Essay on The Darkling Thrush

The Darkling Thrush

By Thomas Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate

When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be

The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among

The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

Time: The poem takes place on New Years Eve, the last day of the 19th century. The end of
the Victorian Age.

Setting: Winter is bringing death and desolation with it. A tired old man leans over a coppice
gate in a desolate area, seeing ghosts of the past and little hope in the future.

The poem opens with ill-fated images, similes, and metaphors. Frost is gray as a ghost, Winter
has dregs, as if the year were a drink that has been consumed down to even the shelters. The
sun is a weakening eye. Stems are like strings of broken lyres. The lyre (harp), has an ancient
association with poetry, as well as song. It is as if poetry itself is broken, music itself is out of
tune. The landscape has become the face of a corpse perished with the effect of death. Here he
uses personification on the landscape, thereby referring to an inanimate object as if it were
human. He compares the landscape to a dead body lying all around him, and the clouds
becoming the coffins top, and the wind his death lament. The poet also makes use of
alliteration in this poem. An example from this stanza is corpse, crypt, cloudy, canopy etc,
where you easily notice the same sounds repeated several times. This has mostly a decorative
effect, but it also makes you focus on these words, thereby revealing parts of the poem‟s
nature and temperament.

Word choice in poems is vital. For example, mankind does not going to their household fires,
but „haunts‟ them. Hardy speaks not only humankind, but also every „spirit‟ and they are
"fervourless"-not just without passion and warmth, as the bodies of the dead.
If we look carefully, we notice him using lots of negatively loaded words such as grey,
desolate, broken, haunted etc. He himself is all alone out in the cold with all his negatively
loaded words. But this changes further on in the poem. In stanza number 3 we will notice a
change in the poets use of diction. In stead of keeping mainly to negatively loaded words, he
suddenly makes use of positively loaded words too. Words like frail, aged, gaunt and small
still remains, but you also get words like evensong, full-hearted and joy illimited. This change
in diction shows the reader that something new has occurred in the poem. A song-bird has
entered, spreading warmth and hope into an earlier desolate and dead landscape. Another
thing to bear in mind (in a more of a general matter concerning his poems) as you read
Hardy‟s poems, is that he chooses to avoid following a “jewelled line”. He doesn‟t care for
writing just pretty poetry. He breaks with conventions concerning the normal use of language.

When we read, "The ancient pulse of germ and birth," what springs first to mind is the pulse
of the heart, the rhythm of life. But pulse also has an agricultural meaning pods, such as beans
and peas, which would seem to refer to resurrection and new life ("If Winter comes can
Spring be far behind?"), but instead, we have a pulse „shrunken hard and dry.‟ Indeed, Hardy
is careful not to say seed, but germ which was first meant seed and later associated with
disease. The thrush sings an evensong, and it is not just singing, but, caroling.

But perhaps one of the most interesting word choices in the poem is in the title. At first read,
we might assume that "darkling" here is just an archaic or poetic way of saying "dark." But a
quick glance at darkling meaning we understand that it is an adverb. Thus the title, translated
into contemporary idiom, would be "The Thrush in the Dark."

"The Darkling Thrush" is, in a way, not to faith, but to doubt. True, the poem would
seem to end on a note of hope, but it is a hope carefully qualified, a mere "trembling" through
the bird's "happy good-night air." And all the evidence "written" around in the landscape
points to the contrary. To read this as a poem of pure optimism is to ignore the carefully-
layered gloom of the opening (a gloom which is "growing"), the actual condition of the thrush
(aged, gaunt, frail), and especially the qualification "that I could think." That the thrush may
somehow be conscious of a "blessed Hope" of which the narrator is not, is not a statement of
fact; rather, a fond wish; optative. The poem closes not on "knew," but on "unaware."
But to read it as a poem of pessimism is, of course, likewise misguided. The poem does
proffer a possibility of hope, however tentative. The bird does sing with "joy illimited."
Whether this joy is ultimately unfounded, we are left not knowing. But even if we end the
poem as "in the dark" as the narrator, we leave it briefly uplifted. Indeed, Hardy bristled at
charges that his work was pessimistic. "The Darkling Thrush" looks to a new century, not
only in its subject, but in its style. If we observe the flow of this poem we will see that it was
the end of an era, and end of a Period and almost the end of a Queen. And when a new Period
is called for, it‟s often a reaction to the old one. Things looked dark and not so promising.
People didn‟t know what hope there lay in the future, but as this poem says, there may be
hope coming although you don‟t know of its coming. In the poems last stanza, the man
revealing his thoughts to us sees a glimpse of hope, as the song-bird colours the air with its
singing. There may be hope after all. Is it the spring coming once more?

BIBLIOGRAPHY

 Abrams, M. H. (Ed.) (1986.) Norton Anthology of English Literature. Fifth Edition, vol 2.
New York: W. W. Norton & Co.
 Bush, Douglas (Ed.) (1959). Selected Poems and Letters: John Keats. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company.

 http://www.enotes.com/darkling-thrush/

Fatih Karamete 1437342

Poetry Analysis -Section 2