Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Darkling Thrush’: Braving the Dark

Poet Thomas Hardy reflects on the hardiness of a thrush that welcomes a new century. Andres Venditti/Shutterstock

I leant upon a coppice gate       When Frost was spectre-grey, And Winter’s dregs made desolate      The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky       Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh       Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be       The Century’s corpse outleant, His crypt the cloudy canopy,       The wind his death-lament. The ancient pulse of germ and birth       Was shrunken hard and dry, And every spirit upon earth       Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among       The bleak twigs overhead In a full-hearted evensong       Of joy illimited; An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,       In blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul       Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings       Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things       Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through       His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew           And I was unaware.

One of the greatest achievements for a writer is to use a word in such a distinctive and masterful way that from that moment on, future readers will always associate that word with that writer. As many literary critics have pointed out, Thomas Hardy (1840–1928), in titling his poem “The Darkling Thrush” (1900), instantly draws the mind back to a memorable use of the word “darkling” in literature. For readers of poetry, the word will instantly recall John Keats’s (1795–1821) “Ode to a Nightingale” (1820). Several other parallels emerge between the two poems.

Hardy was an English poet and novelist, a prolific writer who published at least 14 novels, hundreds of poems, and numerous volumes of short stories during his life. He was a Victorian realist, greatly influenced by the Romantic poets who came before him but also caught in the skepticism and doubt that characterized the crisis of faith in the Victorian era.

The Romantics saw nature as providentially ordered and animated with value and meaning; the Victorians were haunted by the desire to believe nature was divinely ordered and charged with meaning, but many people of that time experienced a crisis of faith. 

"Thomas Hardy, aged 70," 1910, by William Strang. Public Domain

Hardy, for his part, followed in the footsteps of Romantic poets such as William Wordsworth and John Keats in the centrality of nature in his poetry. However, as his biographer Claire Tomalin wrote in “Thomas Hardy,“ there was an ever-present contradiction in Hardy “between the vulnerable, doomstruck man and the serene inhabitant of the natural world.” His love of the natural world was underscored by a fatalism and a bleak observation of the suffering in the world.

This tension is visible in Hardy’s poem “The Darkling Thrush,” one of his most famous works, which presents us with a sharp contrast between a harsh winter landscape and the joyful song of the thrush.

Written to commemorate the end of the 19th century, Hardy’s poem marks the beginning of a new century with an insistent tie to a poem of the previous century: “Ode to a Nightingale.” The echoes of Keats’s poem in “The Darkling Thrush” suggest an inversion of the Romantic view of nature. While both poets long for identification with the bird, Keats seeks what the nightingale suggests in a transcendence of the human condition. Hardy, on the other hand, doesn’t  entertain the idea of such transcendence being possible. Instead, he resigns himself to the fact that if the thrush has found a wellspring of hope, he can only see the effect of it in the bird and can’t access that reality himself.

“Keats Listening to the Nightingale on Hampstead Heath,” 1845, by Joseph Severn. Public Domain

The Century’s Corpse

Despite the fact that the thrush is the central figure of Hardy’s poem (originally titled “By the Century’s Deathbed”), the first two stanzas are solely dedicated to the depiction of the sharp, “spectre-grey” features of the winter landscape. Hardy’s commemoration of the beginning of the 20th century dwells more insistently on the passing of the previous century rather than on new beginnings. For the speaker, the winter scene seems “century’s corpse outleant,” and nearly all of nature partakes in the lament for the end of the age.

Signed handwritten draft of “The Darkling Thrush” with original title “By the Century’s Deathbed.” Public Domain

Even the thrush itself, once it appears, seems far from the romantic image of a comely musician. Instead, the singer is described as “an aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small / In blast-beruffled plume.” The plosives of b in “blast” and p in “plume” mimic the harsh gale, and yet the thrush stands in defiance of the natural forces.

Almost the entirety of the poem is focused on the fact that there’s “so little cause for carolings.” Yet the speaker, at the end of the poem, is so moved by the song’s “joy illimited” that he acknowledges the possibility that, though he is currently ignorant of it, there may be a reality beyond the gloom he now observes. The thrush is perhaps able to perceive supernatural realities which are beyond our grasp.

The joy of the thrush’s song derives either from an ignorance of the harsh realities which man can perceive (mortality, suffering, and the ugliness of the natural landscape) or from a superior knowledge of supernatural realities beyond mankind’s field of vision. However, the fact that Hardy concludes his poem on the note of the speaker’s lack of awareness seems to imply that he finds a definitive conclusion to the question impossible.

Hardy doesn’t dismiss the thrush at the end of the poem; rather, he concludes with the fact that he “could think” that there exists “some blessed Hope, whereof he knew / And I was unaware.”

A Tale of Two Songbirds

Beyond the use of the word “darkling,” “The Darkling Thrush” and “Ode to a Nightingale” are similar in subject—on suffering and yearning for a seemingly unattainable joy that the thrush and nightingale possess. Though Hardy’s use of the word “darkling” reveals a consciousness of Keats’s poem in his own work, the word assumes a different connotation in reference to the darkness in Hardy’s poem.

In “The Darkling Thrush,” nothing about the darkness is desirable, but for Keats it has an enchanting quality as the speaker listens to the bird’s song in a charmed stupor, “half in love with easeful death.” The nightingale (formerly classified as a member of the thrush family) and the thrush appeal to the imaginations of the two poets for their habit of singing in the dark. But one darkness lends itself to an exclusive focus on the bird’s song, while the other threatens to swallow the song in gloom. While the darkness Keats describes allows for the imaginative immersion of the speaker in the world of immortality and beauty suggested by the nightingale’s song, Hardy’s darkness is oppressive and suffocating, one from which men have fled and “sought their household fires.”

Keats’s poem unfolds on the cusp of new life in springtime: the speaker listens to the birdsong in the dark and guesses “each sweet/ wherewith the seasonable month endows/ The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild.” The landscape is lush and verdant, and Keats uses imagery that suggests abundant beauty in descriptions such as “the coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine.” By contrast, Hardy’s landscape seemingly bespeaks only death with no hope of rebirth: “The ancient pulse of germ and birth/ Was shrunken hard and dry.”

Neither poem achieves resolution. As the nightingale flies away, Keats is left questioning the reality of his experience: “Was it a vision, or a waking dream?/ Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?” Similarly, Hardy doesn’t discover the thrush’s cause for hope “Whereof he knew/ And I was unaware.”

Strings of Broken Lyres 

Hardy was most likely aware of how, in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, Keats’s gravestone bears an image of a broken lyre representing a young poet whose life was cut short. Perhaps it’s no coincidence then that part of the ugliness he observes in nature reminds him of the same image: “The tangled bine-stems scored the sky/ Like strings of broken lyres.” Buried within the image are the implications of the futility of art and the incomprehensible suffering in the world.

Both poems confront man’s desire to escape suffering, with Keats’s speaker longing for painless oblivion and “all mankind,” in Hardy’s poem, fleeing to the comfort of their hearths. Even so, both poets find it worthwhile to brave the dark.

The question to be asked, then, is what both poets seek in the solitary audience of the bird. Hardy says “all mankind” seeks their household fires, but the poet remains outside and might say, like Keats, “Darkling I listen.” All men, including both poets, seek comfort and an end of present pain, but the poet seeks something beyond the present, something indicative of the future.

"Woman With a Lyre," 1775, by Gavin Hamilton. Public Domain

Restringing the Lyre

Hardy’s speaker seems trapped in the sense that this moment is all there is, and the drab state of affairs will continue in an eternal winter. However, in spite of the poet’s dreary description of the natural scene, life still persists. The thrush imbues movement and sound into the scene over the wind’s “death-lament,” restringing the lyre.

Hardy chooses his words carefully: The bird sings an “evensong,” a “good-night air.” Not only do both words imply awareness on the bird’s part of the coming darkness of night rather than a happiness sung from ignorance of mortality, but they also denote the wish for safe passage through the dark. The religious connotation of the word “evensong” points to prayers for a restful night, the wish explicit in “good-night.” In both words, there’s an implicit awareness that it will be morning eventually, just as spring will someday come to the grey, wintery scene.

Neither bird nor speaker does what the rest of the world is doing. The bird brings beauty where the rest of nature is decaying, choosing to “fling his soul/ Upon the growing gloom.” The speaker, though “fervourless,” seeks to ignite his soul by observing the darkened scene rather than warming himself by the fire.

A portrait of Thomas Hardy, 1893, by William Strang. National Portrait Gallery, London. PD-US

Even with the many scientific advances of the Victorian era in which Hardy wrote, the speaker is still capable of being surprised by natural beauty. This brings him to the realization that there are still things in the world that man can’t explain or comprehend.

The ambiguity at the end of the poem is itself a vague hope for the new century; the thrush’s cause for hope doesn’t stem from ignorance. Rather, it’s the ignorance of man in response to the thrush’s song that gives hope that there’s something more than this present darkness.

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