Thomas Hardy

“The Darkling Thrush” seems to be another gloomy work of art from Hardy, where the main character seems to have lost all hope in this world and then, like a light house, a beam of hope comes toward him through the dark.

“I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.”

The beginning of this poem makes you feel tired and worn out to be honest. We open with the man in the poem leaning on a gate observing how bleak his surroundings have become and it seems as though he has given up and is just depressed at what he has been given. “When Frost was spectre-gray” makes the mood even more drab, he couldn’t just say gray it had to be a ghostly gray, a deathly gray. “The weakening eye of day” seems to be the sun making less and less of an impact on the earth the deeper into winter it gets. Studies show that depression is more common in the winter time due to lack of sunlight. So maybe as it is growing colder and dimmer, he is becoming more and more depressed.

“And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.”

The plants are all dead or in hibernation, the bushes look like “strings of broken lyres” and all the sane people are inside getting warm by the fire, why does this guy sit outside and wallow in his own misery? The entire poem gives me a dull and sorrowful mood, until we get to line 17, oh line 17, you couldn’t have come at a better time.

“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.”

The first line above takes the reader from a monotonous sad poem to shouting out and proclaiming “At once a voice arose”, finally something upbeat. We come to find that a thrush has began to sing and bring hope to such a dreary day. Like a wave of light to break the dark plane. The man is confused, he doesn’t understand what the cause for all of this happy song is, doesn’t the thrush see how horrible the weather is? Can he just let it be?

“So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
…
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.”

The man questions the thresh’s jubilant song. He looks at his surroundings again and then asks himself if maybe the thresh knows something that he doesn’t know that might be cause for jubilation. I think Hardy is trying to end the poem with some irony, here is this horrible day and then enters the thrush to sing a joyful song and brighten it all up. For this man, the thrush could be too late, or it could be just what he needed to turn his frown upside down.