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- Thomas Hardy’s “The Darkling Thrush” is a somber poem about the death of the old world at the turn of the 20th century. Hardy supposedly wrote it on New Year’s Eve, 1899. In it, the poet eulogizes not only the end of the Victorian era, but also the death of rosy Romantic concepts of God and nature.
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The Darkling Thrush. By Thomas Hardy. I leant upon a coppice gate. When Frost was spectre-grey, And Winter's dregs made desolate. The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky. Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh. Had sought their household fires. The land's sharp features seemed to be.
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- Structure and Form
- Literary Devices
- Themes
- Detailed Analysis
‘The Darkling Thrush’by Thomas Hardy teeters between dismal despair and tenuous hope as the speaker describes a barren hinterland haunted by the spirited evensong of a small bird. ‘The Darkling Thrush’begins with the speaker describing their immediate surroundings and introducing the reader to the poem’s primary setting. They appear leaning against...
‘The Darkling Thrush’ was written by Hardy as a ballad. All four of its stanzas are composed of eight lines (octaves) in iambic tetrameter and trimeter, using a rhyme scheme of ‘ABABCDCD.’ The presence of alliteration (“Century’s corpse“), assonance (“At once a voice arose among”), and consonance (“dregs made desolate”) all lend a heavy and grim to...
‘The Darkling Thrush’relies on some of the following literary devices: 1. Auditory Imagery: The scene depicted in the poem is one seemingly barren of all sound as well as life. That all changes in the third stanza, when the speaker reveals that all “at once a voice arose” (17), singing a song of limitless joy. 2. Visual Imagery: One of the arrestin...
‘The Darkling Thrush’ dwells on the desolation and hope that exists in a world where nothing seems to grow, absent of not just life but the warmth of passion and feeling. This daunting scenery becomes an extended metaphor for the last century, as well as the current state of civilization, as seen through the eyes of Hardy’s speaker. It is a deterio...
Stanza One
In the first stanza, we are introduced to the poet, in the first person, “I” He is leaning on a gate in a little wood – it’s traditionally a thinking pose, and the poem conveys his thoughts and feelings. The bitter hopelessness of a cold winter’s evening is 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...
Stanza Two
The second stanza continues the model of the former if anything in even stronger terms. The whole past century is a “corpse,” the cloudy sky its tomb, and the winter wind like the century’s death song. The personification of the century intensifies one’s feeling that it is a real presence. The imagery in this stanza continues and enlarges on the motif of death contained in the first. Despite the personal, subjective start of the poem, by the end of the second stanza, Hardy has made his mood a...
Stanza Three
In the third stanza, at the nadir of ‘The Darkling Thrush,’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 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...
“The Darkling Thrush” is a poem by the English poet and novelist Thomas Hardy. The poem describes a desolate world, which the poem’s speaker takes as cause for despair and hopelessness.
The Darkling Thrush. Thomas Hardy. 1840 –. 1928. I leant upon a coppice gate . When Frost was spectre-gray, And Winter's dregs made desolate. The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky.
Signed handwritten draft of "The Darkling Thrush" with original title "The Darkling Thrush" is a poem by Thomas Hardy. Originally titled "By the Century's Deathbed", it was first published on 29 December 1900 in The Graphic. The poem was later published in London Times on 1 January, 1901.
Written at the turn of the 20th century, Thomas Hardy’s “The Darkling Thrush” is a meditation on changing times. Hardy introduces a pastoral setting, depicting a bleak winter landscape which represents the “Century’s corpse.”
The Darkling Thrush Lyrics. I leant upon a coppice gate. When Frost was spectre-gray, And Winter's dregs made desolate. The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems...
