A brief summary and analysis of a classic Thomas Hardy poem

Thomas Hardys novels often overshadow his poetry, although a handful of poems
from his vast poetic output remain popular in verse anthologies. One such case is The
Darkling Thrush, a great winter poem which was first published on 29 December
1900. Poised on the cusp of a new year (and even, depending on your view of the
matter, a new century), Hardy reflects in this poem on the events of the nineteenth
century, his own feelings about the future, and his attitude to nature. Here is The
Darkling Thrush, followed by a close analysis of its features.

The Darkling Thrush opens with endings: the end of the year, the end of the day (the
weakening eye of day sets the poem at dusk), even the end of the century (the
original title of the poem was The Centurys End, 1900: for many, including Hardy,
the twentieth century only really began in 1901, not 1900). But every ending is also a
beginning of some sort, a limit marking the end of one thing and the start of another.
What will the new year and, given the poems ominous date of December 1900, the
new century hold? Hardy seems to subject the Victorian age to sharp scrutiny,
analysing its developments and discoveries in an indirect but suggestive way. The
darkling thrush will intrude upon Hardys gloomy reflections.
In summary, then: the poems speaker leans upon a woodland gate and views the land
around him as a symbol of the events of the nineteenth century, the Centurys corpse
outleant; the speaker is made a part of the scene, not just a detached observer, as
outleant echoes the speakers own action at the start of the poem (I leant upon a
coppice gate). The century is dying (crypt, death-lament) because it is at its end,
but also because something has died as a result of the events of that century: religious

faith.Thomas Hardy lost his

own faith in Christianity

early in life, partly as a result of his reading of Auguste Comte and Charles
Darwin (whose On the Origin of Species Hardy had read as a young man), though he
retained a fondness for the trappings of Christianity, such as church architecture and
the language of the King James Bible. Because of such scientific and philosophical
developments and discoveries in the nineteenth century, religious faith had declined
among the overall population. (Interestingly, church numbers continued to increase,
but this was because the overall population skyrocketed between 1800 and 1900;
fewer people were going to church by 1900, proportionally speaking.) A writer like
Hardy could no longer take solace from Christianity, or have unequivocal confidence
in the future of the world. Too much had been learnt, too much lost.
This religious dimension to the poem is borne out by Hardys personal beliefs but also
by his other poems, such as The Oxen (which sees him unable to share a belief in the
truth of Christianity, though he wishes he could believe). In The Darkling Thrush
itself we are given clues that religion is on the speakers mind. In the third stanza,
when the thrush of the title appears (darkling is an old poetic word for in darkness
it also, incidentally, echoes Matthew Arnolds use of the word in his famous poem
about declining faith, Dover Beach, published in 1867), its song is described as
evensong, suggesting the church service, while the use of the word soul also
suggests the spiritual. (Such a religiously inflected analysis of Hardys poem is
reinforced by carolings in the next stanza.) The fact that the thrush, despite being

aged and small, can still sing a song filled with joy illimited is contrasted with
the speakers lack of hope and joy (if we take the speaker of the poem to be Hardy
himself, he, too, is aged: Hardy was sixty in 1900). The word illimited is typical
Hardy: not unlimited (suggesting excess) but illimited, describing a joy that is
unaffected by knowledge of such things as the end of the year or the end of the
century, the very limits or endings which prey upon the speakers mind.
The poem ends on an ambiguous note: is the speaker inspired by the blessed Hope
of the thrushs song, or does he continue to lack optimism for the future? He is
unaware of the thrushs reasons for being cheerful, but he seems to believe that such
a cause for hope exists somewhere, and he simply hasnt discovered (or rediscovered)
it yet. This ambivalence is partly what helps to make The Darkling Thrush not only
a great Thomas Hardy poem to read, but also a great piece of poetry to analyse.
Unlike the thrushs carolings, Hardys poem does not sound an unconditionally
positive note.
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.

he 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, spectregray, 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 blast-beruffled: it has survived the strong
winter winds, that the poet had hitherto painted as brutal and uncooperative. The aged and
frail thrush is, perhaps facing its own imminent end, and yet it flings it soul ecstatically upon
the darkening evening.The resultant picture of an ordinary, weather-beaten, thrush rising from
the depths of the winter winds with their death lament singing a beautiful song, is one of hope.
Three run-on lines take us at full tilt to its message: joy illimited (unlimited). The very words
with which Hardy introduces the song are lyrical, rhythmic, repetitive, like the 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 free-flowing 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.