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The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy
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NatalieA wonderful choice of poem, and especially well-timed as 2016 comes to an end. Will you be providing us with some guiding questions or would you like us to dive right into the poem?
The Century's corpse outleantThis line is really speaking to me, as the current year is just a handful of hours from ending. What has been a very stressful year has overstayed, as if hanging on too long, and somehow, that word "outleant" captures this for me. But it doesn't seem to be an actual word. I love thinking of the current year as a "corpse".
Oh, you can just dive into the poem. But here are a few questions: (I don't really want to set myself up as questions master--or mistress---my technique is basically to interrogate each word).
What are tangled bine-stems?
What about the simile to broken lyres? What does that suggest?
Is it really comfy and snug that everyone has gone indoors?
Why is it the "corpse" of the century?
What is The "ancient pulse of germ and birth" and why is it
"shrunken hard and dry,"
What transformation does the thrush make?
Why does Hardy use the rather antiquated word "Darkling" in the title?
Why are birds so omnipresent in poetry? (i.e. Tennyson's eagle, Keats's nightingale, Shelley's skylark, Yeats's enameled bird and then his indignant desert birds?
The corpse in the poem seems to be the rural land (land features) confronting the narrator, and since it is the end of the 19th century, Hardy appears to be saying something about the end of rural life. A coppice...I had to look this up...is the collection of thin-stemmed trees raised to be cut down for firewood. I learned that the trees took 10-20 years to grow. Yow. Obviously the Industrial Revolution ended that! Just noticing: coppice and corpse.
The bines must be woodbine, and since Frost has arrived, the sole purpose of woodbine, blossoms, are nowhere to be seen. So there are just the "dregs", old vines crisscrossing the narrator's view. He must be low and looking up, since he sees the way the vines silhouette against the sky.
Linda wrote: "somehow, that word "outleant" captures this for me. But it doesn't seem to be an actual word. "Surprisingly, to me at least, the OED doesn't include it. So it seems not to be a "real" word (though of course Shakespeare invented many words, so why couldn't Hardy?)
But I'm not sure what he means by it. Nor what its connection, if any, is with the "leant" in the first line.
I think that "leant" is an archaic past tense for "lean" rather than the "leaned" we might expect. But it's just a guess.
I didn't even see that first "leant" as anything unusual, so much did the meaning of ""leaned" take its place. In looking up the definition, I came across an answer to the narrator's position. He is leaning back against the gate, which is supporting his body. I looked at coppice gates before, but pictured him pausing with maybe an arm propped on the top rail. Suddenly I see him in contemplative mode, staring up at sky, perhaps taking time from a task (collecting firewood?). Does that mean that "outleant " is just "leaned out"?
There is, as you mentioned, a transformation that the thrush makes, and to me this change is the central informative point of the poem. More specifically, Hardy defines the bird as an "aged thrush, frail, gaunt and small" who chooses to "fling his soul/Upon the growing gloom." What wonderful lines. The year, the century is ending, a century of enormous disruption to society, the world and, indeed, Hardy's own life. This pivotal point of time is marked by an " aged thrush" but this bird still seems to know something that the landscape and indeed the world around it is not aware. Why celebrate what, in reflection, has happened? Hardy reflects on "The Century's "corpse, " and incorporates words such as "crypt," "death-lament," "ancient," "shrunken hard and dry." And yet, upon these "bleak twigs overhead" sings "full-hearted" with " joy illimited" this solitary bird.
What is it this "aged" bird knows or can intuit that the surrounding bleak and battered world does not know? Could it be that there is still much wonder that can be teased out of the tatters of the past?
Certainly for Hardy the answer is yes. By this point in his life Hardy had left the pursuit of writing novels for that of writing poetry. Could this poem also be not a lament for what was, but rather a song for what is, and indeed what will become?
We have raised the question of Hardy's creative use of, and perhaps even invention of, words in this poem. Would it be too far of a stretch to ponder whether these new words are not, in some way, linked to the overall motif of the poem? To me, I can see how Hardy introduces new words into an old language as a parallel to the poem's belief that there is still good to come in the new century, in the new world. Indeed, Hardy writes
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
Hope has a capital "H."
I felt that the second stanza portrayed that eternal feeling of winter as death of the land, when in fact the ancient pulse of germ and birth brings out that idea of dormancy vs death-that is, that the earth remains alive under the dark and the snow, and that there is a spring coming in which the sun will return and the land will spring back to life. We greet the new year, and in this case the new century, with a feeling of having been through a trying time but with the promise of something better, a new season, to come.The thrush may also represent the optimism and hope for what is coming, even while passing through the dark winter-I loved the ...full hearted evensong of joy illimited.
Linda wrote: "The Century's corpse outleantThis line is really speaking to me, as the current year is just a handful of hours from ending. What has been a very stressful year has overstayed, as if hanging on t..."
I get the sense of a dead body with its limbs outstretched. There are a few esoteric words here.
Natalie wrote: "What are tangled bine-stems?"Thanks to the built-in OED on Kindle Fire, these are "long flexible stems of a climbing plant." These "score the sky" (5). My association with the word score are those lines on top of a fresh loaf of bread that you can see. They're semi-deep ridges. So, the speaker is focusing on the sky. But, these stems are cutting it into fragments, if you will.
This is obviously important to the speaker of the poem, because in addition to this image, he uses the simile, which brings us to your second question. If these are indeed stems from a climbing plant we would expect them to be serpentine. Thus, the broken lyre. If the lyre were not broken it's strings would be straight. So the winding stems are like the strings of a "broken lyre." The fact that the lyre is broken also reinforces the general feeling of something which is past its prime, ready to be thrown away. What else would one do with a broken instrument? Maybe the 19th century was a broken lyre. We used it up; it's no longer useful. Definitely a funereal feel to the first stanza, which leads into several funereal images in the second.
Natalie wrote: "Is it really comfy and snug that everyone has gone indoors?"It is funny that you use the words "comfy and snug" where there is no mention of it in the poem. That is the power of poetry I guess. Lines 7 and 8, certainly invoked that sensation in me as well. I suppose it is there tacitly. It seems these fireside people are seeking refuge from the desolate landscape.
Natalie wrote: "Why is it the "corpse" of the century? What is The "ancient pulse of germ and birth" and why is it
"shrunken hard and dry,"
The information you gave at the top answers the first question. It was literally the end of the 19th century (Dec. 1900) when Hardy wrote this. The speaker is simply reflecting the feelings of the poet (Hardy).
Lines 13-14, which you asked about, gave me the most trouble in this poem. My notes on "germ" say "seed, the beginning of life". For starters, "the ancient pulse" belonged to the "germ", it existed at the birth or the beginning of the 19th Century. That was almost 100 years before the time that this poem is set. The pulse, as a symbol of life, which literally brought this century to life, is now "ancient", "shrunken hard and dry".
One's pulse is in one's arteries. It seems the arteries of the Century, obvious personification of the latter, are hardening and that is causing its death.
Natalie wrote: "What transformation does the thrush make?"The entrance of the thrush is certainly the climax of the poem. It sure seems to be done purposely. In one sense, it is a turning point. In another sense, it is the high point.
I liken this to Haydn's "surprise" symphony where the music is kind of monotonous and consonant and then this much louder incongruous chord comes out of nowhere and kind of wakes the listener up.
Anyways, the speaker uses antithesis to create this high point/ turning point. Contrast the "fervourless" (16) speaker and the thrush who sings a song "of joy illimited" (20).
This ends up having a profound effect on the speaker. He infers "some blessed Hope" (31) "trembl[ing] through" (29) the thrush's song.
Fittingly, two stanzas are spent on the dreary landscape and the idea of death and two stanzas are spent on the thrush's song and the idea of hope. Clearly, the speaker personified the 19th Century as a dying corpse, without any hope. The entrance of the singing thrush, caused the speaker to begin to look to the 20th Century with hope.
It seems like the discussion here died out pretty quickly. I will offer a few questions to spark a revival. We have yet to discuss the music of the poem. This was something my 19th C. English Lit teacher always tried to get us to answer. What do you make of the heavy-handed use of alliteration in lines (10-11)?
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy.
What about the structure of the poem? Why did the speaker of the poem focus on the landscape for two stanzas and the thrush for two stanzas?
The poet capitalized four words out of place in an obvious attempt to emphasize these words (Frost (2), Winter's (3), Century's (10), Hope (31)?
Linda wrote: "I didn't even see that first "leant" as anything unusual, so much did the meaning of ""leaned" take its place."I will chime in with an observation since everyone is obsessed with this word. Hardy obviously chose this word on purpose. He sticks pretty tightly to his rhyme scheme throughout the poem. (ABABCDCD) There are only two places where there is neither a perfect rhyme or an eye rhyme. "outleant/lament" and "small/soul". That is, unless this mysterious word is pronounced "out-lent". Perhaps the important word was "lament" and he had to choose what is called a "near-rhyme", what with the matching "l" sounds and the same ending "nt". That's the problem with rhyming poetry, sometimes you have to choose words for their sounds rather than to convey precise meaning. I still prefer rhyming poetry though.
Jonathan wrote: "It seems like the discussion here died out pretty quickly. I will offer a few questions to spark a revival. We have yet to discuss the music of the poem. This was something my 19th C. English Lit..."
Yes. It is always a good idea to focus on words that are capitalized that do not occur at the beginning of a new line.
Looking at the four words we have a progression from "Frost," an initial form of cold, to "Winter's" which places the reader firmly into a time frame. Next comes "Century's" which again gives us a very specific time frame. If the reader is uncertain about "Frost" and "Winter's" there is much less uncertainty of time with the word "Century's."
When we add the words that follow the capitalized ones we can see more clearly the progression of time. We have "Frost was spectre-grey" then "Winter's dregs made desolate" and finally the culmination of the "spectre-grey...dregs made desolate" with "The Century's corpse outleant." If we overlay this progression of time with the century that has just past we see Hardy as lamenting the time that has past, or perhaps, more accurately, lamenting all that was not positive and lost in the 19C.
The fourth capitalized word is "Hope." Is this Hardy now not looking back, but rather looking forward into the 20C? Does he see hope in a new beginning, a new century? I think so.
This poem was written at the cusp of the 20C. Hardy lived well into that century and saw how it was evolving. Hardy lived through WWI. By the end of his life his hope for a renewal, for a spring of life to follow the winter of the century past, was dreary and dead. Harry's last words in this poem are "I was unaware." How tragic. Or are those words conscious and eerie?
Jonathan asks some great questions. Hardy's use of alliteration runs through the poems of his entire and long poetic career, I believe. Is it too much? Why so much? FR Leavis, now almost unknown but once one of the foremost literary critics, said words to the effect that Hardy wrote almost 1000 poems but only 6 of them are good. Alliteration in his poems and melodrama in his novels have earned Hardy a very mixed reputation. Loved more by readers than professional critics, Hardy's "greatness" (for want of a better word) has been disputed sometimes with great animosity.
And indeed when I said above that people were "comfy and snug" I was being ironic---Hardy invited me to irony more often than not, but I see him as a melancholic ironist more than anything else.
You mentioned these two lines:
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy.
I think that Hardy is trying to be unmusical: the dactyls and the spondees typically belong in different musical/poetical neighborhoods and perhaps Hardy is having an Alban Berg moment. The lack of conventional poetic "music" here makes the lines slow down and announce themselves prominently.
Thank you, Jonathan and Peter, Frances and Linda for all you have said. I will be back when I've drunk at the trough of caffeine.
Peter wrote: ""Winter's dregs made desolate""Peter brought up this line, which made me wonder a bit about the setting of the poem. Hardy wrote this in December (the beginning of winter), but this mention of winter's dregs seems to refer to winter's end. The dregs are the last few bits of something. Hence the thrush at once represents spring, hope, and the 20th C. In the speaker's view it seems, the 20th C. does not really begin until the spring of the following year. He ties winter into death and this winter in particular is a long funeral for the 19th C.
This use of seasons to represent to represent death and rebirth is common in English poetry. Does anyone see any way in which Hardy deviates from poetic norms? Or, does he mainly stick with the fixtures of those who had come before? Like, the common use of birds for instance.
Natalie wrote: "I think that Hardy is trying to be unmusical"By unmusical, do you mean that these lines are cacophonous? I agree with unmusical in this sense. This definitely emphasizes these lines. The fact that this is only place in the poem, to my recollection, that uses alliteration, and the fact that is extensive leads me to believe that the poet was purposefully drawing attention to these lines. That winter represents the death of the century is, after all, his main point.
Jonathan wrote: "Peter wrote: ""Winter's dregs made desolate""Peter brought up this line, which made me wonder a bit about the setting of the poem. Hardy wrote this in December (the beginning of winter), but this..."
I don't see Hardy as deviating in any ongoing major way from any established poetic norms. Yes, there must be alteration and change for a poet's own unique fingerprint, but I don't see Hardy as radical in terms of style.
Now, in terms of what he could say as a poet that was not yet "allowed" as a novelist, I do find Hardy the poet much more open and expressive than Hardy the novelist.
Only speculation, but I have often wondered what a Hardy novel would have been like post WWI? Indeed, what would a Hardy novel been like if he had written alongside Joseph Conrad?
I did look up "dregs" in the OED and there are 88 unique definitions. One possibility is a reference to "ash" or "dust" which are heaps of garbage filled with merde of all kinds (mostly horse). The dust mounds of London were notorious--and dust is primarily a euphemism.
Another obscure definition of "dregs" is what some people called the rituals of the Catholic church. Although Hardy was certainly an atheist, perhaps he sets up his thrush as a kind of chorister caroling?
Peter wrote: "Now, in terms of what he could say as a poet that was not yet "allowed" as a novelist, I do find Hardy the poet much more open and expressive than Hardy the novelist."
I do find that poetry has been used through the ages to say what otherwise couldn't be said. That is true on more than one level even. Dr. F, my English Lit professor, talked about the need for poetry to express deep feelings that could not otherwise be put into words. I have seen examples where fear of political backlash leads one to encode one's message in poetry or another form of Lit.
Thank you, Peter and Jonathan. I think you are correct. There are various reasons: novels were at the time published with the publisher (or serial journal) intent on making money (just like today) so they would be reluctant to embark upon poetry unless the poet was a well-established celebrity.And poetry with its relative brevity could find a spot in many small journals. While it's true that poetry books were published frequently, poets had the luxury of using the space to publish some poems that were experimental or bitter or atheistic or "difficult" in assorted ways.
Mod
Kerstin wrote: "The thrush, completely oblivious of these dark musings, simply by acting according to its nature, breaks the paralysis and and thereby points toward life. "The entrance of the thrush sure is an interesting climax. I can see three dichotomies between the first two and the last two stanzas:
Hopelessness vs. hope
Gloom vs. Joy
Death vs. Life
I would say the thrush represents hope, joy, and life simultaneously. This would be a good poem to read with family and friends every New Year's Eve.
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.
31 December 1900
…………................……—Thomas Hardy
*******************
Hardy wrote this at the century's end, but the poem remains evergreen for each new year's turning of the calendar leaves. The use of the word "darkling" immediately makes me think of John Keats and his "Darkling I listen" in his brilliant Nightingale ode. Hardy's little bird has, in his song, the transformative power to render some promise to a bleak and "fervourless" scene.