The Darkling Thrush - Poetic Method

The Darkling Thrush

Poetic Method

Narrative Voice (Point of View):

The reader is left to decide who the narrator of the poem really is; it is ambiguous. One could perceive the voice as the “Voice of the Century”, which is lamenting, but can also appreciate the song of the thrush.

The thrush’s voice is a symbol of Hope and happiness in this poem, which contrasts to the narrator’s mournful droning voice.

Structure and Form:

The poem follows an ABAB rhyme scheme, and it is composed of four octaves. The uniform beat of the poem has led many a critic to say that the poem almost forms two ballad stanzas; one, which talks about the possibility of death and the end of the life-cycle (“ancient pulse of germ and birth”) while the other suddenly brings in happiness and contentedness to the poem.

Genre and Style:

“The Darkling Thrush” is a ballad, sometimes referred as being composed of two ballad stanzas, one that talks of depression and death, the other of Hope. Hardy as used references to Charles Darwin’s view of nature and how beauty has been destroyed but paradoxically is also a site of astonishing creativity. He has always invented a new poetic style, by mixing both modern and colloquial English in his poetry.

Setting:

The setting of this poem is that of an English village or countryside. The “household fires” give away a cosy home atmosphere, while “Winter” has forced people to stay inside and keep warm. The “tangled bine-stems scored the sky” suggests cold winds, and the land being “shrunken hard and dry” implies no fertility in the land of his village, thus having connotations of the end of development.

Language:

The poem begins with, “I leant upon a coppice gate” – this suggests the weakness of the narrator, of how he requires the support of the gate in order to view the nature around him. Also, the use of the colloquial word ‘coppice’ adds to the poetic effect of the poem, as it heightens an old man’s views of the modern and industrialised world. The compound epithet “spectre-gray” speaks of desolate frost. One could also argue that it refers to a grey ghost, and it is this ghost of gloom that Hardy fears. The metaphor “weakening eye of day” refers to the sun’s diminishing light, or could also be interpreted as the end of the century, something that Hardy fears.