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Tyler Blanchette
ENGL 210 Essay #2
The Image of the Bird in “The Darkling Thrush”
“The Darkling Thrush” is a poem by Thomas Hardy that accurately portrays the
bleak and desolate nature experienced by the modernists of the early 20th century. What is
most significant is how “The Darkling Thrush” acts as something of a tribute and an
antithesis to the poetry of the 19th century Romantic poets. This connection between
Hardy and the Romantics can be seen through the symbol of the thrush when compared
to John Keats' “Ode to a Nightingale.” The England that Hardy sees is one that is a
desolate and dying shell of its former self as the 19th century ends and the 20th century
begins. Conversely, Keats does not necessarily look at the world for what it is, but rather
he chooses to explore the realm of imagination that transcends the physical. While the
two of these views contrast one another, they both use a bird as a symbol of joy and
freedom.
Much like his Modernist brethren, Thomas Hardy sees the world as something
that is rotten and dying, and there is nothing that can be done about it. “The Darkling
Thrush” accurately describes this gloom that engulfs Hardy, more specifically, it can be
seen in the following passage: “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
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fervourless as I”("The Darkling Thrush," ll. 9-16, NA, 1871). In this particular stanza,
Hardy makes the unique connection of showing time and place to be part of the same
entity. The fact that “the land's sharp features” were shown as “The Century's corpse
outleant” shows that the 19th century is dying alongside the land of England. Expanding
this connection even more, Hardy's speaker makes the claim that the rest of the world
around him is just as gloomy and fervourless as he is. This seems to pervert the typical
Romantic notion of being at one with nature. While the speaker is technically at one with
nature, it is a far less glorious experience than the Romantics would portray it as.
The second half of the poem introduces the character and symbol of the thrush.
The thrush is the one aspect of nature that acts against what the rest of the world is
feeling. Despite the death and gloom that surrounds it, the thrush decides to sing a song
of joy, which is incomprehensible to the speaker of the poem. The song of the thrush is
described in the following passage: “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”(17-24). At this point, it is the song of the thrush that makes this poem in to the
Modernist antithesis to the ecstacy of the Romantics. The bird is not a young, bright, or
vibrant bird. The thrush is old, worn down, and bleak, yet in spite of this, the bird chooses
to sing a song of joy. Hardy's speaker is intrigued by this joyful song that he hears from
the bird, but rather than savoring the song, the speaker chooses to continue wallowing in
his despair and question the validity and reasoning behind the bird's joyful singing. The
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speaker concludes the poem in what appears to be a complete failure to reach the
transcendental state that the Romantics sing the praises of. It can be seen most clearly in
the following passage: “That I could think there trembled through His happy good-night
air Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew And I was unaware”(29-32). Solidifying the
bleak atmosphere of the world, the speaker finds himself completely unable to see the joy
that the thrush is singing of. This instance of failing to recognize beauty in a desolate
world marks the failure of Romantic sentiments in the mind of the speaker. Because the
speaker is unable to understand the joy that the bird sings of, he loses his oneness and
unity with nature and the world around him.
Conversely to “The Darkling Thrush,” John Keats “Ode to a Nightingale”
demonstrates a joyful unity with nature that is brought on by the joyous song of a
nightingale. In this poem which is known as aesthetic poetry, Keats' speaker finds himself
in a dreary state that is similar to the speaker in “The Darkling Thrush” at the beginning
of the poem. The speaker of “Ode to a Nightingale” could even be seen as beginning in a
worse mental state than the speaker of “The Darkling Thrush” as supported in this
passage: “My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock
I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minute past, and Lethe-wards
had sunk”(“Ode to a Nightingale,” ll. 1-4, NA, 878). Keats' speaker is in such a state of
heartache that he compares his feeling to sinking to a river of hell, and he desperately
desires alcohol of some kind to help deliver him from this state. However, the thing that
the speaker finds that delivers him from the state of melancholy is not a drink or drug, but
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it is the song of a nightingale that he observes. Upon seeing this nightingale, the speaker
has an intense ecstatic experience, as demonstrated by the following: “Away! Away! For I
will fly to thee, Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards, But on the viewless wings of
Poesy, Though the dull brain perplexes and retards”(31-34). The song of the nightingale
is something so joyful that it is able to act as a substitute for alcohol or some other
euphoria inducing substance, and the speaker is able to use his imagination and poesy to
give himself a transcendental experience. This is the experience and poetic ability that
Keats himself refers to as negative capability. The speaker denies the logic of the brain,
and simply accepts the joy that is seen around him.
It is, then, perhaps the contrast between raw emotion and cold logic that creates the
contrast between Thomas Hardy's portrayal of the bird's song and John Keats' ode.
Firstly, the birds are drastically different from one another physically. While Hardy's
thrush is old and weak, Keats describes the nightingale as such: “Thou wast not born for
death, immortal Bird! No hungry generations tread thee down; The voice I hear this
passing night was heard In ancient days by emperor and clown” (61-64). The most
interesting thing to draw from this contrast is that Keats writes from the beginning of the
19th century, and Hardy writes of the end of the 19th century with the beginning of the 20th
century. Keats' bird is youthful and seen with broad imagination at the dawn of the 19th
century, yet as England advances through the 19th century, the world becomes more
mechanized with the dawn of the Industrial Revolution, and as a result, the emotions and
feelings from the Romantic era have faded away into a bird that is old, worn down, and
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weak. Thomas Hardy's speaker seems to express the same need as Keats' for a
transcendental experience, yet the difference between Hardy's thrush and Keats'
nightingale is that Hardy's thrush is worn down like the Romantic feelings that used to be
prevalent in England's society. It is because of these societal changes that Hardy's speaker
is unable to have the transcendental experience with nature that he is seeking. Hardy's
speaker responds to the song of the thrush with a logical approach, questioning the
motives for the thrush's song. He shows his lack of understanding in the following
passage: “So little cause for carolings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial
things”(25-27). Conversely to this reaction, Keats' decides that he will simply accept the
song of the nightingale, and it takes him away to a transcendental state.
In literature, the bird is seen as a symbol of freedom and joy, and in Thomas
Hardy's “The Darkling Thrush,” Hardy paints a bleak picture that contrasts the bleak and
desolate world of early 20th century England with this symbol of joy. “The Darkling
Thrush” acts as something of an antithesis to the Romantic ideals expressed by Keats'
“Ode to a Nightingale” in the early 19th century. Keats' presents a joyful experience in
which the song of a nightingale brings the speaker out of a depressed rut that he thought
could only be remedied by alcohol. By contrasting the two poems, one can see that Keats'
Romantic ideas are something that were strong at the beginning of the 19th century, yet
alongside the bird, the emotions and ideas of Romanticism became old and weak. Despite
this, however, the bird and the feelings still existed, they were just in a realm that people
of the time were not able to understand and experience. Even though Hardy's speaker
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sees the entire world around him as dying, the bird somehow remains alive and singing
for joy among the ruin and the death of the 19th century's end.