englishsahitya: The Darkling Thrush

The Darkling Thrush

Stanza 1 Summary

Lines 1-2

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray

So it's winter. Or at least a very cold and dreary autumn. We're not talking springtime and puppies and balloons here. We're talking cold and ice and gray, gray, gray. You excited? We sure are.
Our speaker's leaning up against a gate leading to a big patch of brush and brambles. In other words, this is no walk in Central Park. (Since we're dealing with the other side of the pond, we should probably be talking about London's Hyde Park. But you get the idea.)
What's he doing? Well….nothing. Not that we can tell, at any rate. In fact, this poem is about a whole lot of Nothing. You'll see what we mean in just a minute.
Just who is this "I," anyway? Well, we'll get to that in our "Speaker" discussion. The quick and dirty version, however, is that he's probably your friendly neighborhood downer. That's right: he's the guy that's sucking on lemons when everyone else is drinking lemonade. Don't believe us? Read on, friends, read on.
One quick note: see how Frost gets a capital "F"? It's almost as if Frost attains human-like characteristics. After all, humans have proper names that get capitalized. Elements of nature, like snow and ice and frost, tend not to have proper names. Unless, of course, you're in a Hardy poem. Then, all bets are off.
Before we move on, though, we'd like to emphasize the "almost human" part of Frost's description. Here's what we mean: our speaker thinks that Frost is "spectre-gray." "Spectre" is a fancy nineteenth-century word for "ghost." So if Frost is human-like (with a capital letter), it's also ghost-like, which is not exactly human. Hmm. Non-human humans? Are you confused yet? We sure are.

Lines 2-4

And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day

Now that we've established how dreary this winter day is, our speaker takes the opportunity to hammer home the point one more time.
If you're a coffee drinker, you know that the dregs are those nasty, grainy, bitter things that cling to the bottom of your cup and make your last sip of caffeinated goodness taste like sludge. If you're not a coffee drinker, you can take our word for it: dregs are nowhere near delicious.
So when our speaker says that we're in the dregs of winter, he wants to make it clear that this is not the pretty falling snow that you see in Christmas specials. This stuff's gray and grimy. Think Fargo, not White Christmas.
Oh, and have we mentioned that our speaker's up to his animist tricks again? (Check out what we have to say in Hardy's "Calling Card" about this. The man's a big, big fan of animism.) Day's got an eye. Winter seems to be a person. They may be one foot in the grave already – but they're more alive than any of the other things that we've encountered in the poem thus far.
Speaking of dying, we should mention that this whole world seems mostly dead. After all, as our speaker sees it, day was already weakening before Winter's dregs started making things even worse.
As we pointed out in our "In a Nutshell" section, Hardy writes this poem at the end of the nineteenth century. But we're not celebrating the new century and looking ahead to good times. No, sir. We're very, very, very unhappy. It's like that kid at elementary school graduation who starts sobbing about how much he's going to miss school lunch. Sheesh.
Then again, maybe that's just out twenty-first century biases kicking in. After all, the nineteenth century was a pretty scary place to be. Who's to say that the twentieth century wasn't even worse? Maybe our speaker is right to be so concerned.

Lines 5-6

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres

Our speaker's still in descriptive mode. As he gazes into the patch of tangled brushes, he can only see…death and destruction.
In this case, the vines in front of him look a lot like the broken bits of a lyre, a classical harp-like instrument. In other words, if you were hoping for songs and music, folks, look somewhere else. There is no music or happiness here. We repeat, no music. No happiness. Sorrow. Pain. SUFFERING!
OK, now we're as caught up in melodrama as our speaker. We've got to admit, it's sort of fun. You should try it sometime.
On a serious note, we should point out that Hardy's working hard to incorporate classical allusions (read: references to ancient times, specifically, Greece and Rome in the olden days) into this poem. Talking about weather like it's a person is something that just about every ancient religion spent a good deal of time doing.
The lyre is a classical instrument, as we said. It also makes a cameo in scores upon scores of old poems. Hardy's twist on things is to point out that even these classical elements, the stock and trade of traditional poetry, are on their way out.
We've got some thoughts about this. Check out what we have to say in "Symbolism, Imagery, Wordplay."

Lines 7-8

And all mankind that haunted night
Had sought their household fires.

If we had any doubts about our speaker being a loner, they're laid to rest here. (Hey, who wouldn't want to spend some time with this guy? That's what we want to know.)
It turns out that it's past the time when normal folk are out and about. It's probably getting late, in fact, judging from the way that the speaker suggests that everyone else he knows is curled up by the fire, enjoying dinner and maybe even a nice cuppa tea. There is life out there somewhere, it just doesn't happen to be anywhere nearby.
Or wait…is there life out there? After all, our speaker makes it clear that the people who were out and about earlier were "haunting" the landscape. We're back to the whole sorta-human-but-not-really thing that was going on a few lines earlier.
We've got a theory about why Hardy's so bound and determined to make this poem into a prequel for Night of the Living Dead. Here goes:
Hardy's writing at the end of the Industrial Revolution, which turned the nineteenth century onto its head. Britain transformed almost overnight: what was once a mainly agrarian nation (that's farmers, by the way) became industrial. People migrated to cities, which soon became packed with smog and soot and all sorts of other nasty things.
More to Hardy's point, though, the Industrial Revolution changed how work was done. Men and women used to be in charge of their own lives. Sure, they were poor. Maybe they even worked as peasants for rich landowners. But they were in touch with the land and they got to control their own schedules. (You could play the theme song to The Sound of Music just about now. You know, the one that goes on about how the hills are alive?)
Once people started working in factories, however, all that changed. They had to work 12 or 14-hour a day jobs doing the same mind-numbing tasks over and over and over. They never saw the sun. In fact, they turned pale as…ghosts. (You can see where we're going with this one, huh?)
If you want some devastating descriptions of factories and industry messing people up, check out Mary Barton by Elizabeth Gaskell.
So if folks are walking around like ghosts, it might just be because industry has turned them into automatons. It's sort of like those scary sci-fi movies from the '70s that feature robots taking over peoples' lives.
Then again, Hardy could just be turning the end of the century into the End of Days. As in, the world is about to come crashing down around our ears at any moment. You're all almost dead already. See?
Either way, it's pretty clear to see that our speaker, much like Hardy himself, is no big fan of the modern age.

Stanza 2 Summary

Lines 9-10

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant

Ah, now we're getting to the good stuff. The land becomes a map of everything that's happened over the course of the century. In fact, it starts to embody the Century. Or at least, the dead century.
Why is the Century "outleant"? Heck, is "outleant" even a word? You've got us there, folks. According to the good people at the Oxford English Dictionary, "outleant" is not and never has been a word.
Before we start calling shenanigans, though, we should point out that this is one of several non-words in Hardy's poem. "Darkling," anyone? Hardy's probably not just making up words because it's fun. (OK, making up words is pretty fun. If you don't believe us, check with Disney. They got all sorts of mileage out of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. But that's not our point.)
What was our point? Oh, yeah: non-words. We're guessing that Hardy's speaker sees himself at the end of an era. It's a Huge Moment. It's so huge, in fact, that the English language just doesn't have enough words for him to describe what he's seeing. That's where all of these new words come in.
We've got to admit, this isn't exactly a travel brochure, is it? (As in, come to England…where everything looks like rotting corpses." Hmm.)

Lines 11-12

His crypt the cloudy canopy
The wind his death-lament

Since we're on the subject of death….
The century is dead. Dead as a doornail.
But have you noticed that, by this point, we're spending far more time discussing the once-life of abstract concepts like "Winter" or "the Century" than we have spent discussing people. It's a nifty sleight-of-hand, actually: Hardy's speaker makes us focus on the death of inanimate (or conceptual) things that we forget that they're not alive. Or, well, dying.
All of nature seems to conspire to mourn the passing of the century. The sense that the outer world will mimic or manifest your own emotions a very Romantic notion (as in, Wordsworthian. Not bodice-ripping Harlequins novels. Take our word for it, they're very different things).
A Romantic poet might believe that if you're smiling, the sun would come out. Hardy's at least a century away from the Romantics, but he seems to be stealing a few tricks from their bag in this particular phrase.

Lines 13-14

The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry

We've said it before, we'll say it again. Death and decay, folks. Got it?
Notice, though, that even as our speaker gets off on the ending of all things, the poem's rhythm remains utterly constant and conventional. Here's what we mean:
Try reading lines 13-14 aloud. They should sound something like this: The AN-cient-PULSE-of-GERM-and-BIRTH / Was-SHRUNK-en-HARD-and-DRY.
Notice how there's a totally regular pattern of accented and unaccented syllables? All in all, it's a conventional rhythm. Which, when you're talking about death and decay and everything changing, is pretty surprising. You'd expect that the poem's rhythm would be all over the place.
It just goes to prove that old, old saying: the beat goes on. It's almost like there's tension between the regularity of the rhythm and the huge void that the speaker seems to see in the actual world.
We should point out here that these two lines are heavy hitters when it comes to Hardy's own personal symbolism. He's totally into metaphors of germination (or, in other words, the process of a seed developing into a plant). Or, in this case, failed germination. Check out what we have to say about it in "Symbolism, Imagery, Wordplay."

Lines 15-16

And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

OK, back up just a second here. Wasn't the whole place emptied out by now?
Yes, it was. In fact, the speaker says so, right about at line 8. So where do all these spirits come from?
We're guessing that, by this time, the speaker is so wrapped up in his gloom-and-dooming that he's starting to get a little free-and-easy with his descriptions. It's sort of like when you've just had a no good, very bad day: suddenly everything seems absolutely horrible. There's just no standing in the way of melodrama.
So the place seemed cleared out earlier? Well, that's just too bad. Our speaker has more depressing descriptions to share. And he happens to need some people around in order to do it.
Speaking of melodrama, did you notice how hard Hardy's working to point out that there are no real people in this poem? He takes just about every chance that he can get to push the point home: why, for example, does he choose to use the word "spirit" instead of "person"?
Hardy's being a clever, clever man here. He allows his speaker to refer to humans-as-ghosts (or ghosts-as-humans) by using one little bitty word.

Stanza 3 Summary

Lines 17-20

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;

So the first thing that you've probably noticed is that we're taking on a whole four lines in this section. We're moving up, folks.
Don't worry, we're not trying to get out of explaining the poem line-by-line. It's just that the third stanza marks a significant shift in the poem. See, up until now, the poem seemed to break itself up into four-line chunks. How do we know this? Well, for one thing, there's a period every four lines or so.
Now, though, things are changing. At the end of line 20, we don't have a period. We have a semi-colon! Sure, it's half a period. But it's also half a comma. The sentence goes on for another – wait for it – four whole lines! It's like the poem is breathing a sigh of relief and opening up. Heck, who wouldn't want to talk about joy for a little bit longer?
Why? Well, that's because things are looking up. All of a sudden, out of all that silence and death and never-ending grayness, our speaker hears something. And not just any sound – this is an all-out love song. It's full and beautiful and chock-full of happiness.
But who's singing this happy song? We'll see….

Lines 21-22

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,

Now we're talking. After all, we were told in the title that this poem was about a thrush, right? It's taken us three and a half stanzas to get to the bird, though, and we bet plenty of you were beginning to wonder if the title was a weird attempt to fool us. But, three-quarters of the way through the poem, the thrush makes its star appearance.
But wait. What kind of star is this? Old, weak, and tiny? This sounds like more of the gloominess that dogged us all the way through the first parts of the poem. If any of you were thinking that this poem might be at all like that other famous poem about a bird, you're probably re-thinking that just about now. After all, Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale" is full of pretty things and, well, a pretty bird.
Whatever this bird is, though, it sure ain't pretty. Keats's poem is about the undying voice of the nightingale. The bird's immortal, for crying out loud. Hardy's bird, in comparison, is stuck in the middle of a nasty storm. The best thing that the speaker can say about the bird is that it somehow manages to exist in all of that feather-ruffling wind.

Lines 23-24

Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

Jealous, are we? As frail and puny as this bird is, it's managed to do what our speaker has been too scared to do: to forget about the odds and just sing. Sure, the chances are that the bird won't be able to do anything to make the "growing gloom" one ounce lighter. But it's willing to try.
Then again, it's managed to draw the attention of our speaker. And that's no small thing.

Stanza 4 Summary

Lines 25-26

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,

Once again, the first four lines of the stanza start to bleed into each other. It's almost as if the speaker is gathering momentum as he continues to hear the thrush singing.
But, as the speaker himself points out, there's no good reason for the bird to be singing. We read about it ourselves: the world is a dead, dead, dead place. So why all this song?
Well, you've got us. Frankly, you've got our speaker, too. He can't seem to figure out why the bird wouldn't match his pitch to his surroundings. After all, that's what our speaker has done. The world seems crummy and depressing? Fine. I'll write a crummy and depressing poem. Satisfied?
But now our speaker's questioning his own choices. Sure, he's not doing it outright. After all, would you back down and change your mind in the middle of a poem you've been working really hard to finish? But we can see that the speaker's starting to understand that there might be other ways to imagine his art than just as a reflection his surroundings. After all, didn't you hear from every elementary school art teacher ever that art should be an expression of your soul? Maybe "ecstasy" doesn't come from without. Maybe it comes from within.
Of course, true Hardy-style, it's not another human being that brings our speaker this revelation. It's nature. And "art" isn't really "art," exactly. It's a birdsong. But in Hardy's mind, the more natural an art form is, the better.

Lines 29-30

That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air

OK, the bird is happy. Maybe our speaker's even a little comforted by the thought of the bird's company.
But he's not going to let on that he's happy. Oh, no. That would be way too cheerful. Instead, he plays it cool. He's not sure that the bird is singing a happy song. He just thinks that he could think the bird is happy. (Whew. How's that for complicated feelings?)
Notice Hardy's emphasis on the conditional here: instead of remarking that the speaker does think something, he notes that the speaker could think it.
Could, should, and would are all what our grandparents used to call "weasel words" – they suggest that something's possible, but they don't commit to anything.
It's sort of like that friend of yours who always says that he could be interested in going out on Friday night. Translated, that means "If there's nothing else for me to do, I might think about coming. But don't bank on it."

Lines 31-32

Some blessed Hope, of which he knew
And I was unaware.

Welcome to the twentieth century, folks. Hardy's poem ushers in the century with the last two lines: in them, he captures the worldview of most of the major writers of the next thirty years.
See, Modernists do want to believe that there's something lovely and wonderful and fulfilling out there in the world. They just can't figure out how to get from their present state of unhappiness, decay, and corruption to that happiness and peace.
Hardy negotiates the two extremes perfectly here: our speaker can sense Hope, but it's unintelligible to him – and not just because he doesn't happen to speak bird.

englishsahitya

Sunday, 17 March 2013

The Darkling Thrush...stanza wise Summery

The Darkling Thrush

The Darkling Thrush

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