In The Daffodils Wordsworth puts the speaker in isolation and uses the simile “I wandered lonely as a cloud” to convey this, this suggests that the speaker is totally detached from the rest of the world, the repetition of the possessive pronoun “I” also suggests this. Likewise in The Darkling Thrush Hardy again puts the speaker in isolation and also makes the speaker seem very depressed and down with adjective’s such as “favourless” again in The Darkling Thrush the possessive pronoun “I” again suggests that the speaker is on his own.
In The Daffodils there is use of religious imagery with the adjective “host” this suggests that the daffodils are like a host of heavenly angels and are therefore have such an amount of beauty it is almost God-like and when the speaker looks at the daffodils it is like they have changed his life, almost the way Jesus would change a Christian’s life, whereas in The Darkling Thrush there is not any religious imagery but death imagery and lack of life for example the adjectives: “weakening,” “corpse” and “ancient.”
In The Darkling Thrush there is a sense of disharmony at the start and is shown in the adjectives “scored” and “lyres.” A score is the sheet music of a piece of music and lyres are string instruments, in this sense it is suggesting that Hardy is saying that there is music in the sky but it’s not beautiful music or in harmony but it is in disharmony and the strings are out of key, while in the Daffodils Wordsworth personifies the daffodils with adjectives such as “fluttering” and “dancing” and the present participle “tossing” this suggests that energy is vibrating and makes it seem as there is some sort of connection with the speaker and the nature.
In The Daffodils there is light imagery which suggests there is something good about then while in The Darkling Thrush there is dark imagery which suggests the landscape is not bad but not good either.
In both poems there is a regular rhyme scheme even though both are different they both suggest a sense of harmony, in The Daffodils it’s the flowers and in The Darkling Thrush it’s the harmony of the song of the bird.
In conclusion at the end of The Daffodils the speaker is so connected with nature it seems unreal but in The Darkling Thrush the speaker has not changed even though there is a small bird singing it’s heart out and yet the bird has nothing to be happy about in itself and yet it is happy. The bird has no impact on the speaker at all, it is ironic as the bird can see hope and it’s an animal and yet the speaker can’t and he is human.
