discuss the critical analysis of Thomas Hardy's poem the darkling thrush
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Answer:
The Darkling Thrush” is a poem by the English poet and novelist Thomas Hardy. The poem describes a desolate world, which the poem’s speaker takes as cause for despair and hopelessness. However, a bird (the “thrush”) bursts onto the scene, singing a beautiful and hopeful song—so hopeful that the speaker wonders whether the bird knows something that the speaker doesn’t. Written in December 1900, the poem reflects on the end of the 19th century and the state of Western civilization. The desolation of the scene the speaker sees serves as an extended metaphor for the decay of Western civilization, while the thrush is a symbol for its possible rebirth through religious faith.
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“The Darkling Thrush” is a poem by the English poet and novelist Thomas Hardy. The poem describes a desolate world, which the poem’s speaker takes as cause for despair and hopelessness. However, a bird (the “thrush”) bursts onto the scene, singing a beautiful and hopeful song—so hopeful that the speaker wonders whether the bird knows something that the speaker doesn’t. Written in December 1900, the poem reflects on the end of the 19th century and the state of Western civilization. The desolation of the scene the speaker sees serves as an extended metaphor for the decay of Western civilization, while the thrush is a symbol for its possible rebirth through religious faith.
Read the full text of “The Darkling Thrush”
“The Darkling Thrush” Summary
I was leaning on a gate, on a path leading into a forest. The frost was gray as a ghost and the last of the winter day made the sun look bleak as it descended. The tangled stems of climbing plants cut across the sky like the strings of a broken musical instrument. And all the people that lived nearby had gone away to the warmth of their homes.
The land’s harsh hills and cliffs seemed like the corpse of the just-ended century, leaning out. And the clouds hanging above seemed like the century's tomb, while the wind seemed like a sad song played upon its death. The age-old urge to reproduce and grow had shriveled up. And every living thing on earth seemed as depressed as me.
All of a sudden, a voice rose up from the dreary twigs overhead, singing an evening prayer with limitless joy. He was a bird, frail and old, skinny and small, with his feathers rumpled by the wind. He had decided to sing with all his soul in the increasing dark.
There was no cause for such joyful singing—at least no cause was evident in the world around me. So I thought the bird's happy song carried some secret and holy hope, something that he knew about