The Darkling Thrush

The Darkling Thrush
The Darkling Thrush

Hardy wrote The Darkling Thrush in 1899 and it was published 29th December 1900. The poem
starts off with Hardy leaning on a wooden gate looking at the sunset. It is dusk on the last day of
the nineteenth century and the atmosphere is dead and motionless. A thrush suddenly appears and
starts to sing. Hardy is confused because he cannot find a reason for the thrush to sing. The song
begins to lighten his gloomy mood. Hardy assumes the song of the thrush represents hope for a
better century.
First stanza:
Lines 1-2 I leant upon a coppice gate when Frost was spectre-gray. The poem takes place
sometime in winter and starts out with the poet leaning on a gate which leads to small forest.
Hardy personifies Frost by giving the F a capital letter. This suggests that Frost consists of
human-like characteristics. Spectre means ghost-like, introducing a dead atmosphere.
Lines 3-4 And Winters dregs made desolate the weakening eye of day. This time, Hardy
personifies Winter. These two lines confirm that this poem is taking place in the depth of
winter and so it is very grey. The weakening eye of day indicates that the poet is watching the
sunset and the use of the word weakening suggests that the sun is fading and dying.
Lines 5-6 The tangled bine-stems scored the sky like strings of broken lyres. The use of the
word scored suggests that all the poet sees is destruction when he looks at the bine-stems. The
use of the simile which compares the bine-stems like strings of broken lyres indicates that
there is no happiness or music. Everything is dead.
Lines 7-8 And all mankind that haunted nigh had sought their household fires. This insinuates
that it is late as any normal person at this time would be inside, by the fire in their home, keeping
warm.
Second stanza:
Lines 1-2 The lands sharp features seemed to be the Centurys corpse outleant. The poet
states that the land is a map of everything that has happened over the course of the century. By
personifying Century, the poet gives it human-like characteristics as if the century itself is dead
and the corpse is left behind as the land that the poet is observing (this poem was written at the
end of the 18th century).
Lines 3-4 His crypt the cloudy canopy, the wind his death-lament. The alliteration of c as
well as Centurys corpse intensifies the atmosphere of gloom and deathliness. Death-lament
gives the impression of a death rattle being sung by the wind. The use of the word his makes
the wind more familiar and human-like.
Lines 5-6 The ancient pulse of germ and birth was shrunken hard and dry. The pulse of germ
and birth may mean that any throbbing heartbeat of germination is dead (was shrunken hard
and dry).
Lines 7-8 And every spirit upon earth seemed favourless as I. The last line of the first stanza
and the second stanza are concerned with men. This line means that every spirit on the planet
seems as lifeless as the poet, as hard and dry as the shrunken pulses of germ and birth.
Third stanza:
Lines 1-2 At once a voice arose among the bleak twigs overhead. A bird suddenly appears
and sings a song, disrupting the silence of death. The alliteration of a resembles the sound a
thrushs song. The song drowns out the sound of the death-lament. Bleak twigs gives the
impression that death has reached the vegetation in the area, making it bare and dry.
Lines 3-4- In a full-hearted evensong of joy illimited;. The bird is not just singing a song, it is
singing a happy, joyful song which is strange as the environment is dead and motionless so what
reason does the bird have to sing? There is enjambment in the first four lines of this stanza which
draws the attention of the reader to the next line.
Lines 5-6 An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, in blast-beruffled plume. This use of plosive
b sounds emphasises that it has survived the winter winds. Frail, gaunt and small shows that
such a small, delicate bird is able to lighten the dead and gloomy atmosphere.
Lines 7-8 Had chosen to fling his soul upon the growing gloom. This gives the impression
that the thrush is giving up its life to fight the gloomy environment. Even the words, growing
gloom sound depressing when read aloud.
Fourth stanza:
Lines 1-2 So little cause for carolings of such ecstatic sound. This confuses the poet as there
is no good reason for the bird to be singing. Also, the sibilance (repetition of s and c sounds)
creates a soft music, just like what the bird is singing.
Lines 3-4 Was written on terrestrial things afar or nigh around. Just like the previous stanza,
there is enjambment in the first four lines. The use of the word terrestrial suggests that the poet
believes this is bird is not from Earth as it is flinging its soul to the ghostly atmosphere.
Lines 5-6 That I could think there trembled through his happy good-night air. This proves
that the thrush is happy and the poet may be a little comforted by the thrushs song. This may be
shown by the alliteration of th and tr sounds.
Lines 7-8 Some blessed Hope whereof he knew and I was unaware. Hardy brings up the idea
of Christian hope, as if he has just had a religious experience. There are many reasons for this.
Firstly, the bird sings a full-hearted evensong. An evensong is a service of evening prayers
psalms and so this introduces religious themes into the play. Secondly, Hardy personifies Hope,
as if it were a human-like figure giving hope (i.e. Jesus Christ who came in the form of a human)
which can suggest Christian optimism. Hardy again gives the bird a gender, he knew, making it
more familiar and more powerful.
As well as the actual content of the poem, the structure is also noteworthy. The rhyme scheme is
regular and the lines are structured as tetrameter followed by trimester (an 8 syllable line
followed by a 6 syllable line). This makes the poem flow with a certain beat, just like the beat of
the song the bird is singing.
Altogether, Hardy begins the poem in a dark, lifeless atmosphere. Everything is dead and there
doesnt seem to be any hope for a better century. Suddenly, when the thrush is introduced in the
third stanza, the bird brings the poem to life by singing. This drowns the sound of the winds
death rattle and lightens the mood of the speaker. Its strange for the speaker as there is no reason
for the bird to be cheerful at such a time. The speaker then realises that there is some hope that
the thrush is aware of but he is not, giving him hope for a better century.
Type of Work and Publication Years

......."The Darkling Thrush" is a lyric poem with four eight-line stanzas. The Graphic, a weekly newspaper,
first published the poem on December 29, 1900, under the title "By Century's Deathbed," according to
The Evil Image: Two Centuries of Gothic Short Fiction and Poetry, edited by Patricia L. Skarda and Nora
Crow Jaffe (New York: New American Library, 1981). An article posted on the web site of the Guardian, a
London newspaper, under its Books Blog maintains that the poem was written in 1899 and originally
entitled "The Century's End, 1900." The London Times republished the poem on January 1, 1901. In
London later that year, Macmillan published the poem in the second volume of Poems of the Past and
Present: "Miscellaneous Poems."
Background and Title Information

.......Thomas Hardy wrote "The Darkling Thrush" to express his feelings about the world when it was
about to enter the twentieth century. The title refers to a thrush, such as a robin, in darkness (darkling). To
view images of thrushes, click here.
Summary
.......When the frost was ghostly gray and the depressing winter landscape made the setting sun seem
lonely and abandoned, the speaker leaned on a gate before a thicket of small trees. Twining plants, rising
high, were silhouetted against the sky like the strings of broken lyres. All the people who lived nearby
were inside their homes, gathered around their household fires. The countryside looked like a corpse. The
cloudy sky was the roof of the corpse's crypt, the speaker says, and the wind its song of death. The cycle
of birth and rebirth seemed to have shrunken and dried up, like the spirit of the speaker.
.......But then he heard the joyful song of a birda frail old thrushcoming from scrawny branches
overhead. The song was a jubilant outpouring against the evening gloom. The dreary landscape gave the
thrush no reason to sing with such overflowing happiness. The speaker wondered whether the bird was a
harbinger of some hope of which he was unaware.
Interpretation
.......Thomas Hardy expressed gloomy and fatalistic views of events in most of his writing. It is not
surprising, then, that he uses a bleak winter landscape to symbolize the passing of the nineteenth
century, which the poem calls a "corpse" (line 10) in a "crypt" (line 11).
.......When Hardy wrote "The Darkling Thrush" on the threshold of the twentieth century, he himself was
making a transitionfrom writing novels to writing poetry exclusively. The motivation for the change was
the negative public reception of two of his novels, Tess of the d'Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure
(1895). Their frank depictions of morally taboo subjects outraged readers. A friend of Hardynovelist
George Gissing (1857-1903)called the 1895 novel Jude the Obscene (Whitney). So Hardy had reason
to be gloomy. But would the public accept his poetry? And would the new century improve on the old?
.......Hardy offers a glimmer of hope, expressed in the joyous song of the bird.
.......Incidentally, Tess and Jude the Obscure are widely read and admired today. And his poetry generally
has received high praise.
Work Cited
Whitney, Anna. "Letters reveal Hardy switched to poetry over harsh 'Jude the Obscure' reviews." The
[London] Independent 9 Oct. 2001. 11 July 2011
.......<http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/news/letters-reveal-hardy-switched-topoetry-over-harsh-jude-the-obscure-reviews-630731.html>.
.
Text
I leant upon a coppice1 gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.2
The tangled bine-stems3 scored the sky

Like strings of broken lyres,4
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,5
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ6 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;7
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 things8
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.
Notes
1.....coppice: Thicket of small trees.
2.....eye of day: Sun.
3.....bine-stems: Twining or climbing stems of a plant.
4.....lyres: Musical instruments with strings. A lyre's strings are attached to a bar between two arms. Click
here to see pictures of lyres.
5.....outleant: Lying down.
6.....germ: Seed; egg; bud.
7.....illimited: Unlimited.
8.....Was . . . things: The bleak countryside revealed no cause for the joyous singing.
.
Theme
.......Hope amid desolation is the theme of "The Darkling Thrush." The frail old bird is a harbinger of spring
and his song an expression of joy at a new beginning.
End Rhyme
.......The end rhyme in each stanza is abab cdcd. The first stanza demonstrates this rhyme scheme.
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
.......All of the end rhymes are masculine rather than feminine. In masculine rhyme, the last syllable of a
line rhymes with the last syllable of another line. In feminine rhyme, the last two syllables of a line rhyme
with the last two syllables of another line. Examples of feminine rhyme are ringing and singing and
gender and sender.
Meter
.......The longer lines in the poem are in iambic tetrameter and the shorter ones in iambic trimeter.
Following are examples.
Iambic Tetrameter
.....1..............2..............3................4
I LEANT..|..upON..|..theCOP..|..piceGATE
Iambic Trimeter
..........1....................2.................3.
When FROST..|..wasSPEC..|..treGRAY
.
Figures of Speech
.......Following are examples of figures of speech in the poem. For definitions of figures of speech, see
Literary Terms.
Alliteration
tangled bine-stems scored the sky (line 5)
Had sought their household fires (line 8)
His crypt the cloudy canopy (line 11)
Metaphor
weakening eye of day (line 4)
Comparison of the sun to an eye
Century's corpse (line 10)

Comparison of century to a dead body
His crypt the cloudy canopy (line 11)

Comparison of the cloud cover to a crypt
Had chosen thus to fling his soul (line 23)

Comparison of the bird's song to a soul
Simile
Like strings of broken lyres (lines 5-6)
Comparison of plants stems to the broken strings of a musical instrument
The Darkling Thrush Summary

It's the very end of the day. In fact, it's the very end of the year. The countryside is frozen into an
icy, unwelcoming landscape. It's not quite Hoth, but it's close. As our speaker stares out into the
gloom, he's reminded that everything around him is on the fast track to death and decay. We're
not saying that our speaker is a downer. He's just not exactly a "glass half full" sort of guy.
Then again, maybe the world is full of zombie-like humans and gray, gray weather. After all, our
speaker does hail from England. And the UK isn't exactly a tropical paradise. You'd think that our
speaker would want to buy a one-way ticket to Aruba, right? Instead, he seems to obsess over the
barren British countryside.
Things go from dull and depressing to outright dismal. No life seems to stir. Anywhere.
...Until, that is, our speaker hears the most unexpected sound: a bird singing. The little thing isn't
in the best of shape. It's been beaten badly by the weather, and it seems as old and death-bound
as the year itself. That doesn't stop it from belting its heart out, though. It's bound and determined
to share every last ounce of joy in its soul.
Why be joyful when the world is so crummy? Well, that's a good question. In fact, that's exactly
the question that our speaker asks himself. He can't figure out why in the world anything let
alone a bird would waste its last breath in a song that no one will hear. Unfortunately, our
feathered friend doesn't give him any answers. (What do you think this is, Disney? Birds don't
talk, folks. Which makes it a bit tricky for out speaker to get any answers.)
Strangely enough, our speaker doesn't even try to figure it out. He's content to know that
something out there sees a reason to exist and to be joyful even if he can't comprehend the
reasons himself.
But, don't worry, folks one birdsong isn't going to turn this guy into an optimist. He's a hard
skinned realist. No doubts about it. Nonetheless, he's able to appreciate happiness when he sees
it. And that's something.right?
Lines 1-2
When Frost was spectre-gray
So it's winter. Or at least a very cold and dreary autumn. We're not talking springtime and
puppies and balloons here. We're talking cold and ice and gray, gray, gray. You excited?
We sure are.
Our speaker's leaning up against a gate leading to a big patch of brush and brambles. In
other words, this is no walk in Central Park. (Since we're dealing with the other side of
the pond, we should probably be talking about London's Hyde Park. But you get the
idea.)
What's he doing? Well.nothing. Not that we can tell, at any rate. In fact, this poem is
about a whole lot of Nothing. You'll see what we mean in just a minute.
Just who is this "I," anyway? Well, we'll get to that in our "Speaker" discussion. The
quick and dirty version, however, is that he's probably your friendly neighborhood
downer. That's right: he's the guy that's sucking on lemons when everyone else is drinking
lemonade. Don't believe us? Read on, friends, read on.
One quick note: see how Frost gets a capital "F"? It's almost as if Frost attains human-like
characteristics. After all, humans have proper names that get capitalized. Elements of
nature, like snow and ice and frost, tend not to have proper names. Unless, of course,
you're in a Hardy poem. Then, all bets are off.
Before we move on, though, we'd like to emphasize the "almost human" part of Frost's
description. Here's what we mean: our speaker thinks that Frost is "spectre-gray."
"Spectre" is a fancy nineteenth-century word for "ghost." So if Frost is human-like (with
a capital letter), it's also ghost-like, which is not exactly human. Hmm. Non-human
humans? Are you confused yet? We sure are.
Lines 2-4
The weakening eye of day
Now that we've established how dreary this winter day is, our speaker takes the
opportunity to hammer home the point one more time.
If you're a coffee drinker, you know that the dregs are those nasty, grainy, bitter things
that cling to the bottom of your cup and make your last sip of caffeinated goodness taste
like sludge. If you're not a coffee drinker, you can take our word for it: dregs are nowhere
near delicious.
So when our speaker says that we're in the dregs of winter, he wants to make it clear that
this is not the pretty falling snow that you see in Christmas specials. This stuff's gray and
grimy. Think Fargo, not White Christmas.
Oh, and have we mentioned that our speaker's up to his animist tricks again? (Check out
what we have to say in Hardy's "Calling Card" about this. The man's a big, big fan of
animism.) Day's got an eye. Winter seems to be a person. They may be one foot in the
grave already but they're more alive than any of the other things that we've encountered
in the poem thus far.
Speaking of dying, we should mention that this whole world seems mostly dead. After
all, as our speaker sees it, day was already weakening before Winter's dregs started
making things even worse.
As we pointed out in our "In a Nutshell" section, Hardy writes this poem at the end of the
nineteenth century. But we're not celebrating the new century and looking ahead to good
times. No, sir. We're very, very, very unhappy. It's like that kid at elementary school
graduation who starts sobbing about how much he's going to miss school lunch. Sheesh.
Then again, maybe that's just out twenty-first century biases kicking in. After all, the
nineteenth century was a pretty scary place to be. Who's to say that the twentieth century
wasn't even worse? Maybe our speaker is right to be so concerned.
Lines 5-6
Like strings of broken lyres
Our speaker's still in descriptive mode. As he gazes into the patch of tangled brushes, he
can only seedeath and destruction.
In this case, the vines in front of him look a lot like the broken bits of a lyre, a classical
harp-like instrument. In other words, if you were hoping for songs and music, folks, look
somewhere else. There is no music or happiness here. We repeat, no music. No
happiness. Sorrow. Pain. SUFFERING!
OK, now we're as caught up in melodrama as our speaker. We've got to admit, it's sort of
fun. You should try it sometime.
On a serious note, we should point out that Hardy's working hard to incorporate classical
allusions (read: references to ancient times, specifically, Greece and Rome in the olden
days) into this poem. Talking about weather like it's a person is something that just about
every ancient religion spent a good deal of time doing.
The lyre is a classical instrument, as we said. It also makes a cameo in scores upon scores
of old poems. Hardy's twist on things is to point out that even these classical elements,
the stock and trade of traditional poetry, are on their way out.
We've got some thoughts about this. Check out what we have to say in "Symbolism,
Imagery, Wordplay."
Lines 7-8
And all mankind that haunted night
If we had any doubts about our speaker being a loner, they're laid to rest here. (Hey, who
wouldn't want to spend some time with this guy? That's what we want to know.)
It turns out that it's past the time when normal folk are out and about. It's probably getting
late, in fact, judging from the way that the speaker suggests that everyone else he knows
is curled up by the fire, enjoying dinner and maybe even a nice cuppa tea. There is life
out there somewhere, it just doesn't happen to be anywhere nearby.
Or waitis there life out there? After all, our speaker makes it clear that the people who
were out and about earlier were "haunting" the landscape. We're back to the whole sortahuman-but-not-really thing that was going on a few lines earlier.
We've got a theory about why Hardy's so bound and determined to make this poem into a
prequel for Night of the Living Dead. Here goes:
Hardy's writing at the end of the Industrial Revolution, which turned the nineteenth
century onto its head. Britain transformed almost overnight: what was once a mainly
agrarian nation (that's farmers, by the way) became industrial. People migrated to cities,
which soon became packed with smog and soot and all sorts of other nasty things.
More to Hardy's point, though, the Industrial Revolution changed how work was done.
Men and women used to be in charge of their own lives. Sure, they were poor. Maybe
they even worked as peasants for rich landowners. But they were in touch with the land
and they got to control their own schedules. (You could play the theme song to The
Sound of Music just about now. You know, the one that goes on about how the hills are
alive?)
Once people started working in factories, however, all that changed. They had to work 12
or 14-hour a day jobs doing the same mind-numbing tasks over and over and over. They
never saw the sun. In fact, they turned pale asghosts. (You can see where we're going
with this one, huh?)
If you want some devastating descriptions of factories and industry messing people up,
check out Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell.
So if folks are walking around like ghosts, it might just be because industry has turned
them into automatons. It's sort of like those scary sci-fi movies from the '70s that feature
robots taking over peoples' lives.
Then again, Hardy could just be turning the end of the century into the End of Days. As
in, the world is about to come crashing down around our ears at any moment. You're all
almost dead already. See?
Either way, it's pretty clear to see that our speaker, much like Hardy himself, is no big fan
of the modern age.
Lines 9-10
The Century's corpse outleant
Ah, now we're getting to the good stuff. The land becomes a map of everything that's
happened over the course of the century. In fact, it starts to embody the Century. Or at
least, the dead century.
Why is the Century "outleant"? Heck, is "outleant" even a word? You've got us there,
folks. According to the good people at the Oxford English Dictionary, "outleant" is
not and never has been a word.
Before we start calling shenanigans, though, we should point out that this is one of
several non-words in Hardy's poem. "Darkling," anyone? Hardy's probably not just
making up words because it's fun. (OK, making up words is pretty fun. If you don't
believe us, check with Disney. They got all sorts of mileage out of
supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. But that's not our point.)
What was our point? Oh, yeah: non-words. We're guessing that Hardy's speaker sees
himself at the end of an era. It's a Huge Moment. It's so huge, in fact, that the English
language just doesn't have enough words for him to describe what he's seeing. That's
where all of these new words come in.
We've got to admit, this isn't exactly a travel brochure, is it? (As in, come to England
where everything looks like rotting corpses." Hmm.)
Lines 11-12
His crypt the cloudy canopy
The wind his death-lament
Since we're on the subject of death.
The century is dead. Dead as a doornail.
But have you noticed that, by this point, we're spending far more time discussing the
once-life of abstract concepts like "Winter" or "the Century" than we have spent
discussing people. It's a nifty sleight-of-hand, actually: Hardy's speaker makes us focus
on the death of inanimate (or conceptual) things that we forget that they're not alive. Or,
well, dying.
All of nature seems to conspire to mourn the passing of the century. The sense that the
outer world will mimic or manifest your own emotions a very Romantic notion (as in,
Wordsworthian. Not bodice-ripping Harlequins novels. Take our word for it, they're very
different things).
A Romantic poet might believe that if you're smiling, the sun would come out. Hardy's at
least a century away from the Romantics, but he seems to be stealing a few tricks from
their bag in this particular phrase.
Lines 13-14
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry
We've said it before, we'll say it again. Death and decay, folks. Got it?
Notice, though, that even as our speaker gets off on the ending of all things, the poem's
rhythm remains utterly constant and conventional. Here's what we mean:
Try reading lines 13-14 aloud. They should sound something like this: The AN-cientPULSE-of-GERM-and-BIRTH / Was-SHRUNK-en-HARD-and-DRY.
Notice how there's a totally regular pattern of accented and unaccented syllables? All in
all, it's a conventional rhythm. Which, when you're talking about death and decay and
everything changing, is pretty surprising. You'd expect that the poem's rhythm would be
all over the place.
It just goes to prove that old, old saying: the beat goes on. It's almost like there's tension
between the regularity of the rhythm and the huge void that the speaker seems to see in
the actual world.
We should point out here that these two lines are heavy hitters when it comes to Hardy's
own personal symbolism. He's totally into metaphors of germination (or, in other words,
the process of a seed developing into a plant). Or, in this case, failed germination. Check
out what we have to say about it in "Symbolism, Imagery, Wordplay."
Lines 15-16
OK, back up just a second here. Wasn't the whole place emptied out by now?
Yes, it was. In fact, the speaker says so, right about at line 8. So where do all these spirits
come from?
We're guessing that, by this time, the speaker is so wrapped up in his gloom-and-dooming
that he's starting to get a little free-and-easy with his descriptions. It's sort of like when
you've just had a no good, very bad day: suddenly everything seems absolutely horrible.
There's just no standing in the way of melodrama.
So the place seemed cleared out earlier? Well, that's just too bad. Our speaker has more
depressing descriptions to share. And he happens to need some people around in order to
do it.
Speaking of melodrama, did you notice how hard Hardy's working to point out that there
are no real people in this poem? He takes just about every chance that he can get to push
the point home: why, for example, does he choose to use the word "spirit" instead of
"person"?
Hardy's being a clever, clever man here. He allows his speaker to refer to humans-asghosts (or ghosts-as-humans) by using one little bitty word.
Stanza 3 Summary
Get out the microscope, because were going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 17-20
Of joy illimited;
So the first thing that you've probably noticed is that we're taking on a whole four lines in
this section. We're moving up, folks.
Don't worry, we're not trying to get out of explaining the poem line-by-line. It's just that
the third stanza marks a significant shift in the poem. See, up until now, the poem seemed
to break itself up into four-line chunks. How do we know this? Well, for one thing, there's
a period every four lines or so.
Now, though, things are changing. At the end of line 20, we don't have a period. We have
a semi-colon! Sure, it's half a period. But it's also half a comma. The sentence goes on
for another wait for it four whole lines! It's like the poem is breathing a sigh of relief
and opening up. Heck, who wouldn't want to talk about joy for a little bit longer?
Why? Well, that's because things are looking up. All of a sudden, out of all that silence
and death and never-ending grayness, our speaker hears something. And not just any
sound this is an all-out love song. It's full and beautiful and chock-full of happiness.
But who's singing this happy song? We'll see.
Lines 21-22
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small,
Now we're talking. After all, we were told in the title that this poem was about a thrush,
right? It's taken us three and a half stanzas to get to the bird, though, and we bet plenty of
you were beginning to wonder if the title was a weird attempt to fool us. But, threequarters of the way through the poem, the thrush makes its star appearance.
But wait. What kind of star is this? Old, weak, and tiny? This sounds like more of the
gloominess that dogged us all the way through the first parts of the poem. If any of you
were thinking that this poem might be at all like that other famous poem about a bird,
you're probably re-thinking that just about now. After all, Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale"
is full of pretty things and, well, a pretty bird.
Whatever this bird is, though, it sure ain't pretty. Keats's poem is about the undying voice
of the nightingale. The bird's immortal, for crying out loud. Hardy's bird, in
comparison, is stuck in the middle of a nasty storm. The best thing that the speaker can
say about the bird is that it somehow manages to exist in all of that feather-ruffling wind.
Lines 23-24
Jealous, are we? As frail and puny as this bird is, it's managed to do what our speaker has
been too scared to do: to forget about the odds and just sing. Sure, the chances are that the
bird won't be able to do anything to make the "growing gloom" one ounce lighter. But it's
willing to try.
Then again, it's managed to draw the attention of our speaker. And that's no small thing.
Lines 25-26
Was written on terrestrial things
Once again, the first four lines of the stanza start to bleed into each other. It's almost as if
the speaker is gathering momentum as he continues to hear the thrush singing.
But, as the speaker himself points out, there's no good reason for the bird to be singing.
We read about it ourselves: the world is a dead, dead, dead place. So why all this song?
Well, you've got us. Frankly, you've got our speaker, too. He can't seem to figure out why
the bird wouldn't match his pitch to his surroundings. After all, that's what our speaker
has done. The world seems crummy and depressing? Fine. I'll write a crummy and
depressing poem. Satisfied?
But now our speaker's questioning his own choices. Sure, he's not doing it outright. After
all, would you back down and change your mind in the middle of a poem you've been
working really hard to finish? But we can see that the speaker's starting to understand that
there might be other ways to imagine his art than just as a reflection his surroundings.
After all, didn't you hear from every elementary school art teacher ever that art should be
an expression of your soul? Maybe "ecstasy" doesn't come from without. Maybe it comes
from within.
Of course, true Hardy-style, it's not another human being that brings our speaker this
revelation. It's nature. And "art" isn't really "art," exactly. It's a birdsong. But in Hardy's
mind, the more natural an art form is, the better.
Lines 29-30
OK, the bird is happy. Maybe our speaker's even a little comforted by the thought of the
bird's company.
But he's not going to let on that he's happy. Oh, no. That would be way too cheerful.
Instead, he plays it cool. He's not sure that the bird is singing a happy song. He just thinks
that he could think the bird is happy. (Whew. How's that for complicated feelings?)
Notice Hardy's emphasis on the conditional here: instead of remarking that the speaker
does think something, he notes that the speaker could think it.
Could, should, and would are all what our grandparents used to call "weasel words"
they suggest that something's possible, but they don't commit to anything.
It's sort of like that friend of yours who always says that he could be interested in going
out on Friday night. Translated, that means "If there's nothing else for me to do, I might
think about coming. But don't bank on it."
Lines 31-32
Some blessed Hope, of which he knew
And I was unaware.
Welcome to the twentieth century, folks. Hardy's poem ushers in the century with the last
two lines: in them, he captures the worldview of most of the major writers of the next
thirty years.
See, Modernists do want to believe that there's something lovely and wonderful and
fulfilling out there in the world. They just can't figure out how to get from their present
state of unhappiness, decay, and corruption to that happiness and peace.
Hardy negotiates the two extremes perfectly here: our speaker can sense Hope, but it's
unintelligible to him and not just because he doesn't happen to speak bird.
The Darkling Thrush Symbolism, Imagery &

Wordplay
Theres more to a poem than meets the eye.
Welcome to the land of symbols, imagery, and wordplay. Before you travel any further, please
know that there may be some thorny academic terminology ahead. Never fear, Shmoop is here.
Check out our "How to Read a Poem" section for a glossary of terms.
The Death of the Classics

When we talk about something being "classical," we mean in the sense that it relates to ancient
Greece or Rome. In "The Darkling Thrush" Hardy's bringing out all of the old favorites: the
seasons, the gods, and even the elements all make cameo appearances. Here's the thing, though:
like everything else in "The Darkling Thrush," all of the classical allusions in this poem are
coupled with images of death and decay. Does this mean that this is the death of the gods? Well,
yes. We think it does. Check these out:
Lines 2-3: capitalizing "Frost" and "Winter" makes them seem less like natural elements
and more like, well, "Susie" or "Juan." In other words, they're being personified. And
what's more, they seem to be traditional (read: classical) personifications, which allows
the poem to allude (read: refer to) to an entire symbolic register by inserting just a
few choice images. Call something "Frost" with a capital "F" and we're immediately
thinking about pagan gods of winter or even Greek god who controlled the weather.
Nifty, huh?
Line 6: Referencing a "lyre" is pretty much code for "classical allusion." A lyre is a
classical harp-like instrument.
Line 21: Hardy's choice of birds is anything but accidental: another poet from the not-sodistant past (for Hardy, at least), made the nightingale very famous. It turns out that the
thrush is actually a close relative of the nightingale. You could think of this as a not-sosubtle allusion to Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale." John Keats, watch out Thomas
Hardy is gunning for your position in the Poetry Hall of Fame. (Check out more on other
comparisons between the two poems in our "What's Up With the Title?" section.)
Line 31: Again with the capital letters! Again with the personification! This time,
"Hope" steals the show as an almost-sentient being.
The Living Dead

If killing off all of nature wasn't enough for you, it turns out that all people seem close to tipping
into the grave, as well. Hey, who doesn't like to read about people who live halfway between
here and the netherworld? Come to think of it, the folks who inhabit this poem do seem like
they're in purgatory. We hear that it's very gray and unpleasant.
Lines 7-8: The way that people are "haunting" the area conjures up all sorts of evocative
imagery. Can you imagine these people with bodies? We sure can't!
Lines 9-10: Heck, even non-alive things are dead like the Century.
Lines 15-16: We've said it before, and we'll say it again: referring to people as "spirits" is
both a nifty synecdoche (because people are thought to have spirits inside of them)
and symbolism (because people have become nothing more than spirits).
Line 21: OK, we know that the thrush is alive. But our first introduction to him is meant
to situate him in the same ghoulish symbolic register as the other figures in this poem.
After all, he's "frail, gaunt, and small." That's not exactly Olympic contender material, is
it?
The END (and maybe even the Beginning)

Winter is a metaphor for death (the end of life), which is lucky, because this poem is chock-full
of subtle (and not-so-subtle) references to the grim reaper. And then, of course, this poem is
written (and published) right at the end of the nineteenth century. Latent in these metaphors,
however, is the sense that re-growth just might be possible. Winter turns into spring. The
nineteenth century turns into the twentieth. Things move on, you know?
Lines 1-7: There's an insistent repetition of hard k sounds in the first stanza, mimicking
sounds of breaking and cracking and all other sorts of destruction. The fancy term for that
repetition is alliteration. Since it's winter, we could even imagine that the k sounds in
words like "coppice," "spectre," or "weakening" play off the sounds of ice cracking.
Lines 3-4: The imagery conjured up in these lines brings day to life (through
personification, if you must know) only to kill it off by injecting it with a good
healthy dose of "Winter's dregs."
Lines 10-13: Hardy's up to his old personification tricks again: the "Century"
becomes a "corpse outleant." The poem plays upon an implicit allusion to that oh-sopopular figure, Father Time, to depict the nineteenth century as a dying (or, well, dead)
human-like figure.
Lines 13-14: Even symbolic references to the living, breathing natural world are
drying up. The "ancient pulse of germ and birth" (seeds germinating and becoming
plants) might not be the most recognizable set of symbols today, but it was a powerful
one for Hardy himself.
Nature
"The Darkling Thrush" isn't exactly Animal Planet. Nonetheless, this poem is a whole lot more
interested in the out-of-doors than it is in what's going on beside people's house fires. We're
guessing that outside isn't nearly as comfortable as in by the fire (after all, it is winter), but that
doesn't seem to bug our speaker.
Line 1: A "coppice" is basically a big area of scrub brush. Suggesting that the coppice is
gated and contained starts us off by thinking that maybe humans have been screwing up
nature for a while now.
Lines 2-3: "Frost" and "Winter" take the place of people as key figures in the first stanza.
Lines 5-6: Ah, simile. The vines become "like" a broken stringed instrument.
Line 9: The land takes center stage at the beginning of Stanza 2. We're developing a
symbolic register for nature that, as it turns out, doesn't include people at all. Note the
metaphor that connects the land to the dying Century it becomes the "body" of the
Century's corpse.
Line 21-22: And there's the thrush. Other than our speaker, he's the only living and
breathing creature in this poem. He's not personified, interestingly enough. He's a
bird. Only a bird. And that's precisely the point.
The Darkling Thrush: Rhyme, Form &

Meter
Well show you the poems blueprints, and well listen for the music behind the words.
Rhyming Lines in Iambic Meter

For a guy who's all about apocalypse and ending the earth, Thomas Hardy sure plays it safe when
in comes to form. After all, with all that chaos and nothingness out there, it just doesn't make
much sense to pay attention to something as trivial as a regular rhyme scheme, does it? Why not
go crazy with words that don't sound at all alike?
Well, Hardy doesn't seem to agree. His poem is about as regular as they come (formally
speaking, of course). It's divided into four nice, neat stanzas, each of which has eight nice, neat
lines. Heck, even the rhyme scheme is as traditional as they come: it's all ABABCDCD. Repeat.
Repeat. Repeat.
Here's what we mean by that. Check out the first stanza:
I leant upon a coppice gate (A)
When Frost was spectre-gray, (B)
And Winter's dregs made desolate (A)

The weakening eye of day. (B)
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky (C)
Like strings of broken lyres, (D)
And all mankind that haunted nigh (C)
Had sought their household fires. (D)
Notice how "gate" rhymes with "desolate" and "gray" rhymes with "day"? Every other line
rhymes with each other. That's what we mean when we say it's an ABAB rhyme scheme. It sets
up a traditional rocking sort of motion when you read the poem, pulling you through the stanzas
by interlocking the rhyming lines.
Even the meter is as normal and humdrum as they come: every other syllable is accented. All
through the poem. An unaccented syllable followed by an accented syllable is called an "iamb."
So the meter here is considered iambi. Check it out:
I leant u-pon a copp-ice gate
Just like the rhyme scheme, the meter's supposed to be lilting. We'd write out more lines, but
frankly, it's making us just a bit seasick.
Why does this matter? Well, you wouldn't think that Hardy would be the sort of guy to serve up
the same ol' stuff all the time, would you? We mean, it's like he's creating the ambiance of a
really edgy restaurantand then he just gives you eggs and toast. We're not saying that eggs and
toast is bad. It's just notexciting.
You could say that the rhyme scheme introduces a bit of tension by clashing with the mood of the
poem itself. In fact, we think we will. See, the speaker is intent on showing us all of the ways
that the world is ending. Right this very second. Now! But the poem itself is strictly regular.
Which can do one of two things: it can convince us that maybe we shouldn't trust the speaker as
much as he'd like us to. After all, he must not have gotten everything right. It could also suggest
that Hardy himself might not be as down-and-out as his speaker seems to be. After all, if he's still
interested enough in convention to adhere to a traditional rhyme scheme, things can't totally be
going to hell in a handbasket.
Speaker Point of View

Who is the speaker, can she or he read minds, and, more importantly, can we trust her or him?
Our speaker has a very active imagination. He uses elaborate turns of phrase and whimsical
references to things like the seasons and feelings as if they're honest-to-goodness people. Which
is lucky, actually, because he doesn't seem to be making all that many human friends.
Come to think of it, we don't know all that much about the speaker. Is he old? Young? Married?
A pirate? We can't really say. (We're seriously hoping for the pirate, though. We just wanted to
toss that in there.)
Why the deliberate anonymity? Especially when the first word of the poem is, um, "I"? Well, in a
weird way, the absence of any definite characteristics makes it easy for the speaker's voice to
become the Voice of the Century. Think about it: try reading the first line aloud. Who does the "I"
seem to be now? Some random person? Or.you? In a tricky sidestepping of all detail, Hardy
manages to create a speaker who could be anybodyor everybody. Feel drafted into a strange
role? You should.
Just how seriously should we take our speaker, though? Well, we've talked a little about his
credibility in the "Form and Meter" section of this module. We won't re-hash old news here, but
the short version is that a case could be made that the poem's form might make us take our
speaker's melancholy with a grain of salt. Then again, his worry about the turn of the century is
what many people felt at the time (1899). The nineteenth century was teeming with anxiety. Hey,
why shouldn't the twentieth be even worse?
That said, our speaker can appreciate happiness when he sees it. It's not like he's the bitter person
who goes around quoting stupid sayings like, "Always the bridesmaid, never the bride." He
might not be the star of tonight's show, but he's willing to let the thrush sing its little heart out in
peace. And that's something.
The Darkling Thrush Setting

Where It All Goes Down
If you've seen Fargo, you know just how quiet and desolate all of those quiet frozen Nowheres
are in this world. You know, the kind that don't even make it onto the map. That's where Hardy's
speaker does his best work. See, as far as he's concerned, the more desolate things are, the better.
People only mess with the view.
Not that there's much of a view in "The Darkling Thrush." For one thing, it's almost dark. For
another, anything that was ever green sure isn't green any longer. It's the deepest, deadest part of
winter. The speaker wants us to experience the absolute chill of nature and time conspiring
against us. The thing is, though, that there's no one around to experience it. We don't know why
the landscape is so empty. We do have a few thoughts, though:
Hardy's pretty insistent on the ways that overwork and changed lifestyles that came along with
the Industrial Revolution have turned human beings intoless than human beings. Maybe there
aren't any "real" humans around anymore. We don't mean that in a Bladerunner androids sort of
way. It's more of an I've-been-staring-at-the-TV-so-long-I'm-not-sure-I-can-hold-a-conversation
kind of way. Those dull, blank stares you see around you 50 minutes into an algebra class? Hardy
says "No more!"
Have you ever seen a landscape picture? Maybe those kinds by Thomas Kincade? They're the
sorts of things that every grandma and great-aunt loves. Hey, maybe you like them, too. The
point is, landscapes don't tend to have people in them. If they do, the people are the tiny little
blobs skating on the pond. Imagine this poem as a picture: it's about the changing of time and the
seasons and natural beauty. See? It's almost like Thomas Kincade. Except, well, way better
(sorry, Grandma).
Sound Check
Read this poem aloud. What do you hear?
This poem sounds a little like that dude that sits in the corner of a bar at 10:30 on a Tuesday
morning moaning to himself. Either that, or he's the odd guy on the street corner reminding you
that the world's about to end. Tomorrow.
Those are precisely the people that no one listens to. In fact, "The Darkling Thrush" almost
sounds like an internal monologue that we're not supposed to hear. Sure, our speaker invests in
some alliteration early on in the poem (think about those hard k sounds that we talked about in
"Symbolism, Imagery, Wordplay"). But really, our speaker's not trying to impress anyone with
fancy metrics or a nifty rhythm. His encounter with the thrush is a private one. His hope, if he
actually has any, comes from his ability to replay that vision in his mind, over and over. Maybe
that's why the images in this poem are so precise: they're supposed to stick in his own head. Oh,
yeah. And in ours.
Whats Up With the Title?

Hold on a second. "Darkling" isn't a word, is it? No, no it's not. (OK, we're fudging here. A
loooooong time ago, way before the poem was written, "darkling" was sometimes used to mean
"a creature of darkness." Sort of like an evil spirit. Except not.)
So why the heck wouldn't Hardy keep things simple and call this poem "The Dark Thrush"? Or
maybe "The Darkening Thrush"? Or what about the simple but ever-appropriate "So This One
Time, I Heard a Bird Singing"? (A thrush, by the way, is a kind of bird.)
Well, we can't answer those questions for you. But we do have some theories about why Hardy
would deliberately use an antiquated word in his title.
1. Hardy's a big fan of the Old Ways and of Tradition. Notice how his poem is set in the
country and not in a city? That's because folks used to live in the countrybut now they live in
cities. See? For Hardy, old = better. And that could apply to the poem's title, as well. Want to
indicate that the bird is bringing joy to a dark, dark land? What better way to do it than to use old
words in new ways?
2. Hardy is an early Modernist. Hardy's often been described as one of the first Modernist
writers in England. Why does this matter? Well, it helps group him with other folks who
happened to be interested in similar uses of language, like T.S. Eliot, whose poem "The Waste
Land" used so many obscure phrases that he eventually wrote his own footnotes in order to
explain what they all meant. Hardy's not nearly as crazy as that. (Phew!) But he does share that
Modernist interest in bringing old words back to life. Wait a second.bringing something back
to life? Doesn't that sound sort of like what the England of Hardy's poem needs? Well, yes. Yes,
it does.
3. Hardy is connecting his poem to Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale." The word "darkling" also
appears at the beginning of the sixth stanza of John Keats's totally famous bird poem, "Ode to a
Nightingale." Maybe that's where Hardy got the original idea? There are actually plenty of
similarities between the poems the whole bird thing, the speaker's despair at the state of the
world, lots of emo going around but Keats writes his "Ode" at the beginning of the nineteenth
century (1819, to be exact), while Hardy writes his exactly eighty years later, at the century's
end. We can't say how deliberate Hardy's references to Keats's poems might be but it's quite a
coincidence.
4. Maybe Hardy just likes looking down his nose at other people. As in, "you don't know that
'darkling' was once a word? Hmph. Shows how much you know."
The Darkling Thrush Theme of Perseverance

"The Darkling Thrush" is the story of a little bitty bird taking on the big, bad world. Sure, times
are tough. It's cold and gray and awful out there as our speaker makes abundantly clear every
chance that he gets. But, hey, what does the bird have to lose? He's on his way out, anyway.
Might as well sing a little song to pass the time, eh? We get a sense of just how miraculous the
bird's perseverance is by comparing him to our less-than-hopeful speaker. The thrush is cheerful
enough on his own, but next to our speaker, this little guy is the Miss Congeniality of the
century!
The Darkling Thrush Theme of Isolation

"The Darkling Thrush" is practically the love child of "All By Myself" and solitary confinement.
Whether our speaker is an outcast from society, forced to roam the earth during the dark hours
when all other humankind is at home with family and friends, or whether he just chooses to
spend his time in private thought, the poem rigorously denies him any sort of connection or
communication. Then again, maybe that changes by the end of the poem. Do the speaker and the
thrush have a moment of unspoken communion? Or are they both just as alone as they were
before?
The Darkling Thrush Theme of Man and the

Natural World
Actually, it's more like "The Natural World and Man." Sure, it's a small adjustment, but for "The
Darkling Thrush," it's a key one. What with Frost and Winter and the land and birds stealing the
show, there's not all that much space for, well, humans. It's not that humans don't exist. It's just
that they're apparently not worth writing about. Life and death take on epic proportions in this
poem, and only elements as ancient and enduring as Frost seem big enough to fill the poem. With
all that bigness and grandeur, the tiny thrush seems completely and totally outmatched. Until,
that is, he starts singing. Could Hardy be using this as a metaphor for people, as well? Hmm....
The Darkling Thrush Theme of Fear

What's there to be afraid of in the world of "The Darkling Thrush"? We're so glad you asked. It
turns out that the answer is quite simple: everything. The world's going to hell in a handbasket,
and our speaker is bound and determined to be a tour guide along the way. Sure, there aren't any
actual ghosts and ghouls and creepy-crawlies around, but people who seem to be ghostly and
ghoulish might just be scarier than the real thing. Reality, it turns out, is scarier than fiction, and
this world is all-too-real. And all-encompassing. In other words, there's no way to get out.
Comfortable yet
The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy
Thomas Hardy is reputed to have written The Darkling Thrush on New Years Eve,
1900, at the dawn of a new century. It commences in the personal, subjective mode,
but the poets 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 its traditionally a thinking pose, and the poem
conveys his thoughts and feelings. The bitter hopelessness of a cold winters
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 poets 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 centurys death song. The personification of the century intensifies
ones 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 centurys 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), centurys 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 blastberuffled: 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 thrushs 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
thrushs song: at once a voice arose among
Stanza 4
In the final stanza, the idea of religious faith is conveyed through the thrushs
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); its 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 freeflowing feeling to the lines.
A Final Note
The Darkling Thrush is typical of Hardys 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 Hardys 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.
THOMAS HARDY'S DARKLING THRUSH ;AN ANALYSIS

Thomas Hardy's (1840-1928) "The Darkling Thrush" was published in 1901, New Years Day. It
refers to the beginning of a new year, a new century and the uncertainty of change. The rhyming
scheme is formulaic ababcdcd, the tone is pessimistic and yet there is something that resonates
long after the poem has been read.
In the first line the narrator says,
"I leant upon a coppice gate"
This refers to a gate leading to a wood. Woods are often dark and gloomy. Normally a door or a
gate leads to new beginnings but in this case it doesn't seem hopeful. He leans upon it, which
suggests reflection but also tiredness. The season reflects the mood. It is winter and frosty, which
reminds us of a coldness of emotions. He is alone taking in his surroundings.
The descriptive language about the frost being "specter-gray" highlights the bleakness of the
environment. Gray isn't an interesting color. There is a tremendous sense of loneliness in the
following lines:
"And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day."
For some people this time of year is a desolate time when others are surrounded by families. The
word "dregs" suggests distaste; the last of something. There is a musical quality to the rhythm of
this poem and even the following lines reflect this:
"The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres, (lines 5 and 6)"
The imagery unfolded by the above two lines could refer to the score of music and related to the
words "strings" and "broken lyres". Broken strings would make an unpleasant sound, which
reflects the narrator's mood. Score can also mean to cut something. It is as the stems are cutting
into the sky. The coldness has meant that people have hurried inside to warm up by "their
household fires" (line 8)
If the first stanza is about loneliness, the second one reflects the death of the century.
The imagery of death is used with words such as "corpse;" it is the death of not just a year, or a
decade but a whole century. For Hardy, who would have been in his 50s, change would have felt
harder to deal with. The world has "sharp features" not only physically but perhaps surrounding
him with change. Even the wind reflects the mood of the poem it is described as a "deathlament."
Hardy concludes his second stanza with:
"And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I."
There is stillness. If "fervor" suggests excitement and energy then "fervourless" suggests Hardy,
like nature is lacking. He has no enthusiasm for change. It is the third stanza
that will alter the mood of the poem slightly making it less pessimistic.
Even if the whole of the surroundings appear bleak, a thrush will sing breaking the spell of the
quietness. It has "joy illimited." There is reference to religion with the words "evensong" as if the
thrush is in touch with his creator. The thrush can bring some joy with his voice in the gloomy
circumstances. This is a turning point in the poem; there is some hope that makes the narrator
think. He is momentarily distracted with the noise.
The final stanza is controversial. It can be interpreted that the thrush brings hope to the narrator
and ends the poem on a positive note. We are told how the bird has "such ecstatic sound" (line 3)
when there was no reason for it, "so little cause for carolings" (line 1). Nature has found a secret
source of hope the narrator is not familiar with and so the narrator feels a sense of peace.
Or it can be perceived that whilst the thrush is happy, the narrator is still not convinced. In the
final two lines the narrator says,
"Some blessed hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware."
The narrator isn't aware of feeling anything positive. It is simply the bird who is content. The
narrator still feels sorry for himself and a sense of despair.
Analysis of Thomas Hardy's The Darkling Thrush -- A Darkling Hope
In the sense of brevity and descriptive art The Darkling Thrush is the masterpiece of
Thomas Hardy which at the same time expresses his mixed reaction - pessimism and
optimism for the coming generation. At the fag end of the nineteenth century, i. e.
on 31st December 1900, the last day of 19 th century , the day the poem is composed,
the poet is somewhat listless. The vast desolate winter atmosphere and lifelessness
create a fit occasion to give rise in the poets mind to the central thought embodied
in the poem- a pensive reflection to life and society.
Poems of the Past and the Present (1901), which includes The Darkling Thrush,
contains many poems expressing Hardy's dismay with British imperialism. There he
also mourns the passing of agricultural society and sees little cause to celebrate
Englands rapid industrialization, which destroy the customs and traditions of rural
life. Here in The Darkling Thrush ,in the transition of two centuries, he finds nothing
hopeful or constructive. Yet there remains remote possibilities which the thrush
prophesies.
First of all the poet presents a desolate winter scene
at the close of the day. People living nearby had retired indoors. There was frost
which was pale as ghost. The inclement weather of the winter still prevailed and the
sun has already set on the western horizon. The stems of the bine trees have already
reached the sky. Each and every member of the society was in earnest quest of their
domestic entertainments. The poet is leant upon the gate. The sharp features of the
landscape appeared to be the corpse or dead body of the nineteenth century. The
century was almost dying. The process of birth and growth seemed to have stopped in
the rigorous winter. The sky was cloudy, a storm was blowing. Every living being felt
gloom and depression. But suddenly a song issued from the dark and decayed
branches of the tree. It was spontaneous and it comes from the inner most core of the
heart. It was excessively joyous and delightful. An old thrush that was lean, frail and
weak was singing to his hearts content in the midst of enveloping darkness. His plume
was perturbed by the gust of wind. The poet finds the ray of hope in the birds song.
He hopes for the coming golden future.
Hardys thrush represents his pessimism in the midst of optimism or
reversal. It seems that Hardy is stranded between optimism and pessimism, between
hope and despair. The poet is acutely suffering from a kind of dilemma or conflict.
The evening symbolizes left helpless, despair, frustration, metal darkness and
disillusionment. But the song of the thrush symbolizes the spirit of hope a hope for a
world of beauty, a world which is devoid of ugliness, the hope of the beginning of a
new era or century or Millennium. It represents the passing away of an old century
and heralding of a bright and hopeful new century.
In The Darkling Thrush, Hardy the pessimist sings the glory of Hardy, the
optimist. Although all was not right with his world, yet all was not wrong, all was not
dead. Only for a moment, the pulse of the life seemed to stop but in the very next
moment with all spontaneity life spring up with all its joy illimited. Beneath the
wintry desolation there lies the eternal pulse of germ and birth. Behind the death of
the old century there is the birth of new century, behind death and despair there is
hope and life. From the very title of the poem it is clear that the thrush is sitting in
the dark in the encircling gloom just like Hardy himself in the long drip of human
tears. Yet out of this gloom bursts a song of hope, out of the goodnight air trembles
forth an air of good morning if winter comes can spring be far behind. The thrush
thus symbolized the spirit of resurrection of new life of joy and hope that lay in store
of the future, the store of the new century. The poet has not been transported out of
the growing gloom of the present century but his response to the thrushs song is
positive. Although the blessed Hope i.e. knowledge of hope and prosperity only the
bird has and of which the poet is yet unaware, Hardy accepts the birds song as a sign
that there is hope for the future.
Hardys The Darkling Thrush is the basis of Hardys self-designated
evolutionary meliorism. Hardy has a growing consciousness or awareness of the
blessed hope for the future generation. Hardy is basically pessimistic but a note of
optimism is noticed here in his faith in mans future. The song of the thrush is joyous
and spontaneous. The bird by virtue of its instinct knows the future but the poet is
not aware of. Here Hardys attitude to nature is philosophical. Natures outward
appearance may change but life in Nature in never dead.
Analysis of Thomas Hardy's The Darkling Thrush -- A Darkling Hope
In the sense of brevity and descriptive art The Darkling Thrush is the masterpiece of
Thomas Hardy which at the same time expresses his mixed reaction - pessimism
and optimism for the coming generation. At the fag end of the nineteenth century, i.
e. on 31st December 1900, the last day of 19th century , the day the poem is
composed, the poet is somewhat listless. The vast desolate winter atmosphere and
lifelessness create a fit occasion to give rise in the poets mind to the central
thought embodied in the poem- a pensive reflection to life and society.
Poems of the Past and the Present (1901), which includes The Darkling Thrush,
contains many poems expressing Hardy's dismay with British imperialism. There he
also mourns the passing of agricultural society and sees little cause to celebrate
Englands rapid industrialization, which destroy the customs and traditions of rural
life. Here in The Darkling Thrush ,in the transition of two centuries, he finds nothing
hopeful or constructive. Yet there remains remote possibilities which the thrush
prophesies.
First of all the poet presents a desolate winter scene at the close of the day. People
living nearby had retired indoors. There was frost which was pale as ghost. The
inclement weather of the winter still prevailed and the sun has already set on the
western horizon. The stems of the bine trees have already reached the sky. Each
and every member of the society was in earnest quest of their domestic
entertainments. The poet is leant upon the gate. The sharp features of the
landscape appeared to be the corpse or dead body of the nineteenth century. The
century was almost dying. The process of birth and growth seemed to have stopped
in the rigorous winter. The sky was cloudy, a storm was blowing. Every living being
felt gloom and depression. But suddenly a song issued from the dark and decayed
branches of the tree. It was spontaneous and it comes from the inner most core of
the heart. It was excessively joyous and delightful. An old thrush that was lean, frail
and weak was singing to his hearts content in the midst of enveloping darkness.
His plume was perturbed by the gust of wind. The poet finds the ray of hope in the
birds song. He hopes for the coming golden future.
Hardys thrush represents his pessimism in the midst of optimism or

reversal. It seems that Hardy is stranded between optimism and pessimism,
between hope and despair. The poet is acutely suffering from a kind of dilemma or
conflict. The evening symbolizes left helpless, despair, frustration, metal darkness
and disillusionment. But the song of the thrush symbolizes the spirit of hope a hope
for a world of beauty, a world which is devoid of ugliness, the hope of the beginning
of a new era or century or Millennium. It represents the passing away of an old
century and heralding of a bright and hopeful new century.
In The Darkling Thrush, Hardy the pessimist sings the glory of Hardy, the
optimist. Although all was not right with his world, yet all was not wrong, all was not
dead. Only for a moment, the pulse of the life seemed to stop but in the very next
moment with all spontaneity life spring up with all its joy illimited. Beneath the
wintry desolation there lies the eternal pulse of germ and birth. Behind the death of
the old century there is the birth of new century, behind death and despair there is
hope and life. From the very title of the poem it is clear that the thrush is sitting in
the dark in the encircling gloom just like Hardy himself in the long drip of human
tears. Yet out of this gloom bursts a song of hope, out of the goodnight air trembles
forth an air of good morning if winter comes can spring be far behind. The
thrush thus symbolized the spirit of resurrection of new life of joy and hope that lay
in store of the future, the store of the new century. The poet has not been
transported out of the growing gloom of the present century but his response to
the thrushs song is positive. Although the blessed Hope i.e. knowledge of hope
and prosperity only the bird has and of which the poet is yet unaware, Hardy
accepts the birds song as a sign that there is hope for the future.
Hardys The Darkling Thrush is the basis of Hardys self-designated

evolutionary meliorism. Hardy has a growing consciousness or awareness of the
blessed hope for the future generation. Hardy is basically pessimistic but a note of
optimism is noticed here in his faith in mans future. The song of the thrush is
joyous and spontaneous. The bird by virtue of its instinct knows the future but the
poet is not aware of. Here Hardys attitude to nature is philosophical. Natures
outward appearance may change but life in Nature in never dead.
POEM SUMMARY "THE DARKLING THRUSH" BY THOMAS HARDY
THE DARKLING THRUSH

When Frost was specter-grey,
The weakening eye of day.
Like strings of broken lyres,

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,

Of joy illimited;

Was written on terrestrial things
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

And I was unaware.
SUMMARY!!!!!
THE DARKLING
It was the cold season in which the poet had visited a garden. The days were made
weak by winter and they were frosty. All the trees were still and people were
confined to their household fire as it was very cold.
The whole atmosphere is portrayed as dull and desolate. The still garden the cold
weather reminded the poet of corpses and mourners at the graveyard. This poem
was supposed to have been written in December, 1990, described by the poet
called the''corpse of the Century". As the old century came to an end, everything
appeared as dead and hopeless as the poet himself felt.
At that still moment, a joyous song was heard by the poet. A full-throated song,
sung by an old thrush was heard and the mournful mood of the poet started
changing. The aged bird has chosen to strike a note of new hope. The growing
gloom is checked by that spirited song. Till then the poem didn't hear such ecstatic
sounds on the earth. Hopeful thoughts and cheer filled the atmosphere. The poet
felt that ecstasy of the bird was not known to him till then and without its
knowledge, the bird had lifted his mood from a melancholic state to a joyful state.
Thus the poem which began sorrowfully ended on a of hope note. So also the mood
of the poet changed from gloom to hope.
Hardy's The Darkling Thrush A Study Guide

Type of Work and Publication Years
......."The Darkling Thrush" is a lyric poem with four eight-line stanzas. The Graphic, a weekly
newspaper, first published the poem on December 29, 1900, under the title "By Century's
Deathbed," according to The Evil Image: Two Centuries of Gothic Short Fiction and Poetry,
edited by Patricia L. Skarda and Nora Crow Jaffe (New York: New American Library, 1981). An
article posted on the web site of the Guardian, a London newspaper, under its Books Blog
maintains that the poem was written in 1899 and originally entitled "The Century's End, 1900."
The London Times republished the poem on January 1, 1901. In London later that year,
Macmillan published the poem in the second volume of Poems of the Past and Present:
"Miscellaneous Poems."
Background and Title Information
.......Thomas Hardy wrote "The Darkling Thrush" to express his feelings about the world when
it was about to enter the twentieth century. The title refers to a thrush, such as a robin, in
darkness (darkling).
Summary
.......When the frost was ghostly gray and the depressing winter landscape made the setting
sun seem lonely and abandoned, the speaker leaned on a gate before a thicket of small trees.
Twining plants, rising high, were silhouetted against the sky like the strings of broken lyres.
All the people who lived nearby were inside their homes, gathered around their household
fires. The countryside looked like a corpse. The cloudy sky was the roof of the corpse's crypt,
the speaker says, and the wind its song of death. The cycle of birth and rebirth seemed to
have shrunken and dried up, like the spirit of the speaker.
.......But then he heard the joyful song of a birda frail old thrushcoming from scrawny
branches overhead. The song was a jubilant outpouring against the evening gloom. The dreary
landscape gave the thrush no reason to sing with such overflowing happiness. The speaker
wondered whether the bird was a harbinger of some hope of which he was unaware.
Interpretation
.......Thomas Hardy expressed gloomy and fatalistic views of events in most of his writing. It
is not surprising, then, that he uses a bleak winter landscape to symbolize the passing of the
nineteenth century, which the poem calls a "corpse" (line 10) in a "crypt" (line 11).
.......When Hardy wrote "The Darkling Thrush" on the threshold of the twentieth century, he
himself was making a transitionfrom writing novels to writing poetry exclusively. The
motivation for the change was the negative public reception of two of his novels, Tess of the
d'Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895). Their frank depictions of morally taboo
subjects outraged readers. A friend of Hardynovelist George Gissing (1857-1903)called the
1895 novel Jude the Obscene (Whitney). So Hardy had reason to be gloomy. But would the
public accept his poetry? And would the new century improve on the old?
.......Hardy offers a glimmer of hope, expressed in the joyous song of the bird.
.......Incidentally, Tess and Jude the Obscure are widely read and admired today. And his
poetry generally has received high praise.
Poetry Essay: "The Darkling Thrush" by Thomas Hardy
Economic and Societal Concern through Naturalism

Thomas Hardy was born in 1840, during the second century of the Industrial
Revolution, of which England was at the center of. He wrote The Darkling Thrush in
1900, on the brink of a new era, the end of the Industrial Revolution. Despite the
significant innovations that resulted from the Industrial Revolution, the effects of this
period were very controversial. These confusions about its effects are reflected in The
Darkling Thrush. In his poem, The Darkling Thrush, Thomas Hardy utilizes tone,
imagery, and personification to describe the nature of England at the end of the
nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century, expressing his mixed
concerns for his present time and the new era to come.
The glum tone of The Darkling Thrush is set through Hardys use of nature to
describe the status of England, more than likely London, as he spent a good chunk of his
twenties there. According to Cristopher Nash, editor of Narrative in Culture: The Uses
of Storytelling in Sciences, Philosophy, and Literature, in which value is given to
authors, Hardy being named specifically, in literature in regards to evaluating and
correlating economic status through the use of naturalism, even in the primordial sense,
is useful in terms of covering all bases of argument (Nash 181). Although he doesnt
name specifics, The Darkling Thrush is a reflection of his thoughts and feelings on the
economy, and all those encompassed in it, before and following the Industrial
Revolution through the use of the natural world. The poem begins, I leant upon a
coppice gate/ When Frost was spectre- gray,/ And Winters dregs made desolate/ The
weakening eye of day, immediately personifying elements of winter (Hardy 1-4). It
seems he personifies the characteristics of this season in order to get across a certain
cold feeling that he feels is reflected in London as a result of the Industrial Revolution;
the coldness of winter has been allowed to dominate the land because it is in alignment
with the authors growing concern with the future the period has left the new
generation. The last line of this passage further supports this as it contrasts with the
typical signifier for day time, the sunrise, bringing light and warmth to the land. Hardy
feels as if the cloud cover of English winters parallels the looming pollution that would
have been over the London sky during this time, using the words The weakening eye of
day as a symbolic reference for waning light of the countrys future and his lack of
hope for it (4).
Another instance in which despair and ruin is shown is in the second stanza. The
first half of this stanza reads, The lands sharp features seemed to be/ The Centurys
corpse outleant/ His crypt the cloudy canopy,/ The wind his death-lament (Hardy 912). Personification is used again here to reflect the narrators perspective of the country
following a time of revolutionary innovation; Hardy feels the Industrial Revolution has
ultimately left the country in ruin, a shell of its former self, a corpse. In addition, a
marked cloudiness is also present in this passage, guiding the reader back to his
previous parallels between the elements of winter time and the countrys state discussed
formerly.
Another technique Hardy uses to express his concern is his continuous
association between nature and death, as if the land itself is mourning. He describes the
wind as being a song of lament for the features of the land the narrator is looking upon,
which have been rendered sharp by the Industrial Revolution, describing it as
relatively resembling a corpse (Hardy 9). The clouds seem to be symbolic of a tomb, as
Hardy alludes to in line eleven, His crypt the cloudy canopy (12). This suggests that
the Hardy believes the Industrial Revolution has entombed the country in two senses:
literal and figurative. Literally, the sky above London was known for being rather
smoggy during this period. Figuratively, the effects the Industrial Revolution has had on
humanity, veiling it from morality, leaving it entombed in the resulting negative habits
through the new era.
The same concept of lack luster and despondency is demonstrated again in the
second half of the second stanza, but in relation to the effect of this period on the human
spirit. For example, The ancient pulse of germ and birth/ Was shrunken hard and dry
suggests the life of humanity has shriveled (Hardy 13-14). A pulse can be associated with
the human heart and the rhythm it projects to keep humans alive. This is symbolic in
both a bodily sense as well as a spiritual sense because of the ever-present affiliation
with human livelihood and character of heart. In addition, this pulse is described as
being ancient, hinting that perhaps Hardy feels as if people have lost the values that
once made them a proud as a people; Hardy feels as if humans have lost touch with their
roots as a result of this period of high inventiveness. To more simply put it, as artful as
this poem is, Marjorie Levinson in her work Object-Loss and Object-Bondage:
Economies of Representation in Hardy's Poetry quotes Kevin Moore saying that
Hardys poetry imagines the imagination dead, which perfectly describes the fear
Hardy has about the soul of humans resulting from the Industrial Revolution (Levinson,
552). The last section of this stanza continues with, And every spirit upon earth/
Seemed fervourless as I (Hardy 15-16). In this passage, Hardy simply lends support to
his feelings by globalizing the eras negative effect on humankind, once again expressing
how he feels that this period has only hindered the luminescence of the human spirit,
not failing to point out that he has also been a victim.
Despite the gloomy tone expressed through imagery and personification, The
Darkling Thrush is not completely without optimism, as limited as it may be among so
much pessimism. The first sign of hope is found in words such as weakening, and
little cause. Both of words suggest that a process is still taking effect; the snuffing out
of this figurative light is incomplete (Hardy 4, 25). In the last two stanzas, the thrush is
used to symbolize this glimmer of hope, even if the narrator himself fails to perceive it:
Of joy illimited;
In blast- beruffled plume,
.
Some blessed Hoped, whereof he knew
And I was unaware. (17-23, 31-33)
In his failing to see hope, he admires this songbird because it persists in having the
fervor, despite its decrepit condition, that he believes contrasts with how society used to
be before the Industrial Revolution. This thrush is also the first piece of nature used in
this poem that isnt employed to draw deteriorating parallels between the natural world
and the human world. So, despite all of the negative aftermath he feels surrounds him,
this bird is symbolic of the tenacity the human heart and the capabilities within it to
overcome and persist on against the odds.
Thomas Hardys The Darkling Thrush is an example of Hardys reflections at
the end of a paramount couple of centuries, as well as how it compares to those that
came before it. Ultimately, his concern in this poem is in regards to what the Industrial
Revolution has left for the generations of the twentieth century. What Hardy failed to
realize is that change is just a part of life, and with it comes easy and hard times. Its
easy to sympathize with Hardys concern about the loss of connection to the peoples
roots, but this is inevitable with change that he himself, like everyone else, has
undergone; each generation usually finds it more challenging to truly trace back where
they came from. In addition, his concerns about the Industrial Revolution directly
correlate with the debate about the level of integration and role technology should have
in education, for which, similar to the Industrial Revolution, there will be both positive
and negative consequences for regardless of the degree of amalgamation.
Poetry Essay: "The Darkling Thrush" by Thomas Hardy
Economic and Societal Concern through Naturalism
Thomas Hardy was born in 1840, during the second century of the Industrial
Revolution, of which England was at the center of. He wrote The Darkling Thrush
in 1900, on the brink of a new era, the end of the Industrial Revolution. Despite the
significant innovations that resulted from the Industrial Revolution, the effects of
this period were very controversial. These confusions about its effects are reflected
in The Darkling Thrush. In his poem, The Darkling Thrush, Thomas Hardy utilizes
tone, imagery, and personification to describe the nature of England at the end of
the nineteenth century and beginning of the twentieth century, expressing his
mixed concerns for his present time and the new era to come.
The glum tone of The Darkling Thrush is set through Hardys use of nature
to describe the status of England, more than likely London, as he spent a good
chunk of his twenties there. According to Cristopher Nash, editor of Narrative in
Culture: The Uses of Storytelling in Sciences, Philosophy, and Literature, in which
value is given to authors, Hardy being named specifically, in literature in regards to
evaluating and correlating economic status through the use of naturalism, even in
the primordial sense, is useful in terms of covering all bases of argument (Nash
181). Although he doesnt name specifics, The Darkling Thrush is a reflection of
his thoughts and feelings on the economy, and all those encompassed in it, before
and following the Industrial Revolution through the use of the natural world. The
poem begins, I leant upon a coppice gate/ When Frost was spectre- gray,/ And
Winters dregs made desolate/ The weakening eye of day, immediately
personifying elements of winter (Hardy 1-4). It seems he personifies the
characteristics of this season in order to get across a certain cold feeling that he
feels is reflected in London as a result of the Industrial Revolution; the coldness of
winter has been allowed to dominate the land because it is in alignment with the
authors growing concern with the future the period has left the new generation.
The last line of this passage further supports this as it contrasts with the typical
signifier for day time, the sunrise, bringing light and warmth to the land. Hardy feels
as if the cloud cover of English winters parallels the looming pollution that would
have been over the London sky during this time, using the words The weakening
eye of day as a symbolic reference for waning light of the countrys future and
his lack of hope for it (4).
Another instance in which despair and ruin is shown is in the second stanza.
The first half of this stanza reads, The lands sharp features seemed to be/ The
Centurys corpse outleant/ His crypt the cloudy canopy,/ The wind his death-lament
(Hardy 9-12). Personification is used again here to reflect the narrators perspective
of the country following a time of revolutionary innovation; Hardy feels the
Industrial Revolution has ultimately left the country in ruin, a shell of its former self,
a corpse. In addition, a marked cloudiness is also present in this passage, guiding
the reader back to his previous parallels between the elements of winter time and
the countrys state discussed formerly.
Another technique Hardy uses to express his concern is his continuous association
between nature and death, as if the land itself is mourning. He describes the wind
as being a song of lament for the features of the land the narrator is looking upon,
which have been rendered sharp by the Industrial Revolution, describing it as
relatively resembling a corpse (Hardy 9). The clouds seem to be symbolic of a tomb,
as Hardy alludes to in line eleven, His crypt the cloudy canopy (12). This suggests
that the Hardy believes the Industrial Revolution has entombed the country in two
senses: literal and figurative. Literally, the sky above London was known for being
rather smoggy during this period. Figuratively, the effects the Industrial Revolution
has had on humanity, veiling it from morality, leaving it entombed in the resulting
negative habits through the new era.
The same concept of lack luster and despondency is demonstrated again in

the second half of the second stanza, but in relation to the effect of this period on
the human spirit. For example, The ancient pulse of germ and birth/ Was shrunken
hard and dry suggests the life of humanity has shriveled (Hardy 13-14). A pulse
can be associated with the human heart and the rhythm it projects to keep humans
alive. This is symbolic in both a bodily sense as well as a spiritual sense because of
the ever-present affiliation with human livelihood and character of heart. In addition,
this pulse is described as being ancient, hinting that perhaps Hardy feels as if
people have lost the values that once made them a proud as a people; Hardy feels
as if humans have lost touch with their roots as a result of this period of high
inventiveness. To more simply put it, as artful as this poem is, Marjorie Levinson in
her work Object-Loss and Object-Bondage: Economies of Representation in Hardy's
Poetry quotes Kevin Moore saying that Hardys poetry imagines the imagination
dead, which perfectly describes the fear Hardy has about the soul of humans
resulting from the Industrial Revolution (Levinson, 552). The last section of this
stanza continues with, And every spirit upon earth/ Seemed fervourless as I
(Hardy 15-16). In this passage, Hardy simply lends support to his feelings by
globalizing the eras negative effect on humankind, once again expressing how he
feels that this period has only hindered the luminescence of the human spirit, not
failing to point out that he has also been a victim.
Despite the gloomy tone expressed through imagery and personification,

The Darkling Thrush is not completely without optimism, as limited as it may be
among so much pessimism. The first sign of hope is found in words such as
weakening, and little cause. Both of words suggest that a process is still taking
effect; the snuffing out of this figurative light is incomplete (Hardy 4, 25). In the last
two stanzas, the thrush is used to symbolize this glimmer of hope, even if the
narrator himself fails to perceive it:
Of joy illimited;
In blast- beruffled plume,
Some blessed Hoped, whereof he knew
And I was unaware. (17-23, 31-33)
In his failing to see hope, he admires this songbird because it persists in having the
fervor, despite its decrepit condition, that he believes contrasts with how society
used to be before the Industrial Revolution. This thrush is also the first piece of
nature used in this poem that isnt employed to draw deteriorating parallels
between the natural world and the human world. So, despite all of the negative
aftermath he feels surrounds him, this bird is symbolic of the tenacity the human
heart and the capabilities within it to overcome and persist on against the odds.
Thomas Hardys The Darkling Thrush is an example of Hardys reflections

at the end of a paramount couple of centuries, as well as how it compares to those
that came before it. Ultimately, his concern in this poem is in regards to what the
Industrial Revolution has left for the generations of the twentieth century. What
Hardy failed to realize is that change is just a part of life, and with it comes easy
and hard times. Its easy to sympathize with Hardys concern about the loss of
connection to the peoples roots, but this is inevitable with change that he himself,
like everyone else, has undergone; each generation usually finds it more
challenging to truly trace back where they came from. In addition, his concerns
about the Industrial Revolution directly correlate with the debate about the level of
integration and role technology should have in education, for which, similar to the
Industrial Revolution, there will be both positive and negative consequences for
regardless of the degree of amalgamation.

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Type of Work and Publication Years

Background and Title Information

The tangled bine-stems3 scored the sky

Century's corpse (line 10)

His crypt the cloudy canopy (line 11)

Had chosen thus to fling his soul (line 23)

The Darkling Thrush Summary

Since we're on the subject of death.

The century is dead. Dead as a doornail.

But who's singing this happy song? We'll see.

The Darkling Thrush Symbolism, Imagery &

The Death of the Classics

The Living Dead

The END (and maybe even the Beginning)

The Darkling Thrush: Rhyme, Form &

Rhyming Lines in Iambic Meter

And Winter's dregs made desolate (A)

Speaker Point of View

The Darkling Thrush Setting

Whats Up With the Title?

The Darkling Thrush Theme of Perseverance

The Darkling Thrush Theme of Isolation

The Darkling Thrush Theme of Man and the

The Darkling Thrush Theme of Fear

The Darkling Thrush

The Darkling Thrush Analysis

weakening, broken and haunted are unified and strengthened by their

Overall Poetic Form

THOMAS HARDY'S DARKLING THRUSH ;AN ANALYSIS

Analysis of Thomas Hardy's The Darkling Thrush -- A Darkling Hope

Hardys thrush represents his pessimism in the midst of optimism or

Hardys The Darkling Thrush is the basis of Hardys self-designated

POEM SUMMARY "THE DARKLING THRUSH" BY THOMAS HARDY

THE DARKLING THRUSH

Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be

At once a voice arose among

So little cause for carolings

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

Hardy's The Darkling Thrush A Study Guide

Poetry Essay: "The Darkling Thrush" by Thomas Hardy

Economic and Societal Concern through Naturalism

Economic and Societal Concern through Naturalism

The same concept of lack luster and despondency is demonstrated again in

Despite the gloomy tone expressed through imagery and personification,

At once a voice arose among

The bleak twigs overhead

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

In blast- beruffled plume,

His happy good-night air

Some blessed Hoped, whereof he knew

And I was unaware. (17-23, 31-33)

Thomas Hardys The Darkling Thrush is an example of Hardys reflections

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