Set against the dying embers of a bygone century, Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Darkling Thrush’ is the apparent swan song of an era, which, within its core, nurses a latent hope and optimism
The poem begins on a cold, frosty, winter evening, which is about to extinguish into the last night of the century – “the weakening eye of day” is not merely the sun, but it is as if the whole landscape is sinking into oblivion. The poet’s images of nature suggest ruin and disharmony. They mirror a broken world “haunted” with human forms who, in order to escape the tragic reality of life, seek refuge in “their household fires”.
He portrays a gray afternoon dotted with silhouetted ghosts, who are moving in programmed motion to their warmed homes to shelter their trapped, weary selves from the cold – it is like a vision to the poet – the frayed ends of a dying day. He is the only one aware in this entranced world.
The second octave is an extended metaphor. The landscape is the corpse of an era, the sky its crypt, and the wind its “death-lament”. The use of the phrase “ancient pulse of germ and birth” depicts the throbbing, pulsating life force of nature, which has “shrunken” and shriveled up – like the arteries of a dead organism. Nature had completed its cycle and was counting its last laboured breaths before the final and ultimate extinction. The poet confirms this degeneration and stagnation of life by saying that “every spirit seemed fervourless as I”.
Tom Paulin in his “Poetry of perception” quotes Milton here with respect to Hardy’s attitude. He refers to ‘Paradise Lost’ where Satan says, “the mind is its own place, and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven”. Paulin underscores Hardy’s poetic stance, as he is in the position of a depressed and dejected soul to whom the entire scenery, though perhaps beautiful and pristine seems “hard and dry”. It was not the “winter’s dregs” that made the landscape desolate, but Hardy’s own mood of melancholy which coloured nature with a mellow hue.
In the first two stanzas, the poet was alone among the surrounding gloom. At this point his solitude is broken by “a voice” that “arose among the bleak twigs” – “the “aged thrush” sang out loud, from within the mists of misery. The thrush seems to emerge from the distressed land but unlike the dirge sung by the mourning breeze, it’s voice carries the melodies of “joy illimited” that sets it beyond the discontent of the poet’s darkling mind. The thrush is not allowed Keats’s notion of immortality and divinity, which he confers upon the nightingale in his ‘Ode To A Nightingale’ nor does it share the free, soaring spirit of the skylark in Shelley’s ‘To A Skylark’, but instead it is described in the poem as “ frail, gaunt and small”. It is a fragment of the dying world and yet manages to rise beyond it, displaying a dignity that is achieved through the awareness and understanding of mortal existence that escapes the poet’s dulled senses. It is old and will soon die, but its song still radiates the “full-hearted” if not full-throated quality in its music of ecstasy. Its swan song emanates boundless optimism and bliss – even its dying notes convey the joyful message, which the “broken lyres” could not express. This bird is not immortal, in fact it expires along with its fellow fauna, but its song permeates an immortality that resonates forever.
The thrush’s melody is so profound that even the poet, who can capture nothing but desolation around him is moved into believing that there might still be the possibility that the landscape may hold “some blessed hope”, which he cannot fully appreciate. By the end of the poem, Hardy does not change his perception; neither does he make his observation absolute. The thrush’s song is a cry that negates the “bleakness” – its music dispels the gloom and ushers in the possibilities of a new age. The simultaneous existence of the two possibilities is also discerned in his 1899 poem ‘An August Midnight’, where he writes,
“’God’s humblest they!’ I muse. Yet why?
They know Earth-secrets that know not I”
This directly alludes to the concluding lines of “The Darkling Thrush” which say
“ …there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.”
The thrush, in spite of its humble roots, has in itself a certain wisdom which makes the poet respect it .It has “chosen to fling his soul” upon the dreary terrain, which, shows its act of bravado and it implies a matter of choice not an instinct.
The thrush is indeed a humble creature yet it is magnanimous in its song. The melodies bring to mind the phoenix – it degenerates and dies, only to emerge with fresh plume from the entombed remnants of the century. This realization makes its song joyous.
Tom Paulin particularly noted in his book “The Poetry of Perception” that Hardy’s motive was to show reluctance towards asserting convictions and to resist mythologizing the poetic vocation. Perhaps that’s why he did not idealize upon the thrush, like Keats or Shelley. He was just stating facts coloured by his perception, and he refrained from philosophizing on them. Hence the readers of Hardy have more scope for an objective inference.
In Life Hardy states that “the mission of poetry is to record impressions, not convictions.” That is why he doesn’t let the thrush’s mood coincide with his. He perhaps wanted to maintain certain objectivity. His impressions of the life around him are as real and tangible as the thrush’s “full-hearted evensong”. He himself expressed that his poems are a “series of fugitive impressions which I have never tried to co-ordinate.”
We cannot call hardy a pessimist. Rather, he is a realist- he accepts the omnipotence of fate, but also believes in the productive value of human effort and does not undermine its strength on any account. “A Commonplace Day”, one of his poems echoes this attitude:
“I saw a dead man’s finer part
Shining within each faithful heart
Of those bereft. Then said I “This must be
His immortality.”
Wintertime nighs;
But my bereavement-pain
It cannot bring again:
Twice no one dies.”
Even fate alternates between despair and hope. We may be mere puppets of destiny, but if we sustain our dignity, and fight through it consistently, we might just find peace at the end of the day…the pain may become our pilgrimage to peace...this is probably what Hardy wants to convey.
Finally, the thrush is a local manifestation of an aged symbol. It continuously asserts that only the magnanimous and the glorified are not immortal. It is in the characteristic earthiness of the bird, it’s being both in the natural and the transcendental world simultaneously, which lends its true immortality. The thrush symbolizes the existential bravery required of the people in the twentieth century who must learn to live without the consolations of myth and religion. This reminds us of Hardy’s celebrated poem, ‘In Tenebris II, where he mentions that “a full look at the worst” is necessary to prepare for a “way to the better”. Hardy does not promise of hope but reveals that it exists even in times of despair.
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