Free Essay The Darkling Thrush by Hardy, Background and Commentary

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Author

Hardy was born in Higher Bockhampton June 2, 1840. In 1848 Hardy began attending Julia Martin�s school in Bockhamton. In 1853 Hardy�s education became intensive, he studies Latin, French and began reading widely. During the early years of Hardy�s life, Hardy�s father, a stonemason, let his son apprentice him in restoring old local churches. From 1862 to 1867 Hardy worked for an architect in London. Meanwhile, he was writing poetry with little success this caused Hardy to turn to writing novels and by 1874 he was able to support himself by writing. During the same year (1872) Hardy married Emma Gifford. Their marriage lasted until her death in 1912. Emma�s death prompted Hardy to write his collection of poems called Veneris Vestigiae Flammae ( Vestiges of an Old Flame). In 1914, Hardy remarried to Florence Dugdale.

Hardy anonymously published two early novels, Desperate Remedies ( 1871) and Under the Greenwood Tree (1872). Hardy�s best novels are The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the D�Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895). A critic named G.K Chesterton wrote that Hardy � became a sort of village atheist brooding and blaspheming over the village idiot.� This criticism was so harsh that Hardy stopped writing novels.

At the age of 55 Hardy returned to writing poetry. The Dynasts, written between 1903 and1908 was considered Hardy�s most successful poetry. Hardy died on January 11, 1928.

Origin of the Poem

�The Darkling Thrush� is a poem occasioned by the beginning of a new year and a new century.

Content

I 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
Like strings from broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

Stanza I

The gate which the speaker is leaning on represent the threshold of the new century. The spectral quality of frost suggests the ageing and the ghostly quality of the landscape. The scene has the mere trace of life, in which natural and human presences are ghostly. The figure of the �weakening eye� symbolizes the ending of the day along with the ending of the century. The �tangled bine-stems� represent a harp which all the strings have been broken emphasizing the �winter�s dregs�. The stanza ends with the speakers awareness that he is alone, the people who usually occupy the land have returned to their home.

II The land�s sharp feature 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.

Stanza II

This stanza also marks the end of a century. The landscape�s features become like an immense body layed out. The first sentence shows the speaker�s mind enclosing the huge space of land and sky into the frightening display of the Century�s corpse in its coffin. The sky is the lid. The second sentence emphasizes that the ending of the century is not just closing to the speaker, but an end which seems to separate it from any relation to the future. Every spirit of vegetal and human life is under the pall of this death.

III At once a voice arose among
The black twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
of joy and illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

Stanza III

The darkling thrush, in all its homeliness and diminutiveness, is the corporeal voice of the real world. The bird�s song is spontaneous and unpremeditated. It �fling[s]� its �soul� into the

�gloom� in contrary of the speaker�s previous flinging of his spiritless soul upon the landscape. The bird�s joyful act appears to the speaker as a choice, and not for mere survival in the �growing gloom�, but for the enthusiastic and full-hearted participation.

V 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

Stanza V

The speaker has not been convinced or transported out of the �growing gloom�, but his response to the birds song is to think. Although the �blessed Hope� is a knowledge only the bird has and of which the speaker is yet unaware, the speaker accepts the birds song as a sign that there is hope for the future.