Three of Thomas Hardy’s poems; ‘The Darkling Thrush’, ‘At Castle Boterel’ and ‘Under the Waterfall’ stand as examples of Hardy’s use of imagery and allegory to create strong, tangible settings. These settings vary between these three poems, reflecting Hardy’s talent with imagery.In ‘The Darkling Thrush’, one of the ways the setting is portrayed is where certain words of common connotation are used together to create an almost solid, visible scene. For example, in the first two stanzas, ‘grey’, ‘spectre’ and ‘corpse’ are all words which suggest a melancholic and somewhat darkly spiritual tone, as though the character is seeing ghosts of the past, and little optimism for the future. The poem is set on New Year’s eve, and the end of the 19th century. The protagonist of the poem, the man, paints the scene as twilight dusk; ‘the weakening eye of day’, and except for the
bird, he is isolated from those who ‘sought their household fires’. The use of the line ‘the weakening eye of day’ not only suggests dusk, but also, specifically the word ‘weakening’ is a reflection as to how the man sees himself, and the earth. The second stanza continues in the same manner, with more dark, somber words like ‘germ’ and ‘death-lament’. ‘The land’s sharp features’ reinforces a feeling of pain, with the alliteration of ‘his crypt the cloudy canopy’ intensifying this. These dark, gloomy descriptions of the landscape mirror the characters depression and pessimism. During these first two stanzas, the ...
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bird, he is isolated from those who ‘sought their household fires’. The use of the line ‘the weakening eye of day’ not only suggests dusk, but also, specifically the word ‘weakening’ is a reflection as to how the man sees himself, and the earth. The second stanza continues in the same manner, with more dark, somber words like ‘germ’ and ‘death-lament’. ‘The land’s sharp features’ reinforces a feeling of pain, with the alliteration of ‘his crypt the cloudy canopy’ intensifying this. These dark, gloomy descriptions of the landscape mirror the characters depression and pessimism. During these first two stanzas, the character seems pensive and meditative, with only the sudden ‘full hearted evensong’ of the thrush to awaken him.Beyond the first two stanzas, where ‘a voice arose among The bleak twigs overhead’, the dark tone seems to deteriorate, as the ‘aged thrush’ begins to sing. The narrative of the poem suggests a sense of loneliness surrounding the man, which seems unusual, as it is New Years eve, when people are usually celebrating with family or friends. The idea that this man is alone at such a time once again reinforces a depressing setting for the poem. The ‘aged thrush’, which is described as ‘frail, gaunt and small’, may be another reflection of how the man sees himself.In ‘The Darkling Thrush’, the setting is the key part of the poem. Constantly, the landscape is compared to the mans feelings towards the world, and towards himself. Hardy used mainly imagery to create this, whilst the comparison to human feelings makes the setting appear more tangible to the reader.‘At Castle Boterel’ is another of Hardy’s poems. Like ‘The Darkling Thrush’, weather is also used as a method to describe the setting. In the story, a man is looking back, physically as well as into his memory, to an old castle where he once spent time with a girlfriend. The setting of the current time, where the man is looking back, is not pleasant compared to the time he was last there, which he says was ’In dry March weather’, whereas now the ‘drizzle bedrenches the waggonette’. In the final stanza, the man sees the castle ‘shrinking, shrinking’, as if to say that his memories were very long ago and far away, and maybe that things will never be as they were.The poem ‘Under the Waterfall’ has a key theme of water. One of the ways Hardy creates this as a setting is the use of many words and sounds which suggest imagery of water. The story in the poem is of a woman who is, possibly in conversation with someone else, looking back at a time when she lost a drinking glass in a waterfall. A strong element of the poem is a theme of romance, and looking back on a time where she was in love, similar to ‘At Castle Boterel’.Throughout the poem, there is a sense of a domestic environment. In the first stanza the character says ‘whenever I plunge my arm, like this, In a basin of water, I never miss The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day…’ The character is talking about how whenever she puts her hands into water, it reminds her of a time when she lost the drinking glass in a waterfall, whilst with a man she loved. Words like ‘boiling’, ‘stir’, ‘scoop’ and ‘table’ all suggest a domestic theme, and some also have connotations with water. In the second stanza the woman describes the setting from her memory, once again using words which make the reader think of water; ‘green’, ‘sank’, ‘vessel’ and ‘cascade’ to name a few. Particularly the word ‘cascade’ gives a strong sense of fast moving water, much like a waterfall, a key piece of the setting in the poem.The layout of the poem, too, reflects the theme of water, with the use of enjambment.All three poems show the use of word imagery by Hardy to create scenery, which, once again, in all three poems, is a very key feature to their stories. The use of words with similar allegory is also noticeable in all three poems.
