights the difficult life the
artists lead to shape up their creation. Often it gets
difficult to survive solely on their art. ‘The pale moon’
points to the little or meagre sustenance they manage to
gain for themselves through their art. This strikes chords
with most of the artists who look for a patron for their
art in absence of a hefty inheritance or good fortune.
Yet we are the movers and shakers
Of the world for ever, it seems
Despite that, the poet says these artists are the
‘movers and shakers’ of the world. By the phrase, he
means someone who colours outside the lines —
people who show the world a face outside the
societal norms and ethos — people who are capable
of moving and shaking the world and possibly
building a new one — those who bring dynamicity to
an otherwise static world.

Second Stanza
With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world’s great cities.
In this stanza, the poet highlights the effects of the
artistry on the world. The wonderful, immortal
(deathless) songs created by the artists’ soul are
capable of building the world’s great cities. They are
capable of building and rebuilding new cities, new
settlements, new civilizations by arousing radical
thoughts, feelings and realizations in people’s mind.

And out of a fabulous story

We fashion an empire’s glory:
Similarly, out of a fabulous, mythic story they can
fashion a glorious empire. This means that the fantasy
that comes to an artist’s mind can shape up things he
builds. It is after all poems, stories, songs, paintings and
other arts that mark the glory of a civilisation. We often
talk about the artistic height of an empire to judge its
greatness.
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song’s measure
Can trample an empire down.
The poet further says that one man with a dream
and adequate opportunity (pleasure) at hand can
give that dream a concrete structure. He is the one
who shall go ahead and conquer a crown. It is the
element of fantasy and something mythic, that revs
anyone to move forward and outdo themselves. The
‘crown’ refers to an extraordinary achievement.

The poet adds to say if more (three) people come

together on any such new, novel idea (new song’s
measure), they can trample an empire down. That
huge is the potential of artistry!
At its symbolic height, it reminds one that popular adage
— ‘The pen is mightier than the sword’. The artists can
bring more change in people’s mind than anyone else.
Third Stanza
We, in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth;
In the third stanza of the Ode, We are the Music
Makers, the poet continues to applaud the power of
artists. The artists were present in all ages (in the
ages lying). In the past the artists built the ancient
city of Nineveh that was abandoned in 612 BC (in
the buried past). ‘Sighing’ probably means the
torture those enslaved people received to build the
buildings, streets and all. Again, Babel (Babylon)
was created with mirth, with the artists like the
architects and sculptors working together happily.
And o’erthrew them with prophesying
To the old of the new world’s worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
Or one that is coming to birth.
O’Shaughnessy says that the artists are capable of
overthrowing the old world with their prophecy of a
new world. According to him, each age is the result
of dream of these artists; this is again replaced by
another dream of their own. So, their dream is
capable of replacing themselves to give birth to a
new dream — dream of a new modern world.
This highlights the chain reaction that such an idea
initiates. It goes on. To kill art is, thus, not possible.
Art survives when nothing does. And the men who
think and dream —the music makers — are really
important and immortal in this world.
Crossing the Bar by Alfred Lord Tennyson
Crossing the Bar is about death. Which sounds bleak! But it really isn’t, in fact the narrator states twice that they don’t want people to moan or be sorrowful about their situation.
The poem uses the metaphor of a voyage at sea to describe the journey from life to death. Although Tennyson is famed for his poems based on mythology this poem does not fall
under that umbrella except for a possible reference to a “pilot” which I have theorised may be an elusion to a mythological creature such as the “ferryman”.

Form and Tone

The poem is about the journey into death from life and was written by Tennyson in his advancing years when he was starting to think about death (No surprises there!) It is written
in free verse in four stanzas which each contain four lines. It contains a strict ABAB rhyming pattern. Despite the gloomy subject matter the poem is never dull or gloomy in its
tone, perhaps the rhyming pattern was put in place in order to avoid this. It seems to view death almost as an adventure. The poem is presumably not autobiographical (It is nearly
impossible to write a poem whilst dead!) but is told from a first person perspective.

Crossing the Bar Analysis

First stanza
Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea,
The very first line of this stanza puts the poem in a particular time of day. The evening star that it describes is another name for Venus, Venus is known as both the Evening Star
and the Morning star dependent on whether it is winter or summer which means this poem is based in the winter. Whilst Venus represents the goddess of love this is certainly no
love poem and its inclusion is clearly just to point to what the “time” is. I’m not sure what the narrator is referencing when they mention a “clear call” the poem is quite dated, but
it doesn’t appear to be a nautical term. Perhaps this line is meant to be taken literally. Maybe it is made to suggest that the narrator’s voice carries, perhaps due to the weather or the
location.
The bar that is referenced is the line between living and dying so when the narrator says there is to be no moaning at the bar effectively they are saying that there shouldn’t be any
sadness or complaining about their passing. Throughout this poem the narrator makes references to being at sea. Travelling at sea is used as a metaphor for the journey from life on
into death.

Second stanza
But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.
The first line of this stanza is rather quaint sounding. It describes the current being very minimal. It does so in a way that sounds beautiful. Does this line denote that the narrator’s
journey to the afterlife is a peaceful one? Dying in their sleep perhaps? The idea of the full tide suggests that the metaphorical ship that is being sailed is in deep water. The lack of
sound and foam denotes that the vessel is in the deep sea which in turn suggests that it isn’t at the start of the journey but nearer the end. Note how the narrator doesn’t say this but
subtly hints, leaving clues for a reader like Hansel and Gretel leaving a trail of breadcrumbs.

The third line of this stanza is even more nuanced. What it is talking about drawing from the “boundless deep” IE the sea, isn’t at all clear but it likely the narrator is still
referencing the tide as this seems to be the theme for this stanza. It then continues to say it turns again home. This suggests that the tide is turning; does this mean that it is
becoming less calm? It’s doubtful, but it certainly doesn’t suggest that the narrator isn’t going to cross over after all, the tide isn’t going to carry them “back to shore”.

Related poetry: The Charge of the Light Brigade by Alfred Lord Tennyson

Third stanza
Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;
Twilight once again describes the time at which events take place but also help to create a visual picture of the surroundings. The use of evening bell may be used here to evoke
images of the funeral toll often associated with death. The next line would certainly lend credence to that idea as following the bell there is darkness is this a sign that the narrator
has finally passed on? One thing is clear and that is that narrator doesn’t want people to make a big deal out of their passing as they reiterate the sentiment from the first stanza by
saying that they don’t want sadness.
Their passing to the other side is referred to as “embarking” which fits nicely in with the nautical theme and almost makes it sound like the experience is a bit of an adventure,
which holds it contrast with the descriptions that have made the episode seem serene and peaceful.

Fourth stanza
For tho’ from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.
The theme of time and place are seemingly prominent throughout this poem as you can see as they have been used several times throughout the narrative. And it is mentioned once
again at the beginning of the stanza. This stanza seems to act almost like a summary detailing a very much abridged version of the journey that has taken the narrator from their
birth up to their eventual demise. When they talk of the flood I think this is another way of describing the “endless sea” that has carried them towards their destination, their
passing into death.

When the narrator talks about the pilot they are effectively referring to the person that has controlled their journey. This could be the grim reaper, or the ferryman! (These are
characters from mythology that help people transition to the afterlife) but it could also be a reference to god. Perhaps the narrator wants to “meet their maker”. Crossing the bar is a
phrase that essentially means crossing over from life into death. It is also the name of the poem ending on this line gives it a a prominence.

About Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Alfred Lord Tennyson is one of the most famous poets to have lived. He died in 1892 at the ripe old age of 83. For much of Queen Victoria’s reign he acted as Britain’s poet
Laureate one of the most prestigious awards a British poet can receive. (The position is currently held by Carrol Ann Duffy.) A lot of his more famed works were based on
mythology, such as Ulysses. His poems are often rich with imagery which shows the influence of the romantics on his poetry. He is also noted for coining several phrases that have
become ingrained in British vernacular such as “‘Tis better to have loved and lost / Than never to have loved at all”.
“The Darkling Thrush” is a poem by the English poet and novelist Thomas Hardy. The poem describes a desolate world, which the poem’s
speaker takes as cause for despair and hopelessness. However, a bird (the “thrush”) bursts onto the scene, singing a beautiful and hopeful
song—so hopeful that the speaker wonders whether the bird knows something that the speaker doesn’t. Written in December 1900, the poem
reflects on the end of the 19th century and the state of Western civilization. The desolation of the scene the speaker sees serves as an
extended metaphor for the decay of Western civilization, while the thrush is a symbol for its possible rebirth through religious faith.
 Get the entire

guide to “The Darkling Thrush” as a printable PDF. Download it!

The Full Text of “The Darkling Thrush”

1I leant upon a coppice gate
2 When Frost was spectre-grey,
3And Winter's dregs made desolate
4 The weakening eye of day.
5The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
6 Like strings of broken lyres,
7And all mankind that haunted nigh
8 Had sought their household fires.
9The land's sharp features seemed to be
10 The Century's corpse outleant,
11His crypt the cloudy canopy,
12 The wind his death-lament.
13The ancient pulse of germ and birth
14 Was shrunken hard and dry,
15And every spirit upon earth
16 Seemed fervourless as I.
17At once a voice arose among
18 The bleak twigs overhead
19In a full-hearted evensong
20 Of joy illimited;
21An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
22 In blast-beruffled plume,
23Had chosen thus to fling his soul
24 Upon the growing gloom.
25So little cause for carolings
26 Of such ecstatic sound
27Was written on terrestrial things
28 Afar or nigh around,
29That I could think there trembled through
30 His happy good-night air
31Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
32 And I was unaware.
 “The Darkling Thrush” Summary
o I was leaning on a gate, on a path leading into a forest. The frost was gray as a ghost and the last of the winter day made the sun
look bleak as it descended. The tangled stems of climbing plants cut across the sky like the strings of a broken musical
instrument. And all the people that lived nearby had gone away to the warmth of their homes.

The land’s harsh hills and cliffs seemed like the corpse of the just-ended century, leaning out. And the clouds hanging above
seemed like the century's tomb, while the wind seemed like a sad song played upon its death. The age-old urge to reproduce and
grow had shriveled up. And every living thing on earth seemed as depressed as me.
All of a sudden, a voice rose up from the dreary twigs overhead, singing an evening prayer with limitless joy. He was a bird, frail
and old, skinny and small, with his feathers rumpled by the wind. He had decided to sing with all his soul in the increasing dark.
 There was no cause for such joyful singing—at least no cause was evident in the world around me. So I thought the bird's happy
song carried some secret and holy hope, something that he knew about but I didn’t.

 “The Darkling Thrush” Themes

 Nature and the Decline of Human Civilization
"The Darkling Thrush” appears to be a poem about a winter landscape, which the speaker describes in considerable detail. On a
symbolic level, however, this landscape is an extended metaphor: its bleakness and decay reflect the state of Western culture at
the end of the 19th century. The speaker describes Western culture in a state of desolation: it seems to be damaged and dead,
without the possibility of rebirth or resurrection. In this sense, the poem is both an elegy for and a rejection of that culture,
providing a subtle critique of the way that the West has failed to take care of its own natural and cultural resources.
In the first stanza, the speaker compares “tangled-bine stems”—the stems of a climbing plant—to the “strings of broken lyres.”
The “lyre” is a significant symbol: it represents poetry and, more broadly, the cultural accomplishment of Western civilization. Its
broken strings suggest that Western culture itself has fallen into disrepair or, like the “bine-stems,” has not been properly
maintained and pruned. In other words, the speaker thinks that things have grown unruly and gotten out of hand.
The second stanza expands on this idea, with a series of metaphors that describe the landscape as embodying the death of the
19th century and its culture. The speaker compares the landscape’s “sharp features” to “the Century’s corpse.” Since the poem
was written late in 1900, most scholars take this as a reference to the end of the 19th century. The century is dead because it’s
literally over, but it’s also dead in a broader sense: the simile in the previous stanza with the “broken lyres” suggests that the
speaker feels that its culture has in some way failed.
The speaker does not specify the reasons why Western culture has failed—though there are clues in the way the speaker describes
the landscape. For instance, the speaker begins the poem leaning on a “coppice gate.” A “coppice” is a managed forest, which
foresters cut back regularly to stimulate growth. But with the “bine-stems” growing up into the sky, it seems that this coppice has
not been recently cut back. This image suggests that human beings have shirked their duty to care for the land they use. Since the
landscape is a metaphor for the state of Western culture, the implication is thus that people have acted as poor caretakers for
Western culture itself.
These images of the landscape are perhaps also references to industrialization, the process by which the economy shifted from
farming to factories. This process did significant damage to the English landscape, and it also caused the depopulation of rural
parts of England. As factories took over the work—such as weaving and lace-making—that had been traditionally done by rural
populations, people left their farms to work in the cities' factories.
The speaker does not propose any remedies to address the situation. Indeed, the speaker does not seem to believe any
improvement is possible. In the final lines of the second stanza, the speaker complains that the cycle of death and rebirth has
ended: it is “shrunken hard and dry.” Judging from the first half of the poem, it seems that the cultural death the speaker
describes will not end or reverse; it is permanent, and the speaker doesn’t know what will come next.
 Hope and Renewal
The first half of “The Darkling Thrush” describes a desolate winter landscape—an extended metaphor for the decay of Western
culture, which the speaker presents as dead or unsalvageable. Just as the poem seems to be sliding into despair, however, a
symbol of hope and renewal bursts onto the scene: a singing “thrush.” Various details suggests that the speaker treats the thrush
as a symbol for religious faith and devotion. The speaker thus presents renewed religious faith as a solution to the cultural crisis he
or she describes in the first half of the poem.
The speaker describes the bird that appears in the second half of the poem in considerable detail, down its feathers. It is possible,
then, to read the “Hope” that the bird expresses and represents literally: the speaker’s bad mood is lifted, partially, by the bird and
its song. But the speaker also provides hints that the bird’s song should be understood metaphorically—both on its own and in
conjunction with the extended metaphor developed in the poem’s first two stanzas.
One key detail is that the speaker describes the bird’s song as “a full-hearted evensong.” Evensong is a ritual in the Anglican
Church: it is evening prayers, chants, and songs. The speaker thus describes the bird’s song as embodying a religious ritual. And
in the next stanza, the speaker calls the “Hope” in the thrush’s song “blessed.” The word “blessed” once again suggests religious
rituals and beliefs. And “Hope” itself may be symbolic here: it’s not just any hope, but the Christian hope for resurrection—that is,
life after death. As such, the “hope” that the thrush provides might be tied to Christianity.
The thrush’s appearance in the poem suggests a solution to the cultural decay that the speaker documents in the first half of the
poem. In the first half of the poem, the speaker treats the bleak landscape as an extended metaphor for the cultural decline of
Western civilization—a decline so severe that the speaker sees no possibility that it might be renewed or reborn. But the hope the
thrush embodies does offer the possibility of renewal and resurrection, specifically through religious faith.
That said, the speaker is "unaware" of this "blessed Hope." Perhaps this means that the bird is singing in vain, and the Christian
tradition it evokes is as doomed as the rest of civilization. This would suggest that this tradition is itself rather oblivious, blind to
the reality of the world around it. Alternatively, the presence of the happy bird in the midst of such drudgery suggests the
opposite: that religious faith is the one thing that will survive the march of time. It's up to the reader to decide.
 Despair and Isolation
“The Darkling Thrush” in part uses its description of a bleak winter landscape as an extended metaphor for the cultural decline of
Western civilization. But it is also a literal, detailed description of the world—and of the speaker’s state of mind while looking out
onto that landscape. The speaker seems filled with a sense of isolation and despair, and these feelings strongly shape how the
speaker interprets the surrounding world. Intentionally or not, the poem suggests the cyclical and self-fulfilling nature of
negativity.
The speaker describes him- or herself as “fervourless” (meaning depressed or lacking passion), and then sees this trait reflected
everywhere. Not only does “every spirit” seem as “fervourless” as the speaker, the speaker consistently interprets the natural
world in terms that reinforce his or her own state of mind. For example, the speaker describes the “Frost” as “spectre-grey,”
meaning it looks like a ghost or a spirit. The speaker interprets the frost as a sign that the world is dead, lifeless, and hopeless.
However, one could imagine a different speaker interpreting the landscape differently; for instance, there is no objective basis for
seeing the “land’s sharp features” as an image of the “Century’s corpse.” They could just as soon be majestic and soaring or
evidence of God’s hand in creation.
While the poem’s landscape is described in detail, it is not described objectively: instead, each element becomes another
testament to the speaker’s personal emotions and priorities. The poem’s second stanza, for example, consists of a long list
of metaphors, one building on the next: the landscape is like the “Century’s corpse,” the clouds are like a “crypt,” the wind like a
“death-lament.” The speaker is thus trapped in a vicious cycle: his or her emotions shape the landscape, which then reinforces his
or her emotions.
This cycle holds until the thrush appears in the poem, in stanza 3. The thrush refuses to assimilate to the speaker’s view of the
world or to reinforce the speaker’s emotions. Though the bird is skinny and bedraggled—potentially as much a symbol of despair
as the clouds overhead or the wind whistling—it nonetheless sings a hopeful song. The speaker thus concludes that the thrush
knows something the speaker doesn’t: “Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew / And I was unaware.”
In its brilliant, inexplicable hopefulness, the thrush forces the speaker to recognize the existence of emotions beyond despair and
isolation. Furthermore, the thrush makes the speaker recognize elements of the outside world that cannot be interpreted through
those emotions. It might break the vicious cycle in which the speaker has been trapped, and so proves to the reader, too, that
hope is present in even the most desolate of circumstances.

 Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “The Darkling Thrush”

o Lines 1-4
The first four lines of “The Darkling Thrush” establish the poem’s form and its initial themes.
The poem begins with the speaker leaning against a “coppice gate” at the “dregs” (that is, the end) of a winter’s day. (A “coppice”
is a kind of forest that foresters regularly cut back, chopping down trees and bushes in order to stimulate its growth. This detail
will be important later in the stanza). For the speaker, the landscape is desolate; it provokes despair. For instance, the speaker
uses a metaphor to compare the “Frost” which has fallen on it to a “spectre”—a ghost or spirit. Though the “Frost” could easily be
interpreted differently by someone with a different mindset—for instance, as a sign of Christmas cheer—the speaker takes it as a
metaphor for death. Similarly, the sun (the “eye of day” in line 4) is “weakening”—but the speaker does not mention that it will
rise again. The prevailing mood is thus one of decline and decay, without the possibility of renewal or resurrection.
These lines also introduce a formal pattern that will hold for the rest of the poem. They are written in alternating lines
of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, rhymed ABAB. It also has a regular pattern of enjambment: every other line is end-
stopped. This pattern will hold through the poem’s first two stanzas; until the end of the second stanza, the speaker will never go
more than 2 lines without an end-stop.
“The Darkling Thrush” is thus a ballad. The ballad is one of the oldest forms in English poetry. Though the ballad originated in
France, it is strongly associated with the English language—and, in particular, English folk traditions. The ballad was long used for
folk songs, which were popular poems about crime and love (usually printed cheaply and posted inside taverns). It was also used
for hymns—the religious songs sung in English churches. The form is thus highly flexible, capable of accommodating a wide range
of content. Hardy likely turns to it here for its religious seriousness: these first four lines suggest that this will not be a light-
hearted poem with a conversational tone. Instead, it will pose the most serious questions affecting the speaker and his or her
society—and it will attempt to offer answers.

o Lines 5-8
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 “The Darkling Thrush” Symbols

 Frost
Frost is a kind of ice that forms in cold weather. It tends to fall on the ground or on low-lying plants and shrubs, often killing or
damaging the plants that it touches.
When the speaker mentions the “spectre-grey” frost that marks the winter landscape, he or she is likely referring to the literal
weather conditions. But frost is also symbolically rich: because it damages plants and prevents them from growing, it symbolizes
death itself. And because spring symbolizes renewal, rebirth, and resurrection, the frost stands in symbolically for the forces that
block such rebirth. In this poem, the frost likely symbolizes not just death, but death in the absence of Christian resurrection—
death as a permanent, irreversible loss. It is the symbolic opposite of the “germ and birth” that the speaker describes in line 13.
 Eye of Day
“Eye of day” is a metaphor for the sun. Because it is round and bright, the sun is often compared to an eye in poetry, a comparison
that personifiesthe sun, giving it human characteristics.
Underlying this metaphor, however, is a broader symbolic significance. The sun commonly understood as a rich symbol in English
poetry. Because the word “sun” sounds a lot like the word “son,” poets often use the sun as a symbol for Jesus Christ himself, the
son of God. Moreover, like Christ, the sun appears to vanish and then rises again. The speaker does not make an obvious, heavy-
handed reference to this tradition, but it is nonetheless present. The speaker thus quietly suggests that Christ himself, with his
promise of renewal and resurrection, is disappearing from this desolate scene, leaving behind a bleak and unredeemed world.
 Lyre
A lyre is a stringed instrument: a small harp, played with one hand. Traditionally, the lyre was the instrument played by Greek
poets like Homer and Sappho to accompany their poems.
Because of its close associations with poetry—and because it is now rarely played—the lyre in a poem is almost always
a symbol for poetry itself, rather than a literal instrument. More broadly, it symbolizes the cultural achievement of Western
civilization: its great poetry, music, and philosophy. For the strings of the lyre to be “broken” (as noted in line 6) thus suggests
that poetry itself—and Western civilization more broadly—have fallen into decline. The speaker sees evidence of this decline in the
poorly managed landscape he or she surveys (the "tangled bine-stems") and imagines that it extends to all corners of Western
civilization.
 Fires
The “fires” at the end of line 8 play a complicated symbolic role in the poem. On the one hand, they represent warmth and security
in a cold and desolate landscape: with the exception of the speaker, all the human figures in the poem have gone home to the
solace and security that their fires provide on a cold day. In this sense, the fires are a positive symbol of human resilience in the
face of a hostile natural world.
On the other hand, however, fire is often a symbol of destruction. It calls to mind burning libraries and ruined cities: the
destruction of civilization and its artifacts. This second symbolic sense is only implicitly present in the line, but it is strengthened by
the rhyme between “household fires” and “broken lyres.” The rhyme encourages the reader to seek a connection between the
“broken lyres” and the “household fires,” and the connection lies in fire’s hostility to human culture. As a symbol, then, fire is
double-edged, representing both security and destruction. It thus demonstrates for the reader how narrow the difference between
the two can be and suggests that perhaps the people who are cozily nestled by their fires at home are actually participating in a
form of destruction by refusing to face how bad the world has gotten.
 Germ and Birth
In line 13, the speaker describes the renewal of two different kinds of life: animal and plant. Animals are born, while plants
germinate, sending up saplings and shoots. Taken together, “germ and birth” thus symbolize the renewal of life and its rebirth.
(And this renewal is linked to a specific season, spring, when plants “germ” and animals are often born.)
More broadly, this idea of renewal and rebirth can be taken as a Christian symbol. Often in poetry, the return of spring is used as a
symbol for resurrection: the rebirth of the faithful, after death, in heaven. For the speaker, however, this possibility of rebirth has
disappeared: its “ancient pulse” is “hard and dry.” The symbol is cancelled even as it’s brought into the poem; there may have
once been the possibility of renewal and rebirth, but that possibility has been buried by the cold and desolate landscape the
speaker surveys.
 Hope
Literally speaking, “hope” is an expectation—with or without justification—that something good is going to happen. The speaker
may use the word here in that simple, neutral sense: the world of the poem is so bleak that any hope, even a relatively generic
hope, is exciting and revelatory.
But the word might also symbolize a specific kind of hope: the Christian hope of resurrection and life after death. Indeed, 19th-
century Christians often referred to their expectation of going to heaven as their “hope.” That the speaker capitalizes the bird's
"Hope" and refers to it as “blessed” further strengthens the sense that this is a specifically religious hope. In this sense, the word is
not simply literal, but also symbolic: it symbolizes Christian faith and embodies its boldest expectations.
 Thrush
When the "thrush" (a type of bird) first appears in the poem in stanza 3, the speaker dedicates a considerable amount of attention
to its literal, physical details: he or she describes its weight, its size, even its feathers. However, as the poem progresses, it
becomes clear that the thrush also carries significant symbolic weight in the poem: the thrush is a symbol of hope. The speaker
tells the reader as much in line 31, where he or she interprets the thrush's beautiful, cheerful song—hearing in it the knowledge of
"Some blessed Hope" that stands apart from the bleak world the poem otherwise describes.
The hope that the thrush symbolizes also seems to be at least implicitly religious. The speaker consistently interprets the thrush's
song in religious terms, describing it as "evensong"—the evening prayers in the Anglican church—and as "blessed." The hope that
the thrush symbolizes is might, then, be the hope of Christian resurrection and renewal.

 “The Darkling Thrush” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

o Enjambment
“The Darkling Thrush” uses enjambment in a distinctive and significant pattern. In the first two stanzas, the poem generally
alternates enjambed and end-stopped lines. For example, line 5 is enjambed, while line 6 is end-stopped. These units of
enjambment and end-stop correspond with the poem’s metrical units: each pair of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter lines
forms its own grammatical unit that concludes with an end-stop. This pattern repeats in lines 7-8 and holds throughout the first
half of the poem, except lines 10-12, where each line is end-stopped. In the first half of the poem, the end-stops are never farther
than two lines apart. This creates a highly regular, even constricted reading experience: the poem feels so well-organized as to be
oppressive.
However, this rigid reading experience transforms in the second half of the poem. The third stanza has only two end-stops: one
line 20 and one in line 24. (Lines 21 and 22 might look like end-stops because they end with punctuation—and elsewhere in the
poem enjambed lines are unpunctuated. However, the description of the “aged thrush” is grammatically incomplete until the end of
line 24, so these lines are technically enjambed.) The same is true of stanza 4: there are end-stops only in lines 28 and 32 (and
the end-stop in line 28 is very weak: many readers will experience it as an enjambment). The number of end-stops has been cut in
half: now they appear every four lines instead of every two.
After the tight organization of the poem’s opening two stanzas, this change feels almost liberating—it's a radical expansion of
possibility. When the thrush enters the poem, he reshapes the reader’s experience of the poem, transforming a constrained,
organized world into an open, fluid space. The use of enjambment thus underlines the poem’s argument: the thrush is a sign of
hope for both reader and poet, and believing in this hope can be freeing.

o End-Stopped Line
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 “The Darkling Thrush” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the
poem.

o Coppice

o Spectre-grey

o Dregs

o Bine-stems

o Scored
o Lyre

o Haunted

o Nigh

o Outleant

o Crypt

o Death-lament

o Pulse

o Germ

o Fervourless

o Evensong

o Illimited

o Gaunt

o Blast-beruffled

o Plume
o Fling

o Carolings

o Terrestrial

o Air

o Whereof

o A wooded area. In a coppice, foresters cut back the trees and shrubs that form the forest to stimulate growth. A coppice is thus a
natural area that is managed by human beings, for human purposes.

 Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “The Darkling Thrush”

o Form
“The Darkling Thrush” is a ballad. In keeping with the conventions of that form, it is written in eight-line stanzas, also called
octaves. Each octave features alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, rhymed ABABCDCD.
The ballad is a serial form, which means there are no limits to the number of stanzas it might have. (Often, ballads were sung,
printed, and reprinted, with new stanzas added and old ones taken out; the poems would grow as their readers’ priorities
changed). “The Darkling Thrush” is similarly serial in that the poem may be divided into two parts. In the first, the speaker
meditates on the bleakness and despair of the landscape around him or her. In the second, the appearance of the thrush provides
a rush of hope. The break between stanza 2 and stanza 3 thus operates as a kind of volta or turn. But the form does not change as
the poem’s subject matter changes—unlike the sonnet, for example, whose form does change after its volta. The ballad continues
to hum along, its form smooth and unperturbed, even as the content that fills it shifts. (Though it is worth noting that the poem's
pattern of enjambmentshifts significantly in its second half).
The ballad is an old form in English poetry: it predates many of the language’s prestigious literary forms, like the sonnet. But
unlike the sonnet, the ballad has remained a popular form throughout its long history. It was used for a wide range of popular
songs and poems—everything from hymns sung in English churches to poems about murderers and outlaws, pasted on the walls of
taverns. The form thus has no particular content associated with it: it’s just as good for religious poems that take on the most
serious and difficult question as it is for poems about the seedy underworld of English crime.
“The Darkling Thrush,” seems to follow the more serious, weighty part of the ballad tradition. Certainly there are no tales of
murder and romance here. But ultimately what attracted Hardy to the ballad was probably its strong associations with England
itself. Though it originated in France, it became over the centuries a form deeply associated with English popular culture and the
everyday language of English peasants. For Hardy, the form gave him an intimacy with the English language and its deep history,
which is especially useful for a poem critiquing contemporary English culture.

o Meter
“The Darkling Thrush” is written in ballad meter. It alternates between lines of iambic tetrameter (four poetic feet with a da DUM
rhythm, for a total of 8 syllables per line) and iambic trimeter (three poetic feet with a da DUM rhythm, for a total of 6 syllables
per line). This rhythm is clear from the poem’s opening lines:
I leant | upon | a cop- | ice gate
When Frost | was spect- | re-grey
This is a traditional meter with roots in folk songs. It was used for poetry and music on a wide range of topics, from religious
hymns to poems about murder and crime. Hardy likely turned to ballad meter because it is a strongly English tradition. He may
have hoped it would allow him to access something deep and authentic in the language. And indeed, he uses the meter in a
particularly forceful fashion, even (or especially) as he critiques the culture of England itself.
The meter is often smooth and skillful—note, for instance, the rhyming feminine endings of line 6 and line 8, “broken lyres” and
“household fires.” It’s a difficult move, but the poem pulls it off effortlessly:
Like strings | of brok- | -en ly- | res
Had sought | their house- | hold fi- | res
 Though this is a metrical substitution, it hardly feels like one, because the speaker repeats it and because the stressed and
stressed syllables rhyme across the two lines. However, the poem also uses some less smooth substitutions, like spondees, which
often introduce extra stresses into the line. Compare lines 9, 19, and 30:
Line 9:
The land’s | sharp fea- | tures seemed | to be
Line 19:
In a | full-heart- | ed e- | vensong |
Line 30:
His hap- | py good- | night air
The stresses tend to pile up in these lines—as in line 30, which closes with three consecutive stresses. This gives the feeling of
rhythmic density and intensity; the lines feel thick and heavy.
This sense of density is often related to its content. For instance, the spondee in line 5 corresponds nicely with the density of the
“bine-stems” that partially obscure the sky: their thickness and violence is echoed by the line’s weight. (Something similar could
be said about the “sharp features” in line 9: the line is as sharp as the features it describes). Later in the poem, when the thrush
appears, the spondees mark the intensity and fullness of the speaker’s joy. It seems so rich and important that it overflows the
boundaries of metrical propriety. In these moments of intensity, the poem does seem to approach something essential to the
English language: it seems to revive the heavy stresses and sonic density of Anglo-Saxon poems like Beowulf, bringing their sonic
character into contemporary English.

o Rhyme Scheme
“The Darkling Thrush” follows the typical rhyme scheme of a ballad:

ABABCDCD

Each stanza introduces a new group of rhymes following that same scheme. The rhymes tend to be simple, direct words: even
when it rhymes with words of two or more syllables, the poem favors simple diction. Despite this simplicity, the poem often uses
rhyme in pointed and significant ways. In some cases, rhyme emphasizes the intimacy between two apparently disparate words.
For example, in lines 6 and 8 rhyme the words “lyres” and “fires” (a nifty double feminine ending, which rhymes both the stressed
and unstressed syllables of the two words). At first, it doesn’t seem like there’s much of a relationship between the lyre, a stringed
instrument that poets in ancient Greece played as they sang their poems, and fire. Indeed, the lyres are “broken” while the fires
are contained and peaceful, “household fires.” The fires seem like the one source of solace in an otherwise bleak and forbidding
world. But the rhyme makes the reader pause to think about the relationship between them—and the broken lyres cast an ominous
shadow over the “household fires.” The lyre is a traditional symbol of poetry—and, more broadly, of the glory of Western
civilization—so connecting damaged ones to fires reminds the reader that these seemingly tame "household fires" might have
serious consequences for society. Perhaps the poem is suggesting that hiding out at home is actually making things more
dangerous for "all mankind," rather than safer.
By contrast, in lines 21-23, there is a slant rhyme between “small” and “soul.” Here the failure of the rhyme highlights the
speaker’s point. Though the thrush may be “frail, gaunt, and small,” his soul is not: his soul is full of hope, song, and life. The
imperfect rhyme emphasizes the disconnect between the bird’s body and its soul. And in so doing, it suggests a broader lesson for
both speaker and reader: that the bleak appearance of things may contain a rich and hopeful interior. In this instance, then, the
poem's simple rhymes shed light on the broader religious and philosophical questions the poem raises.

 “The Darkling Thrush” Speaker

o The speaker of “The Darkling Thrush” is an anonymous person. Though the reader does not learn much about details like the
speaker’s class, race, gender, or age, the poem does reveal about a lot about the speaker’s priorities and interests.

Almost the whole poem consists of the speaker describing things—a winter landscape, a singing bird. The reader can learn about
the speaker by watching the speaker in action, by seeing the way that he or she describes the world and the things that he or she
finds interesting or surprising. It is immediately evident, for instance, that the speaker has an unusually bleak view of the world.
As the speaker describes the landscape on a winter’s day, he or she focuses on its desolation. The "Frost" reminds the speaker of a
“spectre”—a ghost (rather than something cheerful like, say, winter holidays). The speaker’s emotions seem to depend on the
condition of the natural world. But, at the same time, the speaker’s emotions lead him or her to interpret the natural world in
severe and dark terms.
However, the speaker’s despair is not impenetrable: in the second half of the poem, a singing thrush reminds the speaker that
hope and joy are possible. The speaker describes this hope in striking religious terms, calling it “blessed” in line 31. Further, the
speaker compares the bird’s song to “evensong”—the evening prayers in Anglican churches. This suggests that the speaker’s
despair is in part a consequence of religious doubts. Perhaps the speaker is experiencing a crisis of faith, or perhaps the speaker’s
anxieties are related to society more broadly. Hardy wrote the poem in 1900, and it seems to reflect on the previous century,
describing it as a “corpse.” The speaker may feel that society is failing or losing its promise—and that a return to religion will help
restore it and give reason for hope. The unnamed speaker’s anxieties are thus deeply personal, but they also expand to include
fundamental issues of faith and society, issues that the poem hopes to help resolve.

 “The Darkling Thrush” Setting

o “The Darkling Thrush” is set in a winter landscape, most likely England at the turn of the twentieth century. The poet, Thomas
Hardy, spent his life in England and wrote this poem there in the winter of 1900.

The landscape is agricultural and sparsely populated; its topography is rugged and harsh. The speaker seems to be looking out
over it, and behind the speaker is a "coppice," a kind forest which people sometimes cut back to stimulate its growth. Though the
coppice should be a managed space, it seems to have been poorly maintained. Although it’s winter, the speaker notes that his or
her view of the sky is obscured by climbing vines—weeds. It has been a while, perhaps too long, since the forest has been cut
back. The people who are supposed to take care of it are missing in action. Indeed, the poem itself is largely devoid of human life:
the weather is so bad that everyone but the speaker is indoors, at their "household fires." The setting of the poem is thus desolate
and unpopulated. It seems to reflect the speaker’s mood, which is as bleak as the landscape he or she describes.

 Literary and Historical Context of “The Darkling Thrush”

Literary Context
“The Darkling Thrush” is a ballad. The ballad is a very old folk form of English poetry. Over its long history, it was used for a wide
range of poetry: from religious hymns sung in English churches, to drinking songs, to popular poems about murderers, thieves,
and star-crossed lovers. After he stopped writing novels and dedicated himself exclusively to poetry, Hardy turned often to the
ballad. His ballads tend to be morally and intellectually serious, drawing on the tradition of hymns rather than drinking songs or
scandalous popular verse. But his interest in the ballad has less to do with its traditional content and more to do with its deep
history in English literature.
At the time Hardy wrote his poems, poets in England, France, and Italy were increasingly questioning the traditions and forms of
poetry, often inventing new ways of writing. This was called modernism, a broad literary movement that emerged from the rapid
urbanization and industrialization of society in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The modernists attempted to develop new
literary techniques and forms that would be adequate to the new realities of an industrial society.
Hardy was familiar with these developments, but he responded to his changing society in a different way than the modernists did.
Instead of attempting to develop new literary forms, he sought the oldest forms available to him, especially ones that were closely
connected with the English language. Although the ballad was invented in France, it is strongly associated with native English
poetic tradition and has often been used by poets who want to return to something essentially "English" in their poetry. In this
spirit, Hardy hoped that this venerable form would help him recover something authentic about the English language at a time
when his society was undergoing rapid transformation. Although Hardy is now better remembered for his novels than his poems,
his resistance to modernism and his work reviving the ballad made him important to later of anti-modernist poets. For example,
Hardy was a central figure for the group of young British poets called “the Movevement” in the early 1950s, which included major
figures like Thom Gunn and Ted Hughes.

Historical Context
“The Darkling Thrush” was written in December of 1900. It reflects on the end of the 19th century: in lines 9-10, the speaker
describes the landscape he or she views as “the Century’s corpse outleant.” The poem takes a bleak view of the historical moment
it describes; the speaker seems to feel that all hope and possibility have been stripped from the landscape that he or she views.
The speaker does not specify which historical developments inspire this sense of desolation and despair, but the reader can make
some guesses based on the way the speaker describes the landscape.
First, the speaker is unable to see any other people; they’ve all gone inside to sit by their fires. The poem thus expresses a deep
sense of loneliness and a loss of human community. This is likely related to the rapid urbanization and industrialization of England
in the 19th century, a process which depopulated rural areas (like the one the speaker describes in “The Darkling Thrush”). It also
produced large urban populations, in which individuals often felt rootless, anonymous, and cut off from their communities.
The poem meditates on both sides of this social condition: the depopulation of rural communities and the resulting sense of
isolation and anonymity, even within large cities full of people. Without people to manage it, the landscape is overgrown and
unruly. This is also likely a reflection on the environmental costs of industrialization. The speaker ties the two together, suggesting
that industrialization strips the landscape of its people and, in so doing, endangers the landscape itself.
Second, as the speaker describes it, the landscape is a profoundly secular place, stripped of its connection with religion. The
possibility of rebirth, so central to Christian theology, seems to have been cut off. As the speaker looks out over the land, he or
she sees only death and decay until the thrush appears in stanzas 3 and 4, transforming the world with its incongruous and
hopeful song. The speaker describes this song in religious terms, as “evensong”—the traditional evening prayers in an Anglican
church—and as something “blessed.”
The bird thus seems to offer a renewed sense of religious commitment and religious feeling. It suggests that the speaker has been
personally troubled by religious doubts—but it also suggests that the speaker’s society has had its religious difficulties. Indeed, the
19th century was a time of increasing atheism and secularization across Britain. The poem seems to respond to this historical
development by calling for a return to Christianity as the foundation of society. In its response to the industrialization and
secularization of English society, the poem offers a conservat
"Dover Beach" is the most celebrated poem by Matthew Arnold, a writer and educator of the
Victorian era. The poem expresses a crisis of faith, with the speaker acknowledging the
diminished standing of Christianity, which the speaker sees as being unable to withstand the
rising tide of scientific discovery. New research and intellectual inquiry cast doubt on
humankind's central and special role in the universe. The speaker in the poem senses this change
almost subconsciously, seeing and hearing it in the sea that the speaker is looking out upon. In its
expression of alienation, doubt, and melancholy, the poem is often interpreted as a remarkably
forward-thinking precursor to 20th century crises of faith—like Existentialism and Absurdism. In
essence, the poem is an inquiry into what it means to be alive.

Get the entire

guide to “Dover Beach” as a printable PDF. Download it!

The Full Text of “Dover Beach”

1The sea is calm tonight.
2The tide is full, the moon lies fair
3Upon the straits; on the French coast the light
4Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
5Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay.
6Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!
7Only, from the long line of spray
8Where the sea meets the moon-blanched land,
9Listen! you hear the grating roar
10Of pebbles which the waves draw back, and fling,
11At their return, up the high strand,
12Begin, and cease, and then again begin,
13With tremulous cadence slow, and bring
14The eternal note of sadness in.
15Sophocles long ago
16Heard it on the Ægean, and it brought
17Into his mind the turbid ebb and flow
18Of human misery; we
19Find also in the sound a thought,
20Hearing it by this distant northern sea.
21The Sea of Faith
22Was once, too, at the full, and round earth’s shore
23Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled.
24But now I only hear
25Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar,
26Retreating, to the breath
27Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear
28And naked shingles of the world.
29Ah, love, let us be true
30To one another! for the world, which seems
31To lie before us like a land of dreams,
32So various, so beautiful, so new,
33Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
34Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;
35And we are here as on a darkling plain
36Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
37Where ignorant armies clash by night.
 “Dover Beach” Summary
o The speaker looks out upon a calm sea, and observes the fullness of the tide and the moon
reflecting on the water. Looking across the English channel, the speaker sees the lights of
the French coast fade away, while the cliffs of the English coast stand tall and bright, and
the bay seems calm. Suddenly, the speaker addresses someone else, and implores this
person to come and look at what the speaker is looking at, and to enjoy the night's
pleasant air. The speaker senses something is not quite right, and describes the spray
where the water meets the moonlit land. The speaker instructs the other person to listen to
the sound of the pebbles as the waves shift them back and forth, up the beach and down
again.The speaker notes this slow repeating action, and identifies it with eternal sadness.
All of a sudden, the speaker thinks about the ancient Greek playwright, Sophocles, and
imagines Sophocles hearing the same sadness in the Aegean Sea as the speaker hears now
on the English coast. Sophocles, in the mind of the speaker, likens the sad sound of the
 waves to the general sorrow of humanity, which moves like the waves. The speaker then
notices another thought that comes with the sound of the sea.
Explaining this next thought, the speaker describes religious faith as a sea that was once
full like the tide. At that time, it reached around the earth like a girdle. Now, though, the
speaker just hears that sea's sad retreat. As the Sea of Faith becomes smaller, says the
speaker, it disappears into the atmosphere and leaves the edges of the world naked.
The speaker suddenly addresses the companion as "love," and states desperately that the
two of them need to treat each other with honesty and authenticity. This is because the
world, though it has a dream-like quality of variety, beauty and newness, doesn't actually
offer joy, love or clarity. Neither, claims the speaker, can it provide certainty, peace, or
relief from pain. The speaker then compares their collective situation to standing on a flat
and dark piece of land, which is caught up in the chaos of fighting. Here, battles between
unknowing groups continue under the cover of darkness.
 “Dover Beach” Themes
 Loss of Faith and Certainty
Written during the Victorian era, Matthew Arnold’s “Dover Beach” admits to and
laments the loss of religious faith that came with advances in various fields at the time:
evolutionary biology, geology, archeology, and textual analysis of the Bible, to name a
few. The poem senses the turn of a historical epoch and finds this change echoed in the
transitional figure of the beach—the blurry border between land and sea. The poem thus
asks the reader to consider what is lost in humankind’s movement away from the
(debatable) certainties of the Christian faith.
For the speaker, loss of faith equates to loss of certainty. The Dover beach itself seems to
embody this loss, both in its sights and its sounds. At first, the poem offers no clues that
its main subject is the loss of faith. Instead, it begins by describing the atmosphere in
which the speaker stands. The descriptions of the sea and the sound of the pebbles on the
beach are lyrically beautiful at first, but they mask “the eternal note of sadness” that is
revealed at the end of stanza 1. This sudden intrusion of sadness hints at the speaker’s
sense of loss, which finds fuller expression later in the poem. Through the symbol of the
sea, the poem suggests two key ideas: firstly, that major shifts in the fabric of society
occur subtly—the beach’s slow, repetitive movements symbolize the gradual but
inevitable loss of faith that the speaker senses in this historical moment.
Secondly, mapping the loss of religious faith onto the movement of the waves implies
that these kinds of historical changes come in cycles—waves, in other words. Indeed, the
speaker imagines the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles hearing the same sadness in the
sea that the speaker hears now. That is, the speaker sees an analogy between the
irrelevance of the classical Greek Gods in the speaker’s time with the coming irrelevance
of the Christian God in the near future. That doesn’t mean that religious faith will return,
but more that something will come along to take its place (in this case, the dominance of
science).
The speaker's position on this loss of religious faith becomes clear in the third stanza.
Faith once made the world “full” and “bright”—that is, it offered comfort and joy in its
certainty. Its loss, then, represents “melancholy.” What’s more, the “Sea of Faith” once
touched the shores of the entire world, but is now “withdrawing.” The poem is essentially
saying that this loss of faith is global, in turn suggesting the vast reach of scientific
advancements at the time. The speaker doubles down on the idea that scientific
advancement represents a loss rather than a gain in the poem’s final couplet, saying that
the new era will herald “confused alarms of struggle and flight,” and “ignorant armies
clash[ing] by night.” In other words, the speaker believes that scientific advancement will
bring only scientific—not spiritual—certainty and will lead to more doubt and
questioning (which is, in fact, an important part of the scientific method of inquiry).
Overall, then, the poem expresses a kind of resignation. The speaker fully admits the
change that is in process—it is as inevitable as the waves rising and falling—and
challenges the reader to consider whether this loss of faith is progress or a wrong turn.
“Dover Beach,” then, is a deeply pessimistic poem that questions the dominant values of
its day and embodies the sense of grief that some felt at the prospect of the loss of
religion. This questioning still stands up in the 21st century, calling on its readers to
examine whether their own lives are spiritually fulfilled.
 Nature and Alienation
Linked to the idea of a loss of faith is a shift in the way people relate to the natural
environment. Written shortly after the era of the Romantic poets, who praised nature as
an antidote to overly rational thinking, “Dover Beach” questions humankind’s
relationship with nature. Instead of finding happiness or the sublime in the natural
environment, the speaker finds a deep sense of sorrow (even while admitting to the
beach’s beauty). The cold indifference and vast power of the natural world make the
speaker feel small and insignificant. The poem is therefore an attempt to capture the
complexity of human experience as just one part of the natural world, rather than its
center.
Central to the poem is an implicit admission that mankind is merely one part of a larger
system—the natural world. The natural scene prompts the speaker to think about
timescales that make their own life seem less significant. The speaker looks out on a
scene that is, on the one hand, beautiful, but on the other, a powerful reminder of nature’s
indifference to humankind. The beach and the sea are by far the most prominent figures
in the poem. As products of millions of years of erosion and water movement, they
represent scales of time well beyond the expanse of human life, and perhaps beyond the
mind’s capacity to comprehend them too.
This sense of deep time alienates the speaker from the natural scene that the speaker is
observing. The scene makes the the speaker feel small and creates a feeling that nature is
almost antagonistic towards the trials of humankind, as demonstrated by the harsh sound
of the beach, which “roars” with the “eternal note of sadness” as the pebbles move with
the waves. The mention of eternity here specifically links the idea of time to the speaker’s
alienation—without God to provide the certainty of eternal afterlife, the timescales
evoked by nature seem almost mocking of humankind’s limited place in the world.
The speaker's thoughts about the ancient Greek playwright Sophocles further emphasizes
the tragedy that the speaker believes is occurring. The speaker imagines Sophocles
hearing the same loneliness and sorrow in the sea as the speaker does in the poem. For
the speaker, human life is fundamentally sad—and Sophocles, as a writer of tragedies,
must have heard that same sadness in the sea. On the one hand, then, the poem argues
that nature has always had this alienating effect. But on the other hand, it also seems that
the speaker is particularly mindful of the present moment, the moment when he poem
was written—the use of present tense throughout demonstrates that the speaker feels that
the current moment is an especially alienating time.
The natural setting of the poem, then, makes the speaker question everything about
human existence, a state that was once made certain by religious faith. There is a
paradoxical nature about the beach—it is always shifting in shape, yet it can stay roughly
as it is for millions of years, seemingly always in transition and always the same. This
paradox embodies the way in which people try to make sense of their lives while the
world itself offers no certainty. In this way, the poem is a precursor of 20th
century Existentialism and is often considered ahead of its time. Ultimately, “Dover
Beach” exposes the underlying melancholy of awe-inspiring natural sites. While the
speaker does admit to the scene’s beauty, that beauty doesn’t compensate for the way in
which the scene makes the speaker feel small and insignificant.
 Love
With the retreat of religion causing a crisis of spiritual faith, the speaker turns to love as
an answer for the loss of God. Perhaps, the poem suggests, love between people can
compensate for the loss of the connection between God and mankind. But the poem only
argues that love has the possibility of creating the certainty that religion once did—it
doesn’t make the case that this is inevitable.
It is generally agreed that Arnold wrote “Dover Beach” while on his honeymoon.
Whether or not this is definitely true, the speaker is certainly not alone in the poem. The
speaker’s interactions with an off-stage (off-page) lover demonstrate the possible
restoration of a different kind of faith—in love, rather than in God. The first five lines of
the poem give nothing away in terms of whether the speaker has an addressee (beyond
the reader). But lines 6 and 8 offer clear instructions to the speaker’s companion to come
and share the experience of looking out at Dover beach. Given that the beach scene
inspires such melancholy in the speaker, the speaker's attempt to share the experience is
an argument for intimacy and honesty between people. Togetherness, the poem argues,
can help in any situation.
Stanzas 2 and 3, however, lack the direct address to the other person, and therefore seem
to show the speaker retreating into their own psyche. The melancholy of the sea echoes
the loss of religion, and almost swamps the speaker’s psyche entirely. But out of these
depths comes the final stanza, which is spoken directly to the speaker’s lover. If the two
lovers can be true to one another, suggests the speaker, then that will in part provide
solace and certainty in a world that offers neither of these. The poem ends on a literal
cliff-hanger, with the two lovers standing together—only the second time the poem uses
“we”—awaiting what will come. Love, then, may be the only answer to the problems
identified by the speaker: loneliness and loss of faith.
But the poem does not end on an optimistic note, casting doubt on the idea that love will
save the day. Instead, the speaker anticipates confusion, struggle, and violence. Though
love might not be able to defeat these, the speaker presents it as the only potential
solution. Love, then, is definitely valued in the poem, and the reader in turn is asked to
share in that value. But love shows up in only a few brief moments, leaving its meaning
far from certain. The poem can’t say for sure that love will be able to make life
meaningful, and perhaps even suggests that it ultimately can't—but it is presented as the
best option, and worth trying.
 Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Dover Beach”
o Lines 1-3
The poem begins with a deceptively simple and seemingly innocuous statement—that the
sea is calm. The end-stop in line 1, combined with the simple vocabulary and regular
iambic meter, makes the language feel calm too:
The sea | is calm | tonight.
The tide | is full, | the moon | lies fair
Upon | the straits |

The use of anaphora also contributes to this sense of quiet calm. The first three phrases
all begin with "the" followed by a noun, setting up a gentle rhythm that mimics the slow
movement of the waves.
 Everything here suggests regularity—nothing is out of the ordinary. It also conjures a
sense of simplistic beauty, bringing the speaker's vantage point to life.
The consonant sounds, too, are gentle and have a meditative quality. The three "l" sounds
in lines 1 and 2—"calm," "full," and "lies"—have a sleepiness to them, also helping to
establish the sense of night that is important to the poem. Likewise, the "n" sounds
between "tonight," "moon" and "upon" tell nothing of the speaker's internal struggle that
is to come.
The reader, then, is lured into a poem that seems to be a description of a beautiful but
ultimately uninteresting coastal scene. This is in part reflective of the speaker's initial
state of mind, as the speaker looks out and perceives beauty in a natural scene. But this
calm beginning is also part of the poem's strategy to evoke a movement from spiritual
security to existential worry. The reader is meant to experience the speaker's thought
processes in real time, and the first three lines gently draw the reader into this
psychological world. Put another way, this opening lures the reader into a false sense of
security which will unravel as the poem goes on, a strategy that mirrors the way that the
poem chronicles a move away from faith and certainty towards doubt and anxiety.
o Lines 3-5
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o Lines 21-28
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o Lines 29-34
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 “Dover Beach” Symbols

 The Sea
The sea is a multi-functioning symbol that courses throughout the entire poem. At first,
the sea is still and calm, creating a sense of security that the poem eventually undoes. But
the speaker begins to observe the sea more closely, and notices that it is not as calm as it
first seemed. The detail of their observation increases alongside the speaker's increasingly
troubled psyche—the sound of the sea and the way it moves the pebbles becomes
unnerving. In this sense, then, the sea is a symbol for speaker's own inner thoughts.
The sea also functions as a representation of time. In the second stanza, the sea becomes a
vehicle through which the speaker is mentally transported to ancient Greece. The body of
water that covers the earth has always been there, and the speaker imagines Sophocles,
the great Greek tragedian, reading the same symbol of misery in the sea as the speaker
does. It's in part a symbol of the past, as well as the way the connections between humans
across eras.
A third figurative use of the sea is in the speaker's concept of the "Sea of Faith." In its
uniformity and far-reaching connectivity, the speaker reads a similarity to the way that
religion once covered the world. The sea, then, is also a representation of the globe itself
and religion's place within it.
 “Dover Beach” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
o Alliteration
Alliteration occurs throughout "Dover Beach."
In line 2, the "f" sounds of "full" and "fair" contribute to the opening's relaxed feel, tying
in with the calmness of the sea.
In lines 4 and 5, the "gl" sounds tie together conceptually with light, the softness of the
sound evoking the way the light is fading.
The "f" sound returns in "Faith," "full," "folds," and "furled" in the third stanza. The use
of these many similar sounds suggests the way the "Sea of Faith" used to be "full,"
creating a sense of abundance and also mimicking the way that—in the speaker's view—
faith used to reach far around the world. The poem withdraws these sounds after the
conjunction of "But" in line 24, which moves the discussion on from how things used to
be to how the speaker sees them to be now, changing the sound of the language to match.
Alliteration is also found in the final stanza. Line 31 links "l" sounds together across
"lie," "like" and "land." The alliteration ties these three words together conceptually,
playing on the double meaning of "lie:" the world both lies before the speaker and the
speaker's "love" in the spatial sense, but it is also dishonest in its promise of variety,
beauty and newness, as stated in the following line.
o Anaphora
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o Assonance
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o Allusion
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 “Dover Beach” Vocabulary

Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are
listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

o straits

o moon-blanched

o strand

o tremulous
o cadence

o Sophocles

o Aegean

o turbid

o ebb

o girdle

o furled

o drear

o shingles

o certitude

o Darkling

o A strait is a naturally formed narrow waterway, in this case a reference to the English
Channel that runs between England and France.
 Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Dover Beach”
o Form
"Dover Beach" has been noted by many critics for its unusual form. The poem is highly
irregular and does not fit with any specific poetic form, and as such is considered an early
precursor of free verse and other 20th century experimentation with form.
The poem consists of four stanzas, each of different length. The first stanza is 14 lines,
the second is 6, the third 8, and the fourth 9. The poem shows a speaker trying to grapple
with a subject that they find difficult and not a little unnerving: humanity's loss of faith
(in particular, the fading of Christianity). Accordingly, there is an instability to the
speaker's psyche which expresses itself in numerous ways, including the poem's form.
While much of Victorian poetry embodied principles of uniformity and strict obedience
to form, this poem's departure from that rigidity signals a break with the past — which
makes sense, given that the poem's subject is also focused on a rupture from the past
brought on by new scientific learning that threatens and diminishes religious faith. As
shown by the last stanza, in which the speaker predicts a new era of "confused alarms of
struggle and flight" and "ignorant armies," the speaker senses that the times stand on a
historical precipice, a transition point away from the certainties of faith to the skeptical
rigor of science. The resistance of standard form embodies the speaker's fraught mental
state, which is brought on by worry about what will happen to their society when it does
away with the moral and spiritual reassurances of religion.
The use of stanza breaks follows the most significant developments in the speaker's
mental journey, with each stanza focusing on a coherent set of thoughts:

 Stanza 1 deals with the speaker's initial experience of the beach, which shifts from
calmness to disquiet brought on by the sound of the moving pebbles.
 Stanza 2 introduces Sophocles, as the speaker imagines ancient Greece and believes
that the tragic playwright must also have experienced the same sort of pain and doubt
that the speaker is experiencing now.
 Stanza 3 develops the specific reason why the speaker hears such sadness in the sound
of the sea: the loss of faith.
 And stanza 4, finally, tries — without entirely succeeding — to build a defense against
the future faithless world by professing the value of authentic love.
o Meter
The meter in "Dover Beach" is highly unpredictable; any time a pattern seems to be
establishing itself, it is soon disrupted. This unpredictability plays out both in the pattern
of stressed and unstressed syllables and in the lengths of the lines. For example, line
10 features iambic pentameter(five feet) whereas line 21 is a line of iambic dimeter (two
feet). This restless variation is quite unusual for the Victorian time period in which the
poem was written, and it contributes to the reader's real-time experience of the speaker's
psyche, which is disturbed, worried, and — crucially — unpredictable.
At first, the poem appears to be establishing an iambic rhythm, even if the line lengths
vary from the outset:
The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits;
 These lines are highly regular, with the reliable shift from unstressed to stressed creating
a gentle rocking motion in keeping with the discussion of the sea and its tides. But as line
3 continues, a kind of metrical battle begins, in which the iambic pattern tries to re-
establish itself but is constantly disrupted:
Upon the straits; on the French coast the light

"On the French coast" is a phyrric foot followed by a spondee, two unstressed syllables
before two stresses. This is unusual in itself, but that it occurs in the middle of the line is
doubly daring and lays down a metrical challenge to the iambic opening lines. This
signifies the conflict going on in the speaker's psyche, between the outwardly beautiful
scene and the symbolically troubling world it seems to represent to the speaker.
The final stanza embodies this tussle between iambs and irregularity too. Lines 33 and
34 are straightforwardly iambic, but lines 36 and 37 defeat this stability. Considering that
these two lines introduce the idea of an uncertain future dominated by "confused alarms
of struggle and flight" and "ignorant armies," metrical confusion plays a relevant role.
The unreliability of the metrical pattern embodies the "confusion," "struggle" and "clash"
that these lines discuss:
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.

The subject of the poem is about a rupture or breakage, as a world founded on faith is
changed by the rise of science. That the meter of the poem itself seems ruptured
underscores and amplifies the poem's subject.
o Rhyme Scheme
Like other aspects of its form, the rhyme scheme in "Dover Beach" is erratic and
unpredictable. It can't quite be said that there isn't a rhyme scheme—lines certainly do
rhyme strongly—but they don't settle into an overall pattern.
For instance, technically speaking, the rhymes for the first stanza go as follows:

1. A
2. B
3. A
4. C
5. D
6. B
7. D
8. C
9. E
10. F
11. C
12. G
13. F
14. G

Every line rhymes with some other line in the stanza, but there doesn't seem to be an
actual pattern of which line matches with which other line. The "rhyme scheme" of the
poem, then, creates a conflict, between order and disorder, pattern and chaos. This
 confusion represents the speaker's psyche, which shows itself in tones that are sometimes
measured (e.g. the opening of the first stanza) and at other times panicked (e.g. the
opening of the final stanza). The speaker wants the world to make sense—and feels that
religion once fulfilled this role. Now, however, with faith in retreat before the learnings
of science, the speaker fears the future and its potential chaos. Reflecting the speaker's
concerns, the use of rhyme occupies a similar transitional space—the rhymes are there,
playing on the ear's recognition of pattern, but they don't fall into order.
One particular moment worth mentioning are the final two lines of the poem. Here, the
reader encounters the poem's only true couplet, as the speaker rhymes "flight" with
"night." The sudden use of a couplet lends the lines a sense of finality, and helps the
poem end on a deep sense of uncertainty. Both words have negative associations and in a
way defeat the same rhyme from line 33—"light"—by coming as a pair. "Flight" speaks
to fear," and "night" speaks to the loss of divine guidance.
 “Dover Beach” Speaker
o The speaker in the poem is often equated with Matthew Arnold. Though the poet
certainly shared the speaker's concern with the loss of religious faith, there isn't enough in
the poem to say that the speaker is Arnold, but it is fair to say that they at the very least
have plenty in common.
In essence, the poem is a journey through the speaker's mind. At the beginning, it almost
feels like the speaker is trying to write an entirely different poem, one which praises
nature—a kind of night-time pastoral—using distant, descriptive language. But as the
speaker looks and listens a little closer, suddenly everything changes. The speaker
become overwhelmed by the "eternal note of sadness" that seems to linger in the sound of
the the sea lapping over the pebbles of the beach. The poem then becomes a mental
journey through the speaker's psyche.
Stanza 2 gives the reader further insight into the speaker's intellectual perspective. The
way in which the speaker suddenly think of Sophocles suggests that the speaker is an
educated person—the classical allusiondoesn't seem forced, but rather seems to have
occurred quite logically according to the speaker's inner mentality.
Stanza 3 demonstrates that the speaker is also deeply religious, and that the speaker fears
society's loss of faith. Perhaps, too, there is a sense that the speaker's own faith is
diminishing or even already gone. For the speaker, this change leaves the world
vulnerable and confusing—without the light of God, the world will be left "naked" and
exposed.
Stanza 4 represents the speaker's take on the future. Without faith, the speaker sees the
world as a "land of dreams"—that is, an illusion. It contains none of what is supposed to
make life worth living—joy, love, beauty—because there is no longer spiritual certainty.
This lack of certainty destabilizes man's place in the world, and this is why the speaker
hears sadness—not beauty—in the sea.
Finally, it's important to note that the speaker is not alone. Rather, the speaker has a
companion—just off-stage/off-page—who never speaks. Three times in the poem,
though, the speaker directly addresses this companion. The last of these is the most
telling. Lines 29-30 show that the speaker believes that love might provide a solution to
 the problem of the loss of faith, but that only a love that is authentic and true can hope to
fill the gap created by a loss of faith.
 “Dover Beach” Setting
o The setting for the poem is two-fold. First, there is the literal setting as suggested by the
title: Dover Beach. Dover is on the southeastern coast of England and is a major port. The
cliffs that the speaker mentions are largely chalk, meaning that they are white, which is
what makes them glimmer in the moonlight. They also have a sheer drop, with the
coastline ending abruptly and giving way to the sea. The sea that the speaker looks out
upon is the English channel, which divides England from France (which is why the
speaker can initially see France across the water). The setting also embodies the speaker's
psychological conflict that develops throughout the poem. The scene is outwardly
beautiful—the cliffs are very impressive—but there is also a sense of vague threat.
Because England is an island nation, anyone wanting to attack it (before the time of air
travel) would have to arrive by sea and land at the coast.
The beach itself is a transitional space. That is, while to the casual observer a beach might
look the same from one year to the next, it is constantly undergoing change—subtle
differences are made each time the waves come in and recede. Likewise, the beach is the
point where land meets the sea; it is a kind of in-between zone, at which it is difficult to
say where land ends and sea begins. This is important to the poem, because the speaker is
expressing worry about a similarly transitional moment in history. As the speaker sees it,
society (and perhaps humankind more generally) is moving from faith to a science-based
understanding of the world. The intellectual and spiritual life of the world is in transition.
The transitional nature of the beach therefore makes the speaker think more deeply about
faith, and change, and loss, and love.
With that in mind, then, there is another sense in which the poem's setting is the speaker's
psyche itself. The reader goes along on the speaker's mental journey, from calmness, to
doubt, to love for another, to sadness and worry for the future.
 Literary and Historical Context of “Dover Beach”
Literary Context
"Dover Beach" was first published in 1867, though it is generally believed to have been
written around the time of Matthew Arnold's honeymoon in 1851. It is a stand-out poem
in the Victorian canon, and often claimed to be the greatest poem of the era. Partly, this is
because it is so different from the other poetry of its day. Poets like Alfred Lord
Tennyson (the poet laureate of England) and Robert Browning wrote with strict
formality—indeed, much of Arnold's other poetry is similar to theirs—but this poem
stands out in its refusal to settle down into a reliable shape or pattern. In this sense, the
poem is a precursor to literary movements of the 20th century—to the innovations of
Modernism and, in its fraught psychology, the spiritual doubt of Existentialism. Thomas
Hardy's poetry probably comes closest to expressing similar concerns, in particular the
close look at the fading of faith in the blinding light of scientific advancement. Another
useful comparison is with William Wordsworth's poem "Tintern Abbey." In that poem,
the natural environment provides the speaker with a sense of "tranquil restoration," in
keeping with the generally positive associations of nature in Romantic poetry. In Arnold's
poem, the sea does the opposite, ushering in a sense of deep, even eternal sadness and
melancholy.
Historical Context
Though the poem never explicitly mentions its historical context, apart from the vague
reference to a prior era in which the Sea of Faith was abundant, most critics agree that the
particular intellectual, spiritual and social moment in which it was written is key to its
understanding. The poem expresses fear and anxiety about the loss of faith, and the
historical context explains where this comes from. The 19th century in England was a
time of significant changes in the way humankind saw itself in the world. For example,
Charles Lyell's innovations in the study of geology had suddenly cast an almost
undeniable doubt over the alleged timescales of the world's creation as described by the
Bible. Similarly, Mary Anning—known as the "fossil lady"—had made discoveries of
bizarre skeletons in the beach areas of southern England (which, like the poem's
geographical position, look out over the English Channel), adding to that sense of doubt.
Advances in evolutionary biology had unsettled the idea of man as the center of a
universe created by God. In summary, Arnold was writing in a time of large-scale
readjustment and anxiety. The poem gives expression to this mindset, ending on a fearful
note about what the future holds.