'Extended commentary of ‘The Darkling Thrush’ by Thomas Hardy Essay\r'

'On the title: A thrush is a fizzle; plump, soft-plum hoary, clear to medium-sized, often inhabiting woodsy beas. They feed on the ground or finish small fruit †just directly arn’t noned for their songs. Examples include a robin. ‘Darkling’ is an archaic contrive for ‘a creature of darkness’ or ‘in the dark’. stout uses it in its latter finger †the razzing appears in a very no-good face, at the determination of the solar day, at the end of the form (and century, for that matter). It as well as has negative connotations as well, however †for obvious reasons.\r\nPotential otherwisewise implications: ‘darkling’ is peradventure use to create a diminutive form of the thrush (like a ‘duckling’). Other critics have identified the title as explaining, or preparing the reader for the unexpected advent of the snicker half way finished the metrical composition, appearing into the s cene from nowhere. Perhaps robust was attempting to use an antiquitated word to get on demonstrate the bird is bringing joy to a dark come to, and that thither exists an enormous time passage between the new century and the old?\r\n overall Structure: Hardy uses four regular eight chore iambic stanzas; in either ‘tetrameter’ or ‘trimeter’, dep coating on the length of the line. This meter creates a poetical lilt, with alternate stressed feet. It seems very out of displace in such a dismay verse †we must question why this is. Does it reflect the bank expressed at the end of the metrical composition, or prepares us for it? Or does it recite of an oddity within the contrisolelyion; is his negative manner actually genuine †possibly we shouldn’t accept the fiber’s apprehension/emotions to the same extent as he’d like us to? His choice of rhyme abstract and meter along with the harsh subject emit to match up.\r\ nThemes: Time (passing of century), Isolation, Man and the Natural World.\r\n unenviable Language Notes: ‘Darkling’ †discussed above. ‘Illimited’ is an archaic form of ‘ countless’.\r\nFirst and atomic number 16 Stanza Notes: As usual, Hardy presents us with an image, this time of a landscape †a depressing sensation, at that. This poem was published at the end of the century †31st December 1900 (Hardy was one of those tribe who believe that a century is complete when the hundredth year is over.) It is very cold and frosty and the day is ontogenesis to a close. It really is the end of a century.\r\nAnd Hardy presents us with a very lightsome image of death †he later personifies the light speed itself as being dead. The premier two stanzas are full of death-language:\r\n1. â€Å"When Frost was spectre-gray”. A clear guinea pig of ghost imagery (‘a spectre’). This line is of interest on its own, due to the obvious avatar of ‘Frost’. This is a good place to desexualize a spot short letter more or less the poem itself. Throughout, we discover a distinct Hardy-esque style; the milieu is unamiable and it demonstrates his usual antics in animism. Hardy develops entangled (and often deeply individualised) symbolic systems which deal nearly exclusively with the natural world. The reader is made epitomel with non- valet de chambre entities like frost and birds moreover avoids people †tied(p) the reference is a subject avoided in slap-up full point.\r\n1. Back with the ‘death imagery’, â€Å"The weakening kernel of day”; a comment on the blackening sky †the day is dying.\r\n1. â€Å"All mankind that haunt nigh” †haunted is clear a write to death and ghosts. Hardy is commenting on the lack of human life in his scene; they â€Å"had sought their theatre fires”. A further indication of the low temperature. Is it a hint that the world is last? Or is that erect a little extreme? In some(prenominal) case, note how the rest of humanity are quest light in an otherwise dark environment.\r\nThe guerrilla stanza contains an extended metaphor involving the dead century, only when we submit to examine the first stanza more(prenominal) before wretched on.\r\nHardy’s persona is leaning upon a coppice gate †a gate into a small woods or ‘coppice’. It is a highly ambiguous persona (another thing to explore), but he leans nevertheless. The scene is wintry, indeed, along with Frost, Winter is personified evenly †â€Å"Winter’s dregs made knock off/ The weakening eye of day.” The dregs of the season intend a very cold atmosphere; one without some(prenominal) colour. Clearly this has emptied the scene of any many-sided sight upon which the â€Å"eye of day” weakens. The day is ending; thus dusk darkens the scene.\r\nâ€Å"Tangled bine-stems scored the sky/ akin strings of broken lyres”. As before mentioned, the persona is standing in woodland, thus â€Å"Bine-stems” are corner branches. Hardy’s comparison of them to broken lyres is interesting. Lyres are a) harmonious in Classical literature and b) run short only in Classical literature. Hardy is clearly stating that the scene is not ‘harmonious’ or perhaps the ‘death-lament’ later mentioned isn’t. Or is it also a annex Hardy’s romantic passion for the past, that it was somehow better than the day in which he writes?\r\nSecond Stanza Notes: The first four lines of this stanza deal explicitly with Hardy’s ‘dead Century’ metaphor. He imagines the land before him as â€Å"the Century’s clay outleant.” Quite what ‘outleant’ means, I have no idea, (The OED has corroborate that ‘outleant’ is not, nor ever has been a word) but â€Å"his crypt [becom es] the cloudy canopy” (the cloudy sky) and â€Å"the wind his death-lament”. One need not explain it in any more detail; the implications are quite explicit. Hardy’s persona clearly didn’t approve of the past century, but had moreover to indicate an emotional reflection on the future. He imagines England as a rotting corpse, essentially. However, note the use of the verb ‘seems’ †is all as it seems?\r\nHowever, Hardy goes on to write even more damningly of his persona’s scene. ‘The ancient pulse of germ and birth’ †the regenerative former of life, following Winter’s onslaught †‘was wi in that locationd dry and hard’. Nothing appears to be maturement sustain †is this another indication of the end of the world, or certainly of an era. Hardy appears to be making the frank change of an arbitrary number into something quite different, and more serious. A degeneration of life itself. Indeed, â€Å"every heart and soul upon earth/ Seemed fervourless than I.” Very negative.\r\nObserve how silent the visualizeation is up to this point in the poem. There is an implied labored in both the death-lament and of broken lyres, but otherwise, the locomote is non-existent. That changes soon.\r\nHere comes the VOLTA.\r\nThird Stanza Notes:\r\nâ€Å"At once a voice arose among\r\nThe bleak twigs overhead\r\nIn a full-hearted evensong\r\nOf Joy illimited;”\r\nHardy emphasizes a abrupt change with the words â€Å"At once” †indeed, there are multiple changes which create this volta:\r\n* Note the fast inclusion of sound †the thrush is singing! This breaks the poetic lock in (of death) which has held the poem so far.\r\n* The length of ‘sentence’ also changes. Note the semicolon at the end of these four lines above. Previously, distributively quatrain had completed with a full stop. Perhaps Hardy is opening up his poetic form to reflect the sudden movement in the lines themselves. The use of enjambment accentuates this.\r\nThere are perhaps spectral connotations with ‘evensong’. Much as Hardy may obviously be again referring to the mundane fact that the bird is singing a ‘song’ and ‘eve’, we entreat that the man is capable of higher minded comparisons. These mistily religious nuances are maintained throughout the poem.\r\nThe life-and-death fact is that the mood has changed, perhaps. â€Å"Of Joy illimited” suggests a pleasant image, which stands in stark contrast to the surrounding gloom.\r\nâ€Å"An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,\r\nIn blast-beruffled plume,”\r\nYet the mood is suddenly plunged back into the red with Hardy’s following lines. The thrush, which is, admittedly, a very odd bird to chose (not famed for their song), is an elder figure in a storm †therefrom the ‘blast-beruffled plume’. In this other wise grim situation, the reader’s immediate concern is whether the bird itself is going to survive at all! The use of â€Å"frail, gaunt, and small” mirrors the ghoulish imagery used in the first two stanzas †the thrush is alive, for certain, but perhaps the persona questions for how much longer?\r\nNote how the thrush is NOT personified. Every other element of the natural world takes an animated form, but not the bird! Why does Hardy do this?\r\nâ€Å"Had chosen thus to fling his soul\r\nUpon the growing gloom.”\r\nPerhaps desperation is the key word in this stanza, but also hope. There is a sizable message in the face of this ghoulish bird; that, in spite of all the darkness and death, the thrush maintains his song.\r\nStanza quartet Notes:\r\nâ€Å"So little cause for carolings\r\nOf such rapt sound\r\nWas written on terrestrial things\r\nafar or nigh around,”\r\nOnce again, Hardy’s use of enjambment allows for the lines to ‘bleedà ¢â‚¬â„¢ into each other †in a direct contrast to the poem’s former rigidity. Perhaps he is now gathering momentum for a change in mood? Yet, in terms of aesthesis, Hardy appears to be doing the opposite. He states that the bird has no reason to be singing a joyful song amongst so much desolation. However, perhaps, by even considering such a fact, the persona’s own deep-rooted pessimism is generator to shift away?\r\nOn some key language points:\r\n* Note more religious accent mark: ‘carolings’ typically sing hymns at Christmas time. Hymns are decidedly religious!\r\n* Perhaps there is an equally religious connotation which Hardy applies to his comments on the ‘terrestrial things’. If there is not any cause for singing about things on Earth, then perhaps, reciprocally, there is cause for celebrating the sky, or heaven?\r\nâ€Å"That I could think there trembled through\r\nHis happy good-night air\r\nSome blessed Hope, whereof he knew\ r\nAnd I was unaware.”\r\nIt is a rather ambiguous ending upon which Hardy chooses to conclude, but he achieves a sense of dramatic effect through it. The persona realises the front of (a perhaps religious) hope, in the fact of utter desperation, but it is unintelligible to him. In an odd way, the reader is laboured to consider whether the persona is being entirely faultless:\r\n* Can one be unaware of something, yet still able to write about it?\r\n* Does this tell us that the persona, as a Modernist, is able to see such an uplifting messages but unable to interpret them in such a way as to ‘release’ himself from the ‘dark’? Hardy himself was a modernist and accordingly dwells upon an odd lot of ideas. Amongst them was ‘searching for hope/ nitty-gritty to darkness and cruelty’. Despite being a realist, he was deeply influenced by Romantic notions (look them up) †perhaps this exploration is one of them?\r\n* The use of ‘bl essed’ again implies a deified presence within the thrush’s message. Is the persona experiencing some divine inspiration?\r\n'