Darking Thrush Flashcards
What is the poem about?
Hardy is walking on a cold, miserable winters day and hears a thrush singing cheerfully. He doesn’t know what good there is to sing about in this world.
What is the rhyming structure?
Why is it like this?
ABABCDCD
Regular alternate rhyme
The regular rhyme contrasts to the content of the poem as it is discussing the overpowering ability of industrialisation. Where as the regular ‘perfect’ structure makes the descriptions stand out.
At the same time, this rhythm makes it sound quite like a nursery rhyme although it is quite lifeless, the themes only emphasise the monotonous, repetitive rhythm.
Context of the poem
Written in 1899, the poem is about the end of the century. The bleak vision of a desolate winter landscape is a deliberate referents to the poetry of the past, particularly Keats and romanticism as if he is still clinging on to the past.
Reference to Keats ‘ode to a nightingale’ and ‘what the thrush said’ - this is a DARKLING thrush so it is particularly pessimistic.
What happens to the romantic motif of birdsong?
You could say that it is beautiful and redemptive however it seems almost lost in the gloom of the landscape and the speakers mood (the use quotes to show gloom of landscape)
Good quotes in the first stanza:
‘Frost was spectre-grey’
‘Weakening use of day’
‘Tangled bine-stems’
‘Like strings of broken lyres’
“When Frost was spectre-grey”
Frost has a capital letter as if it is personified or a proper noun, this gives it an energy or presence as it is so powerful and controlling.
It makes it seem ubiquitous - prominent/everywhere in the landscape.
More like a Greek God now, powerful and shows the power of nature (contrast to what he thinks will happen with technology in new century?)
Spectre-grey has a lifeless rhythm which relates to the meaning as it is a ghost. The colourless, lifeless theme links to his opinions of the industrialised landscape.
‘the weakening eye of day’
This literally denotes the setting of the sun and has connotations with the dying of the century. Very pessimistic.
‘Weakening’ has connotations with sick or old people, he feels helpless to the ageing of the earth and despair.
Eye personifies day, making it more personal to hardy as if he is losing something as the sun sets.
Eye site weakens when you get older, his vision could represent his perspective and understanding of the world. As he and the earth get older they will both change and he won’t be able to see or understand it as clearly.
The narrator’s understanding of the world and nature is vivid in the way that it fluctuates throughout the poem. The word eye personifies or but instead of providing it with power and emotion, it is taken away by the previous word ‘weakening’.
‘Tangling bine-stems score the sky’
Bine-stems are dried out and have lost their leaves in the winter.
Score is used to mean cutting into the sky but also could be a wordplay on music, works with ‘lyres’ in the next line.
If music was in the sky for me that has connotations with the end of the world, particularly if the lyres are ‘broken’ or out of key.
Tangled links to his confusion and anxiety about the next century, as if that is how he feels or his thoughts are muddled.
“Like strings of broken lyres”
Broken like classics
There is a lot of similarities at the time between classical music and poetry.
Poetry was like a song.
Because of the regular alternate rhyme it is quite like a song too.
Quotes for the second stanza
Lands sharp features
The Century’s corpse
Death-lament
‘Every spirit on earth’
The century’s corpse
The fin de siècle gloom
“Death-lament”
Song of death
Vernacular / archaic language even though the classicism of poetry is dying he is trying to give it salvation.
This signifies he feels that he belongs in the previous century and is already mourning its death, relating back to song of death because that is kind of what the poem is.
“The ancient pulse of gem and birth”
Iambic tetra metre, it has a pulse.
It is paradoxical because no matter how hard he tries there is still joy at the heart of the poem and there are still ‘births’ In nature
(Please improve me)
‘And every spirit upon earth seems fervourless as I’
Hardy is assuming that everyone feels the same as him, or perhaps he is basically saying he feels like he is the only person on earth. This is supported by the fact he purposefully chooses the word ‘spirit’ and not ‘person’ which again gives it a ghostly, eerie atmosphere. Maybe he is saying that with the end of the century he feels that people don’t really exist, he has personified Frost and Winter and natural things but seems to have taken away from humans.
It is a synecdoche
Quotes in third stanza
In full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited
An aged-thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
Fling his soul