1
Harnisch
Jeanna Harnisch
Dr. Crider
Lyric Study I
9 December 2003
“Desolation, Despair and ‘The Darkling Thrush’”
“Poems…enact the self’s solitary struggle with the soul,” according to Edward Hirsch (163). Thomas Hardy’s poem “The Darkling Thrush” does just that. It is an enactment of the speaker’s struggle to overcome the isolation of his soul, engaging the reader in the self-same struggle. The reader struggles with the soul of the poem, trying to lift himself beyond the desolate atmosphere of the speaker. This movement beyond desolation actualizes the nature of lyric poetry. The speaker’s isolation from life and spirituality is developed through Hardy’s images and language, while shifts in tone emphasize the speaker’s recognition of some metaphysical hope. The manipulation of these elements leads both speaker and reader beyond desolation.
In understanding Hardy’s theme of isolation from hope, one must first examine the style and structure of the poem as a whole. The ballad, “The Darkling Thrush,” is as follows:
I Leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
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.
The traditional ballad form that Hardy employs here has an ABAB rhyme. There are four octets in alternating iambic tetrameter and trimiter lines. Hardy chooses this traditional ballad form to convey an untraditionally balladic idea. Ballads traditionally convey songs of hope or joy, and the ABAB rhyme lends itself to song, such as a Psalm or a hymn. The song-like form is fitting to relate the song of the thrush. On the other hand, Hardy’s poem breaks from the traditional subject matter and tone of ballads. His poem presents the speaker as isolated from hope and confines the traditional joy of a ballad to one stanza of the poem. The tone throughout this ballad does not shift far from despairing. By isolating the hope the thrush brings to one stanza of the poem, Hardy mimics the speaker’s isolation from hope and joy. Hardy introduces this idea of isolation in the first stanza.
Hardy details the setting of the entire poem within the first stanza, surrounding the speaker with images of death and allowing the reader to visualize this world. “Spectre” is most clearly defined as ghostly, and in describing the frost as “spectre-gray,” Hardy’s diction brings the reader not to the earthly realm but to the realm of death and the incorporeal (2). In addition, the speaker describes mankind that had “haunted nigh, a ghostly image that furthers the image of death surrounding the speaker (7).
Hardy sets the poem in winter, and in the seasons of life, winter represents death. Only the “dregs” remain of the season, showing that the winter itself is dying (3). The “weakening eye of day,” or twilight, signifies that the day is also passing away (4). Furthermore, the speaker is not walking or moving, he is passively leaning on the gate (1). He separates himself from any other sign of life and humanity as “all mankind…had sought their household fires” (7-8). Each of these images isolates the speaker from life and the realm of the living.
The reader learns in the first stanza that the speaker is also isolated from spirituality. The image of “bine-stems” that “scored the sky” draw the reader’s attention upward towards the heavenly realm (5). The hard alliterative sounds of “stems scored the sky” mimic the harshness of the scoring, or slashing, of the stems against the sky (5). The speaker distances himself from the heavenly with a simile comparing the “bine-stems” to “strings of broken lyres” (5-6). The lyre is an instrument associated with the god Apollo, and Hardy’s use of metonymy to associate the lyre with the heavenly realm exemplifies his manipulation of language. The broken strings that symbolize the speaker’s break from the heavenly realm further this image. It is possible that the lyre is relating to lyric poetry itself; the broken lyre strings would refer to poetry and the inability of the poet to write. I have chosen not to discuss that interpretation here.
The second stanza broadens the sphere of the speaker’s isolation, setting him not only in a dead land but also in the death of the century. The land is the out laid corpse of the century. The wind is the century’s “death lament,” imitating bells that would toll for a funeral (12). The second coordinate sentence within this octet establishes the speaker’s utter isolation from hope of the future. The speaker’s belief that the “pulse of germ and birth/was shrunken hard and dry” kills every hope for a future (13-14). The seed for new life has died, and the hard consonance of “hard and dry” emphasizes a dead hope for new life (14). Within the first two stanzas, the speaker has isolated himself from any sign of life or hope for the future. The desolate tone pervades the speaker, his surroundings, and the century itself. At this point, the reader cannot hope for a future or a continuation to the poem if life itself is dying out, necessitating the change in tone of the third stanza.
The first line of the third octet raises the plane of action of the poem to overhead. The alliteration in “At once a voice arose among” quickens the pace of the sentence and works with the enjambment of lines 17 and 19 to bring a sense of life to this image of death (17-19). Suddenly, there is a voice, a movement and action of some life, though the speaker still places the life in the desolation of “the bleak twigs” and “growing gloom” (18, 24). The reader learns that voice is signing an “evensong,” another name for an evening prayer or vesper (19). The song connects to the spiritual and is being sung with “joy illimited,” a sharp change from the desolate tone of stanzas one and two (20). The tone shifts towards hopeful, insinuating a kind of religious hope and joy.
A sign of life arises amidst the dead landscape as a song emanates from the thrush. Line 21, “An ag/ed thrush, // /frail, // gaunt, /and small,” has a metric substitution, the only line within the poem to do so. The second foot, “frail, gaunt,” is spondaic, and the heavy iambic stresses on “thrush” and “small” necessitate caesuras after “thrush” and “frail.” These caesuras draw out the old age of the thrush and emphasize how he too is close to death. The plosive alliteration of “blast beruffled plume” forces the reader to feel the violence of the blasts of wind whipping around the thrush. The dire image of the thrush is pressed upon the reader through Hardy’s use of harsh stresses and phonetics.
The violent imagery associated with the thrush continues as he brutally “fling[s] his soul/Upon the growing gloom” (23-24). It is plausible that the thrush is a metaphor for the poet who is flinging his song, or poem, upon the gloom of society, but I will leave this interpretation and examine the spiritual aspect of the thrush instead. The reader interprets this ungraceful flinging as a true spiritual prostration before God, enhancing the spirituality the thrush brings to the poem. Although the thrush has brought joy to the desolate image of death, the deathlike way in which the speaker perceives the thrush may be saying that even this spiritual sign of hope or joy will also die.
It is significant that the hope of this poem is confined to only one stanza, showing how Hardy’s form parallels the theme of isolation. The speaker is given a choice—he can either accept the quasi-spiritual hope and joy that the thrush offers or continue to isolate himself in a hopeless world. The fourth octet sustains the argument that the thrush offers a spiritual hope and suggests that the reader reasons against this hope. Lines 25-27 establish that there is nothing terrestrial to be joyful about, supporting the idea that the thrush’s hope must be of a metaphysical or spiritual character. Furthermore, the speaker describes a “blessed Hope” in the thrush’s song (31). Hardy chose to capitalize the “H” in hope, much like the “H” in him would be capitalized when referring to Christ and the spiritual. This directly relates the thrush’s hope to the spiritual realm.
The speaker ultimately rejects the hope that the thrush offers, and it is difficult for him to acknowledge that a spiritual hope even exists. The fricatives of line 29 “That I could think there trembled through” make the line hard to read, paralleling the difficulty the speaker has in recognizing the hope of the thrush. On the other hand, this line may be mimicking the difficulty the reader has in rejecting the hope of the thrush, but this reading of the poem does not seem consistent with the despairing attitude of the speaker established in the previous stanzas. The final lines of this octet, “Some blessed Hope, // whereof he knew/And I was unaware,” affirm the speaker’s inability to partake in the thrush’s joy and instead remain isolated from human life and spirituality (31-32). The caesura after “Hope” dramatically separates the speaker from the blessed Hope of the thrush (31). While the speaker refuses to accept the hope of the thrush, he acknowledges that there may be a blessed Hope, a shift from the tone of utter of the first two stanzas. One has to have something to refuse before he can refuse it—the speaker must believe that there is a blessed Hope before he can finally reject it. This consolation that there may be a blessed hope is not only seen within “The Darkling Thrush” but within lyric poetry as a whole.
Edward Hirsch describes one of the elements of the nature of lyric poetry as being able to move beyond despair, beyond desolation. One must first understand how Hirsch defines despair in order to move beyond it. According to Hirsch, there is a “sense of bewildering isolation” in this despair, “a sense of being spiritually lost” (161, 162). “The Darkling Thrush” is evidence of such despair, and at first glance, the reader does not believe the poem moves far beyond the realm of desolation. The speaker has lost himself in the “bewildering isolation” described by Hirsch and is isolated from life and from humanity as a whole (162). The broken lyre strings symbolize the speaker’s break from the spiritual realm—he is spiritually lost.
“Despair is turning away from human commerce, it is silence,” says Hirsch (157). The speaker is engulfed in silence, the horrible silence that coincides with despair within the first two stanzas of the poem. It does not seem after these first two stanzas that the speaker can lift himself from this utter desolation. He is bound to it, not even struggling to free himself. It is in the third stanza that the speaker breaks away from this “tempting ensnarement of inner desolation” (167). The “illimited joy” of the thrush’s song invades the speaker’s solitude. The dilapidated appearance of the thrush may help to console the speaker as he sees that something else in nature is feeling the desolation of death. The song of the thrush begins to move the speaker beyond complete despair, and the fourth stanza furthers this movement.
The speaker does not accept the quasi-spiritual hope the thrush offers. Although it is difficult for him to do so, he at least acknowledges that there is a hope, a step in moving beyond desolation. The fourth stanza establishes a hope within the song of the thrush, a hope of the spiritual, or merely a hope to move beyond despair. Even though the thrush’s hope does not console the speaker, it may console the reader to know that there is “some blessed Hope” (31). A reader who is ensnared by despair may find the song of illimited joy by a barely living thrush in an atmosphere of death comforting, knowing that there is still some hope.
Furthermore, Hirsch states that it is “consoling but also liberating to come across lyrics that articulate [one’s] own sense of distress” better than the reader is able to (162). It is the participation in the suffering, the reader’s sharing in the speaker’s pain that characterizes the nature of lyric poetry, or lyric lamentation. Lyric moves one beyond the desolate isolation of “The Darkling Thrush”, and “isolation is transformed into a relationship with the future reader;” the speaker is no longer alone but in the company of the reader (157). On the other hand, some readers may disagree, saying that there is no consolation because the speaker does not choose to believe in the hope or consolation of the thrush. But the consolation does not lie in acceptance, it is found in mere recognition of life in an atmosphere of death, of a spiritual hope among “strings of broken lyres” (6).
“A soul in action through words” is the final definition of lyric poetry given by Hirsch (245). The soul of Hardy’s speaker, perceived through images and language, appears as motionless as death itself. The song of the thrush shatters his isolation, moving his soul beyond absolute despair to awareness of some metaphysical blessed Hope. The speaker’s recognition necessitates the reader’s movement beyond desolation; it is the nature of lyric poetry. The struggle for recognition is the action of the soul.
Works Cited
Hardy, Thomas. “The Darkling Thrush.” The Norton Anthology of Poetry. Eds. Margaret Ferguson, Mary Jo Salter, and Jon Stallworthy. New York: Norton and Company, 1996. 150.
Hirsch, Edward. How to Read a Poem. New York: Harcourt Inc, 1999.