Janeth's Take on Global Literature and Media: Our Thrush of Hope: Essay on Hardy's "The Darkling Thrush"

We have all experienced disappointment and the feeling that our times have failed to live up to the past and all it stood for. The feeling that mankind has lost its way is something that persists today as we face a world that is increasingly more violent and indifferent to suffering. However, something that hasn’t changed is human kind’s thirst for self-expression. Our ability to put into words those feelings bursting with longing, joy, disappointment, or hope is a unique human trait which is brought forth through many venues by talented writers such as Thomas Hardy and his ‘thrush of hope‘’. Hardy’s talented use of verse, now more than ever, is able to bridge the gap of time to make the reader feel this longing for the redemption and restoration of a fallen world because his was also a feeling of loss but with light at the end of the tunnel. This is very apparent in Hardy’s “The Darkling Thrush” in which we see a cry of lament for an era gone by and, Hardy pays homage to this golden age of literature through the use of imagery, metaphor, and an iambic verse that lends hope to a future still unknown. These stanzas, although filled with pessimism for the fate of human kind, leaves the reader with a glimmer of light in a world full of darkness.

Thomas Hardy’s poetic works are notorious for their allusions to death and their cry for something lost and dead: “In brief, Hardy‘s poetic distinction is in the blending of two qualities that can easily be contraries - hard etching and spectral atmosphere“(Elliot 1186). “The Darkling Thrush” is one of several poems in which Hardy’s longing for the past is evidenced through his masterful use of imagery and metaphor heavily influenced by Romanticism. We see this deathlike imagery in the very first stanza. ‘Frost’ and ‘Winter’ are capitalized because they represent death. In fact, Hardy describes the frost as being “spectre-gray”. Indeed, this image evokes a ghostly picture of what once used to exist. Winter seems to absorb all life, leaving behind only “dregs” and remains of what used to be there. The next verse also speaks of death when he describes the “weakening eye of day” (4). The eye is symbolic for the sun which gives light to everything and sees everything. Now, that light has been darkened and it has been “weakened by Winter’s merciless force. Music too has succumbed to this death as evidenced when “the tangled bine-stems scored the skies like strings from broken lyres” (5-6). The lyres represent music and the power it has to enliven the spirit. However, the lyre is broken and its strings can no longer animate the soul. The broken strings symbolize that which has changed - that which no longer exists and they don’t’ caress the sky but “score” it as if trying to rebel against their condition. Thus, we have a vivid picture of decay and death.

Yet, Hardy’s imagery of death doesn’t stop with the first stanza. The first stanza gives us an image of death but, the second stanza identifies what is dead and presents the reader with what can be compared to a funeral. The first identification of this dead body is seen when Hardy describes

“the land’s sharp features seemed to be The Century’s corpse outleant, His crypt the cloudy canopy, The wind his death-lament” (9-12).

‘Century’ is capitalized because its symbolic of an age gone by. This is the body that is being mourned for. This is the body that is buried beneath the ‘Frost’ of ‘Winter’ and, similar to a funeral, “the wind his death-lament” is a cry of mourning. Thus, we can picture an age being buried and around its grave, we can hear the mourning of those attached to it. Unfortunately, there seems to be no hope for restoration since,

“The ancient pulse of germ and birth was shrunken hard and dry, and every spirit upon earth seemed fervourless as I.” (13- an16)

The ‘germ’ is a seed that, together with the ‘pulse’, symbolize life. There is no sign of life. There is no birth. Consequently, there is no purpose to live in a world that is so desolate and dark. Thus, there is no warmth, no passion and no fervor when everything that was once cherished is dead. There is no longing to live in a world that seems hopeless and purposeless and this is seen in the landscape depicted in these verses emptied of light with only a dim cloth of darkness covering around everything with doom. This is also seen in the last stanza where “all mankind that haunted nigh had sought their household fires” (7-8). Man are living dead and, Hardy cries for the past and mourns “the passing of one age and anxiously anticipate(s) the arrival of another” (Ramanzi 133) He mourns for a lifestyle that marked an age. He suffers for those beliefs, values, and principles that have been lost. As readers, we are witnessing the burial of the past. As Ramanzi states: “It inters the aesthetic in allusions to poems like ‘ode to the West Wind’, ‘Ode to a Nightingale,’ and ‘Dover Beach’, incorporating words that the very language of the elegy becomes a crypt for Romanticism” (Ramanzi 134). This is the age that has dissipated.

Although, these two stanzas have presented us with a ghastly view of the world, the next two stanzas give us something different. The protagonist of the third stanza is not nature buried beneath snow and cold. Instead, we have a bird as the carrier of hope. The bird is presented as an “aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, in blast-beruffled plume” (21-22). We can say this bird is symbolic of what is left of that Century gone by. Although, the past is gone, there still remains something left behind and, this bird is an echo of a golden age of human kind. We can see it has suffered the ravages of change and time but, it is still fighting to exist and he does so by choosing to “fling his soul upon the growing gloom” (23-24). The choice “fling” as a word to describe the way the bird casts his soul upon the world, is a violent one which means that, although ‘frail’ and ‘gaunt’, the soul of that past is fighting back. Again, we see Hardy’s brilliant use of metaphor to describe the struggle that exists between Hope and Hopelessness. Hope that something good that was left behind can still provide for a better future.

This hope is much more concrete in the verses of the last stanza where:

So little cause for carollings of such ecstatic sound was written on terrestrial things afar or night around, that I could think there trembled through his happy good-night air some blessed Hope, whereof he knew and I was unaware. (25-32)

This stanza doesn’t carry as much imagery and symbolism as the first three but, it mentions what the whole poem is about - hope. Ted R. Spivey, in one of his book reviews, noted that “Hardy, at least after he turned to poetry, developed a reassuring view of the future” (Spivey 17). This is evident in the last stanza of “The Darkling Thrush”. He doesn’t end the poem with pessimism and helplessness. Instead, after filling the reader’s imagination with images of death and decay, Hardy leaves the reader with a small dose of hope; a hope for the future that he harbored himself because “he believed that consciousness and the ideals it creates will lead man toward a better future,” (Spivey 18). Thus, he implants this hope at the end of the poem in the form of a thrush. Our world might seem dark because of the injustice, cruelty, and frivolity that surrounds us and, the future is down a dark tunnel where discerning its tidings is difficult. The future is the unknown and, therefore dark; a darkness that is exacerbated by what we witness in the present. Yet, he believed that hope is still alive even when we are battered by ‘Frost’ and ‘Winter’ and, this poem is both a lament for something lost but, it is also a statement of belief that something better will come.

Although the imagery and metaphors contribute to the overall meaning of the poem and its tone, the meter in this poem also plays a role. As we could see, this poem has two sides to it: death and hope. The imagery conveyed makes this clear. However, although the imagery contributes to a tone of disappointment, the meter does the opposite and, it is in these two things that we also see this struggled aforementioned. Hardy uses iambic meter throughout most of the verses in the poem. However, the verses tend to alternate between tetrameter and trimeter and, this continuing alternation coupled with the iambic foot is what lends a melodious beat to every stanza.

I leant/upon/a co/ppice gate

When Frost/ was spec/tre gray

The words in bold indicate the syllables that are stressed while the rest of the syllables indicate that they are unstressed. If you count the feet in each line, there will be four in the first verse, which is a tetrameter and three on the second - a trimeter. If the beat of the feet is followed, it will be noticed that is iambic in nature because an iambic foot consists of two syllables: an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable. The beat does not give us a tone of darkness or, disappointment instead “‘The Darkling Thrush’ is a lyric of rugged strength, that peculiar strength that comes from understatement and the sense of something in reserve” (Noyes 96). Consequently, while the stanzas give an image of decay, the meter dabs them with a beat of reassurance.

In conclusion, “The Darkling Thrush” still speaks to our times because, as time passes and as long as we are plagued by cruelty, all of us will turn to the past for a moment of comfort just as Thomas Hardy did. We will look for those memories and lament some of the changes that have taken place. We will mourn a lost age but, within us we will carry a glimmer of hope that maybe everything will be for good. Of course, the difference between Hardy and us lies in the fact that he stamped those feelings of loss on the pages of history and on the memory of many. He was able to evoke these feelings through his good use of imagery and symbolism. He was able to conflate a meter of hope with images of decay. This poem is a testament to creativity and the ability of the human mind to recreate through a poetic form of expression and, it is proof that words can bridge the gaps that exist amongst individuals; individuals as far apart as Thomas Hardy and the reader of the 21^st century.

Works Cited

Elliot, G.R.L "Spectral Etching in the Poetry of Thomas Hardy." PMLA Vol. 43, no.4 (1928) 15 Sept. 2010 <http://www.jstor.org/stable/457610>

Hardy, Thomas. "The Darkling Thrush." 100 Best-Loved Poems. Ed. Philip Smith. New York: Dover Publications, 1995. 72-73.

Noyes, Alfred. "The Poetry of Thomas Hardy." The North American Review (1911). 15 Sept. 2010 <http://www.jstor.org/stable/25106974

Ramanzi, Johan. "Hardy's Elegies for an Era: 'By the Century's Deathbead." Victorian Poetry Vol. 29 (1991) 15 Sept. 2010<http://www.jstor.org/stable/40002078>

Spivey, Ted. "Gloom to Hope." Rev. of Thomas Hardy and the Cosmic Mind, by J.O. Bailey. Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press May 1957. 15 Sept. 2010. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3198186