Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
The poem opens with the speaker introducing the setting of time and place. Leaning on the coppice gate, he makes the survey of the season and the places around. The phrases like winter’s dregs, household fires, frost and the shoots like the strings of broken lyres indicate the season as winter. Everything is gloomy with depressing cold and gray everywhere. He gives the elaborate description of the winter season. In the second part of the poem, he makes the survey of the land which is preparing the coffin of the century, wind is making a death lament on that all the spirits upon earth seem ‘fervourless’. England has lost its basic beauty, joy and human values. Despite the spring in the material progress, England was permanently in the winter.
As he was meditating on the features of the century, there comes a thrush with evensong. The song was sonorous, musical and at the same time it lifts the mood of the poem. A positive note of hope and enthusiasm has been marked in the song the bird. The bird was old and feeble, but still he has the power to sing and make others happy. The bird makes the evening prayer, pours forth his soul, sings of joy and blessed hope but the speaker does not find anything to be happy on that and here comes a contrast between Victorian and romantic approach to nature. Romantics find nature as the shelter or protection, but Hardy cannot find such protection in the lap of nature. The sentence ‘I was unaware’ reflects his indifference towards nature. Though the speaker is depressed, he is unknowingly somehow hopeful about the future. The song of the thrush represents better hope for the new era.
The poem is metaphorically rich when the title itself is a metaphor. Darkling means of the darkness which explicitly states the end of the day. If Darkling is taken as an adjective, the title metaphorically means a dying thrush. Here, dying thrush stand for the dying 19th century. The main point is that the dying thrush is still able to sing a happy song and has the power to uplift the mood of the listeners. And as every death is followed by rebirth and every decay is renewed, there is new era coming and waiting for the new beginning.
As a modernist poet, he laments on the frustration, worries, anxieties, loss of human values and decay of the 19th century and nostalgically he seems to remember the pre-industrial era. The opening of The Darkling Thrush is the ending of the day, the ending of the year and even the end of the century. Though the ending of everything refers to something ominous and depressing, it is also a mark of the something new, something new to begin with. It is the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century. It is the end of depressing year and the opening of the new bright hopeful year.
The ending of the poem is confusing when the speaker says ‘And I was unaware.’ it is vague that if the speaker is touched by the hopeful note of the aged bird and said that he was unaware of the reasons to be happy and optimistic. And at the same time, the bird’s song may not affect the speaker and he finds no reasons to be happy and hopeful like the bird.
The poem has some religious elements that come from the belief of the poet himself. The song of the thrush is called an ‘evensong’ which means a prayer in the service of the church. The use of words like ‘soul’ and ‘caroling’ too have religious connections which proves that Hardy’s mind is filled with religious belief. The small and aged bird’s joy song is contrasted with the speaker’s lack of joy and hope in the poem.
Some critics are of the view that this poem is an elegy as it symbolically laments on the ending of the era. But, others say it is not only the end, it is the dawn of the new era as the poem ends in the positive hopeful note. The poem focuses on the change, death and birth cycle, which is never going to stop. The continuous flux in the life is inevitable and every change is marked by either death or birth of something new. When the death of the 19th century is lamented, the birth of the 20th century is welcomed with great vigor and enthusiasm.