The Darkling Thrush

'The Darkling Thrush': Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy, a novelist and poet, was born in 1840 in a rural village in Higher Brockhampton, Dorset. His childhood and adult life in the county of Dorset was the inspiration for much of his literature. Hardy’s lived experience of country life influenced his views on clichéd, idyllic representations, as well as class structures.

Unusually for the time, Hardy married twice. Both marriages were largely unhappy, despite or maybe because of his progressive views about women, the need for children and the regulation of the institution of marriage. He died in 1928, a few miles from where he was born.

Often considered to be a Victorian Realist, Hardy was influenced by a variety of sources from Milton to the Romantics and even Jon Stuart Mill. Continuous themes that feature in his work are the role of religion in defining social norms, marriage, education and his era’s gender and class inequalities.

'The Darkling Thrush': poem

Hardy wrote the poem as a new century was about to begin. The ode, written in a less formal and more personal style than is traditional for an ode, is written in the first person, 'I'. The poem relays Hardy’s thoughts and feelings as he considers the turn of the century.

As the speaker leans against a gate in a little wood or forest, he looks around him at the bleak winter landscape. Everyone else has gone indoors. He compares the frosty landscape to a 'corpse', the sky to a 'crypt' and the sound of the wind to a 'funeral lament'.

The speaker is pessimistic and gloomy, viewing the death of the old century without any sense of fond reminiscence. The landscape he describes is equally bleak until a common thrush starts to sing.

He wonders if the bedraggled bird knows something that he doesn’t.

'The Darkling Thrush': analysis

There are of course many possible readings of 'The Darkling Thrush', but a straightforward one is a good place to start.

The historical poetic references that Hardy deliberately uses throughout the poem begin with the title, 'The Darkling Thrush'. The word ‘darkling’ has been used by poets since the mid-15th century. It means, 'to become dark'. In 'Paradise Lost, Book III, Milton describes a nightingale:

There are many are other poetic references to ‘darkling’ throughout history, including Keat's famous 'Ode to a Nightingale' (1819).

Other than the word, ‘darkling’, birds have an equally long and illustrious poetic history, from the nightingale of the already mentioned Keats and Milton poems to the albatross of Coleridge’s 'The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner' (1798) and Wordsworth’s 'To a Cuckoo' (1815).

The other element of Hardy’s poem that has a long poetic lineage is the Aeolian musical instrument. Traditionally, these were stringed instruments, usually either a harp or a lyre. Again, showing his influences, Hardy references a lyre in his poem. This can be linked to Coleridge's poem with similar themes and stringed instrument elements, 'Ode to the Departing Year' (1796).

In addition, Hardy’s references to the wind and the ‘death lament’ link 'The Darkling Thrush' to Shelley’s 'Ode to the West Wind' (1820). 'Lament' is a synonym for 'dirge'.

With his choice of words and themes, Hardy embeds his poem with past poetic tradition.

The average thrush is a common bird and pretty plain.

'The Darkling Thrush': structure

The poem is four stanzas long with the first two octaves describing the bleak winter and the desolate landscape. Hardy makes use of iambic tetrameter for his long lines and iambic trimester for the short lines.

The second two stanzas feature the thrush and his song. Hardy is surprised by the contrast between the scruffy old bird’s beautiful song, its appearance and its grim surroundings. He wonders if the hope he imagines that the bird feels is due to some knowledge that he is unaware of.

'The Darkling Thrush': themes

On the surface, the poem is about change, time, and perspective. These themes are represented by the dawn of a new century, with Hardy looking back at the past. He is quite pessimistic but considers the possibility of hope when he hears a bird singing despite the gloomy environment.

Personification in the 'Darkling Thrush'

Hardy makes extensive use of literary devices throughout the poem but there are a few more central ones worth looking at in a little more detail. A key device for analysing the poem is personification.

In the second stanza, Hardy uses personification when he compares the wintry and unpopulated landscape to the century’s corpse. Generally, neither time nor a landscape has a body, so cannot become a corpse. By using a metaphor to compare the bleak landscape with a corpse, which is a word usually used for dead human bodies, Hardy personifies both the landscape and the passing century.

Hardy also personifies the thrush, by calling its song ‘ecstatic’ which is a human emotion. All of Hardy's adjectives for the bird are related to human emotions or states from ‘full-hearted evensong’ to the final lines which speak of the thrush potentially having both the knowledge and hope that eluded the poet.

In the Victorian era, animals were not typically considered to be capable of complex human emotions, self-awareness or to have knowledge that humans may not have. In giving the thrush these attributes, Hardy personifies it, creating a stronger connection between himself, as the human poet, and the scruffy bird.