The Darkling Thrush" by Thomas Hardy , Short summary and analysis

 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

The Century’s corpse outleant, 

His crypt the cloudy canopy, 

The wind his death-lament. 

The ancient pulse of germ and birth 

Was shrunken hard and dry, 

And every spirit upon earth

Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among 

The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

Of joy illimited; 

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small, 

In blast-beruffled plume, 

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings 

Of such ecstatic sound 

Was written on terrestrial things 

Afar or nigh around, 

That I could think there trembled through 

His happy good night air

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew 

And I was unaware.

Short summary and analysis. 

* “The Darkling Thrush” is a poem by the English poet and novelist Thomas Hardy.

* The poem describes a desolate world, which the poem’s speaker takes as cause for despair and hopelessness. 

* However, a bird (the “thrush”) bursts onto the scene, singing a beautiful and hopeful song—so hopeful that the speaker wonders whether the bird knows something that the speaker doesn’t. 

* Written in December 1900, the poem reflects on the end of the 19th century and the state of Western civilization.

* The desolation of the scene the speaker sees serves as an extended metaphor for the decay of Western civilization, while the Thrush is a symbol for its possible rebirth through religious faith.

* The speaker leans upon a wooden gate and views the land around him as a symbol of the events of the 19th century.

* The speaker separates himself from everyone as he, quietly, views the bleak scene around him. He feels that the century is dead, and the sky acting as a blanket for the dead.

* All of a sudden out, of all that silence and death and never ending grayness, the speaker hears something. 

* The sound which reminds him of love, life and hope. This is the evening song sung by a Thrush hidden somewhere.

* The speaker, surprised, says that the Thrush manages to sing a beautiful song even in this feather ruffling wind.

* The poet reflects on hearing the song. He is unaware of the thrush’s reason for being cheerful but he seem to believe that such a cause for hope exists somewhere, and he simply hasn’t discovered it. 

* Against the background of this hopeless scene when coldness and darkness descends, the human beings retire to their homes to sit by the fireside.

* The speaker, however, does not include himself among all mankind. He alienates himself as to be the only man standing at a desolate scene.

* To make the dejected ambience more profound, Frost develops human like characteristics in “spectre-grey.” The speaker points out the lack of life, colour and music through the first stanza. 

* In second stanza, the land becomes a map of everything that’s happening over the course of the century. It seem to embody the dead century.

* The sharp features of the land seem to be the Century’s dead body and the cloud works as a canopy, covering up the dead body.

* The speaker feels that because of extreme cold, the rhythm of conception and truth has slowed down remarkably. Throughout the stanza, the image of death is quite prominent. Through the birth of technology and the  Industrial Revolution, 19th century has become stagnant.

* A new era is rising in the horizon and the people have found solace through that. However, the poet is unable to come to terms with the new era as he is not so sure about forgetting all old values and beliefs for the sake of a new and improved world. 

* Suddenly, the speaker hears a singing and not just any song- "this is an all out love song. It is full, beautiful and full of happiness. This is the evening song sung by a thrush, hidden somewhere. Though the titular thrush finally makes its appearance, it is not at all pretty to look at".

" It is a weak aged bird whose plumes have been battered by the storm. The poor bird is stuck in the middle of a nasty storm, yet its zest for life has not been drained. The bird somehow manages to exist and sing in this dull and desolate surroundings with its ruffled plumes. 

* The thrush’s song is cheerful and the cheerfulness of its song has disrupted the gloominess around. The song is merely just not a song, but an indication that nothing is absolutely negative. 

*Hope arises even from the most dark and dejected situations. The small and frail bird has managed to do what the poet has been unable to.

* Though the bird probably won’t create a big change but it’s willing to try. The speaker realizes that even the tiniest of efforts can lead to different speculations.

* The speaker points out that there is no such reason for the thrush to be singing in such a weather and in a world where everything is dying.

* There might be some hope of good fortune in the bird’s heart, which the speaker is unaware of and yet to find out. This stanza conveys a message of hope and love and a positive approach to life. If a thrush can sing its heart out without a care, surely the poet can do the same. 

Conclusion

Though the poem ends on an ambiguous note, it does spread the message of hope and love. The song of darkling thrush ushers a new lease of life in the gloomy ambience and a positive approach to life itself. The new century about to take birth, might bring a new shaft of hope to the ailing humanity.

Hope can be found even in the littlest of things because one just has to keep looking. Just like the poet, everyone needs to find their hope and love, even in desolate times, to sing like the thrush. 

The Darkling Thrush Themes

The three main themes of “The Darkling Thrush” are the search for meaning, nature, and chaos and order.

The search for meaning: 

The speaker cannot find meaning in the grim present, echoing Hardy’s own despair at England’s industrialization.

Nature: Hardy’s poem de-romanticizes nature by describing it as a largely bleak and indifferent place governed by the cycles of life and death.

Chaos and order: 

While the poem depicts a world in chaos, it also adheres to an orderly structure and rhyme scheme.

The Search for Meaning

The speaker’s despair echoes Hardy’s own world-weariness and loss of hope for humanity’s future. Isolated from those who have “sought their household fires,” the speaker sees a death-haunted landscape and a “growing gloom.” Hardy himself mourned the passing of agricultural society and saw little cause to celebrate England’s rapid industrialization, which helped destroy the customs and traditions of rural life. 

The speaker’s connection to the past has been severed, and he cannot find meaning in the present, and the dawning century, symbolized by the thrush’s song, offers little in the way of meaning. The bird is “frail, gaunt, and small,” and his “carolings,” though joyful and “fullhearted,” are an evensong and about to end. Any meaning that a new beginning might bring with it is nowhere to be found, not in the landscape and not in the speaker’s heart.

Nature

In Hardy’s poem, nature is not a pretty place where flowers bloom and fuzzy animals frolic in the sun waiting to be petted. It is governed by the cycle of life and death and is largely indifferent to human needs or desires. “The Darkling Thrush” deromanticizes nature by taking even the capacity for renewal away: “The ancient pulse of germ and birth, / Was shrunken hard and dry.” Romantics such as William Wordsworth often depicted nature as awe-inspiring, simultaneously inscrutable and full of meaning. Hardy’s speaker, however, finds no inspiration in the processes of the natural world. Though he has meditated on the nature of life, he has found no life in nature. Even the thrush, the harbinger of hope, is “aged” and on its last song. By using the exhausted landscape as a symbolic projection of the speaker’s own interior life, Hardy makes a bleak comment on the potential of human nature as well.

Chaos and Order

The form of Hardy’s poem is traditional in meter and rhyme and acts as a container of sorts for the chaos of the landscape he describes. Other structural parallels similarly give the poem a coherence that the poem’s themes work against. The speaker’s posture leaning “upon a coppice gate,” for example, is like the “Century’s corpse outleant.” By juxtaposing the chaos of a dying world with the order of its description, Hardy illustrates and underscores his own status as a poet with one foot in Victorian England and the other in the modern world.