The Darkling Thrush
By Thomas Hardy
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.
“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.
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 but I didn’t.
Themes
Nature and the Decline of Human Civilization
"The Darkling Thrush” appears to be a poem about a winter landscape, which the speaker describes in considerable detail. On a symbolic level, however, this landscape is an extended metaphor: its bleakness and decay reflect the state of Western culture at the end of the 19th century. The speaker describes Western culture in a state of desolation: it seems to be damaged and dead, without the possibility of rebirth or resurrection. In this sense, the poem is both an elegy for and a rejection of that culture, providing a subtle critique of the way that the West has failed to take care of its own natural and cultural resources.
In the first stanza, the speaker compares “tangled-bine stems”—the stems of a climbing plant—to the “strings of broken lyres.” The “lyre” is a significant symbol: it represents poetry and, more broadly, the cultural accomplishment of Western civilization. Its broken strings suggest that Western culture itself has fallen into disrepair or, like the “bine-stems,” has not been properly maintained and pruned. In other words, the speaker thinks that things have grown unruly and gotten out of hand.
The second stanza expands on this idea, with a series of metaphors that describe the landscape as embodying the death of the 19th century and its culture. The speaker compares the landscape’s “sharp features” to “the Century’s corpse.” Since the poem was written late in 1900, most scholars take this as a reference to the end of the 19th century. The century is dead because it’s literally over, but it’s also dead in a broader sense: the simile in the previous stanza with the “broken lyres” suggests that the speaker feels that its culture has in some way failed.
The speaker does not specify the reasons why Western culture has failed—though there are clues in the way the speaker describes the landscape. For instance, the speaker begins the poem leaning on a “coppice gate.” A “coppice” is a managed forest, which foresters cut back regularly to stimulate growth. But with the “bine-stems” growing up into the sky, it seems that this coppice has not been recently cut back. This image suggests that human beings have shirked their duty to care for the land they use. Since the landscape is a metaphor for the state of Western culture, the implication is thus that people have acted as poor caretakers for Western culture itself.
These images of the landscape are perhaps also references to industrialization, the process by which the economy shifted from farming to factories. This process did significant damage to the English landscape, and it also caused the depopulation of rural parts of England. As factories took over the work—such as weaving and lace-making—that had been traditionally done by rural populations, people left their farms to work in the cities' factories.
The speaker does not propose any remedies to address the situation. Indeed, the speaker does not seem to believe any improvement is possible. In the final lines of the second stanza, the speaker complains that the cycle of death and rebirth has ended: it is “shrunken hard and dry.” Judging from the first half of the poem, it seems that the cultural death the speaker describes will not end or reverse; it is permanent, and the speaker doesn’t know what will come next.
Hope and Renewal
The first half of “The Darkling Thrush” describes a desolate winter landscape—an extended metaphor for the decay of Western culture, which the speaker presents as dead or unsalvageable. Just as the poem seems to be sliding into despair, however, a symbol of hope and renewal bursts onto the scene: a singing “thrush.” Various details suggest that the speaker treats the thrush as a symbol for religious faith and devotion. The speaker thus presents renewed religious faith as a solution to the cultural crisis he or she describes in the first half of the poem.
The speaker describes the bird that appears in the second half of the poem in considerable detail, down its feathers. It is possible, then, to read the “Hope” that the bird expresses and represents literally: the speaker’s bad mood is lifted, partially, by the bird and its song. But the speaker also provides hints that the bird’s song should be understood metaphorically—both on its own and in conjunction with the extended metaphor developed in the poem’s first two stanzas.
One key detail is that the speaker describes the bird’s song as “a full-hearted evensong.” Evensong is a ritual in the Anglican Church: it is evening prayers, chants, and songs. The speaker thus describes the bird’s song as embodying a religious ritual. And in the next stanza, the speaker calls the “Hope” in the thrush’s song “blessed.” The word “blessed” once again suggests religious rituals and beliefs. And “Hope” itself may be symbolic here: it’s not just any hope, but the Christian hope for resurrection—that is, life after death. As such, the “hope” that the thrush provides might be tied to Christianity.
The thrush’s appearance in the poem suggests a solution to the cultural decay that the speaker documents in the first half of the poem. In the first half of the poem, the speaker treats the bleak landscape as an extended metaphor for the cultural decline of Western civilization—a decline so severe that the speaker sees no possibility that it might be renewed or reborn. But the hope the thrush embodies does offer the possibility of renewal and resurrection, specifically through religious faith.
That said, the speaker is "unaware" of this "blessed Hope." Perhaps this means that the bird is singing in vain, and the Christian tradition it evokes is as doomed as the rest of civilization. This would suggest that this tradition is itself rather oblivious, blind to the reality of the world around it. Alternatively, the presence of the happy bird in the midst of such drudgery suggests the opposite: that religious faith is the one thing that will survive the march of time. It's up to the reader to decide.
Despair and Isolation
“The Darkling Thrush” in part uses its description of a bleak winter landscape as an extended metaphor for the cultural decline of Western civilization. But it is also a literal, detailed description of the world—and of the speaker’s state of mind while looking out onto that landscape. The speaker seems filled with a sense of isolation and despair, and these feelings strongly shape how the speaker interprets the surrounding world. Intentionally or not, the poem suggests the cyclical and self-fulfilling nature of negativity.
The speaker describes him- or herself as “fervourless” (meaning depressed or lacking passion), and then sees this trait reflected everywhere. Not only does “every spirit” seem as “fervourless” as the speaker, the speaker consistently interprets the natural world in terms that reinforce his or her own state of mind. For example, the speaker describes the “Frost” as “spectre-grey,” meaning it looks like a ghost or a spirit. The speaker interprets the frost as a sign that the world is dead, lifeless, and hopeless. However, one could imagine a different speaker interpreting the landscape differently; for instance, there is no objective basis for seeing the “land’s sharp features” as an image of the “Century’s corpse.” They could just as soon be majestic and soaring or evidence of God’s hand in creation.
While the poem’s landscape is described in detail, it is not described objectively: instead, each element becomes another testament to the speaker’s personal emotions and priorities. The poem’s second stanza, for example, consists of a long list of metaphors, one building on the next: the landscape is like the “Century’s corpse,” the clouds are like a “crypt,” the wind like a “death-lament.” The speaker is thus trapped in a vicious cycle: his or her emotions shape the landscape, which then reinforces his or her emotions.
This cycle holds until the thrush appears in the poem, in stanza 3. The thrush refuses to assimilate to the speaker’s view of the world or to reinforce the speaker’s emotions. Though the bird is skinny and bedraggled—potentially as much a symbol of despair as the clouds overhead or the wind whistling—it nonetheless sings a hopeful song. The speaker thus concludes that the thrush knows something the speaker doesn’t: “Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew / And I was unaware.”
In its brilliant, inexplicable hopefulness, the thrush forces the speaker to recognize the existence of emotions beyond despair and isolation. Furthermore, the thrush makes the speaker recognize elements of the outside world that cannot be interpreted through those emotions. It might break the vicious cycle in which the speaker has been trapped, and so proves to the reader, too, that hope is present in even the most desolate of circumstances.
어둠 속의 지빠귀
나는 잡목 덤불 문에 기대었다,
서리가 유령처럼 회색이고
겨울의 찌꺼기가 약해지는 낮의 눈을
황량하게 했을 때.
뒤엉킨 덩굴줄기가 하늘을 금 그었다
부서진 칠현금의 줄처럼.
가까이 나타났던 모든 사람들은
그들의 집안의 난로를 찾아갔다.
땅의 날카로운 모습은
쭉뻗은 세기의 시체처럼 보였다,
구름 낀 천개는 그의 납골당,
바람은 그의 임종소리처럼 보였다.
배(胚)와 탄생의 옛 맥박은
줄어들어 딱딱하고 메말랐다,
지상의 모든 사람들이
나처럼 열의없어 보였다.
갑자기 한 목소리가 머리 위의
삭막한 나뭇가지 사이에서
무한한 기쁨의 감개무량한
저녁 기도 소리로 들려왔다.
연약하고, 수척한 작고 늙은 지빠귀가
강풍에 헝클어진 깃털에 싸여
짙어가는 어둠에 그렇게
자신의 영혼을 내던지기로 선택했던 것이다.
그런 황홀한 소리의
노래를 부를 이유가
가까이든 멀리든 주변의
사물들에게는 거의 없었기에,
나는 그의 행복한 작별인사를 통하여
그는 알지만 나는 모르는
어떤 축복받은 희망이
울렸다고 생각할 수 있었다.
이 시는 1900년 12월 31일 세기말에 그것도 한 해의 끝자락에 추운 겨울저녁을 배경으로 쓰였습니다. 태초의 생명의 맥박은 쪼그라들고 메말라버린, 즉 지상에 더 이상 생동감, 온기, 열정, 희망이 없는 상황을 제시합니다. 서리(Frost)를 겨울의 잿빛 유령(specter-grey)으로, 기운이 약해지는 태양을 기력이 약해지는 눈(the weakining eye of day)으로, 앙상한 나뭇가지(tangled bine-stems)를 줄이 끊어진 수금(strings of broken lyre)으로, 얼어붙은 땅은 드러누운 시체(corpse outleant), 구름 덮인 하늘은 시체의 관뚜껑(canopy)으로, 매서운 바람은 죽음의 탄식(death-lament)으로 각각 묘사하고 있습니다. 겨울을 의인화하고, 시각적 이미지를 사용하여 하디는 우리에게 겨울과 세기말의 스산한 모습을 보여줍니다.
그런데, 이 시는 단지 황량한 겨울풍경 이야기에 그치지 않습니다. 시인은 과연 세기말에, 다가오는 새 해, 새 세기에는 희망을 가져야 할 것인가, 라는 문제를 제기합니다. 늙고, 야위고, 왜소한 티티새가 혼신의 힘을 다하여(full hearted evensong/ happy good-night air) 부르는 노랫소리는 시인의 절망적인 내면 풍경 및 황량한 겨울(외면) 풍경과 좋은 대조를 이루고 있습니다. 여기서는 청각적 이미지가 효과적으로 사용되고 있습니다. 절망과 희망을 대조시키는 ironic contrast수법을 사용하여, 시인은 절망과 희망의 경계선에 위치한 시인(화자, I)의 심리상태를 아주 잘 드러냅니다. 연약한 새도 희망의 곡조를 부르는데, 하물며 인간이 절망적이어서 되겠는가.라는 메시지를 찾아낼 수 있습니다. 아울러, 새가 부르는 희망의 곡조는 절망적인 분위기를 더욱 강조하기 위해서 동원된 것으로도 볼 수도 있습니다. 이처럼, 이 시는 분위기와 음조 상에서 상이한 두 가지 해석이 가능합니다. 희망을 지니고 살면 우리의 절망적 삶이 조금씩 나아질 것이라는 믿음, 즉 개량주의(ameliorism)의 표현일 수도 있고, 더 이상 희망을 품기 어려운 믿음, 즉 염세주의(pessimism)의 표현일 수도 있습니다.
어쩌면, 아마도 이 시는 절망과 희망, 낙관과 비관을 둘로 구분하지 않고, 두 가지가 함께 긴장을 이루고 있는 혼합된 공존의 상태를 전달하고 있을지도 모릅니다. 티티새는 희망을 알지만, 난 희망을 몰랐네. 그래서 이제 희망을 지닐까? 세기말 겨울에 하디는 이런 생각에 빠져있었나 봅니다. 아니면 새가 부르는 '황홀경의 소리' 가 시인의 '절망적인 상황'을 더욱 약 올리고 있나요? 어둠이 덮이는 겨울 들판에 서서, 희망과 절망 사이에 곡예를 하는 시인의 모습이 우리 눈앞에 선합니다. 새소리도 우리 귓전에 처박히면서... 벽난로와 희망이 추위와 절망의 현실을 지탱시켜 주면서...