Write the summary and explanation of the Poem entitled "The Dark

Write the summary and explanation of the Poem entitled “The Darkling Thrush”.

Ans.

Summary of the Poem

One wintry evening Hardy was standing leisurely but in a pensive mood at a coppice gate. This evening was the last evening of the 19th century. The light of the setting sun was getting more and more dim on account of Frost and winter. The sky showed the same design as the earth; here below, it was a criss-cross design formed by entangling of climbing plants in the hedge. The place looked deserted as the people in the neighbourhood had retired to their houses to sit by fire.

The 19th Century had come to an end. It was to be buried this very day. The land’s surface formed its crypt and the cloudy sky, its canopy. The wind was singing its funeral lament. The mother earth was shrunken hard and dry by grief and every creature on it seemed as spiritless as the poet himself.

All at once a voice came from among the twigs overhead. It was an evening song of boundless joy from the bottom of a bird’s heart. The bird was none other than a small, old, weak and haggard thrush with feathers ruffled by the blast, who had decided to pour out his song on this gloomy evening.

The joyful singing of the thrush astounded the poet since he could not find any immediate cause for it nor could he co-relate the song with the surroundings in which it was being sung. Nothing on the earth seemed to favour the ecstasy of the thrush but then nothing happens without some cause. The thrush was singing perhaps of come future hope whereof he knew but the poet was unaware.

EXPLANATIONS

1. 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 threshold fires.

Explanation with Reference to the Context- This is the opening stanza of ‘The Darkling Thrush‘ composed by Victorian poet, Thomas Hardy. The poet composed this poem when the nineteenth-century was passing and the new century was beginning. Though Nature is full or beauty yet the poet is not happy. The poem is a combination of pleasure and sadness..

The poet begins the poem with a gaze upon the beauty of Nature. He watched at the beginning of the forest where the small tress were grown for periodical cutting. It was the gateway of the forest. It was afternoon yet the frost was present in the atmosphere in considerable measure. The dirt of the winter was making the evening full of desolation. The sun was going to set. On the other side creepers were climbing upward with twisted branches. These stems seemed to the poet as these are the broken strings of a lyre. Human beings were returning towards their houses. They seemed worried and watched their houses red like the fading rays of the sun.

2. The land’s sharp features seemed to be

The Century & 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.

Explanation with Reference to the Context- This stanza has been selected from “The Darkling Thrush’ composed by Thomas Hardy. The poet in the beginning finds Nature pretty but gradually he alters his emotions. He finds the nineteenth-century passing in the beginning of the winter. It was a fine period that passed by and now be imagines this century as a human being.

Hardy finds that the Nature in winter season is not shining and brightly as it has been earlier. One century is passing behind. The frosty afternoon with setting sun is mourning on the death of the departing year. Nature made a covering over the dead bod of the year. Clouds are the shroud of century.

The wind is making a howling march with lament. Seeds buried in the earth cannot sprout during winter as they have been frozen by the winter. Everything in the Nature looks desolate like the poet.

Note- In the third line of the stanza alliteration is used in a musical manner. The poet creates the confusion of the atmosphere that everything is fail yet. Nature and poet, both are desolate at the death of Century.

3. At once a voice arose among

The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted even song

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.

Explanation with Reference to the Context- This stanza emerges in the poem The Darkling Thrush’ composed by Thomas Hardy. The poet wants to remain happy through the natural aspect of the Nature but he reminds his sadness on the death of the departing year which is the last year of the Century.

The poet mourns at the death of departing century. He does not find Nature happy even in the beautiful spectacle. The gloom pervaded in the atmosphere is broken by the sweet song of haggard thrush. He does not know from where this sound come through the upper region of colourless branches of the trees. The bird sang with full voice but the bird too was weak, small, old and his plumes did not look full of energy. This bird too was sad on the death of the departing century but it wanted to remove the glocn into joy.

Note- The poet is not completely pessimist. He finds a say of hope in the song of thrush.

4. 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.

Explanation with Reference to the Context- This concluding stanza exists in ‘The Darkling Thrush’ composed by Hardy. It has been a romantic fashion of the Victorian poets that they found the earth full of vice. There is a sense of escapism from world and its concerns. Nature knows better than these poets.

Hardy finds the world sad. He wants to mourn on the death of the year. Time is passing and the poet feels pessimist. He listen the sweet song of thrush. The song was sweet as well as full of joy. He never thought to listen such a sweet song on the earth as the thrush sang. The song broke the monotony of atmosphere, wind and night. He thinks that the bird should posses some supernatural power or it should have some specific knowledge of music which the poet claims not to possess himself.

Note- Hardy decides himself to be a petty singer in comparison of the thrush in the same way as Shelley thinks in To A Skylark and Keats, in Ode to A Nightingale.