Just a few stray thoughts on the beautiful "caroling" structure of "The Darkling Thrush": it unfolds in four equal stanzas, each stanza like a movement in a chamber piece. Hardy uses a standard hymn line and verse construction (and you can actually sing "The Darkling Thrush" to various melodies, like "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear"). The first movement sets the desolate scene. In the second movement the "fervourless" "I" enters the desolate scene. Movement three is the solo voice of the joy from the old bird flinging his soul. And the fourth, culminating movement returns us to the voice of that miserable "I," seemingly inspired by the joy the bird understands. I always feel that the hope is forced in the end. The image of the "aged thrush" is so complete with its fabulous adjectives of "frail, gaunt," "small" and "blast-beruffled," that I never get past the vision of struggling decrepitude. Hardy's cranky personality identifies more sharply with the century that's over, not with the hope of what is to come. He makes a rational commitment to hope, but he's not emotionally persuaded. (And neither am I.) But that's why this is an appealing poem for our moment: what choice do we have but to make a rational commitment to hope?

Molly, that's so much better than the Yellow Rose of Texas/Emily Dickinson connection. And this "rational commitment to hope,"(which Erin Belieu also talked about in a post below), as pathetic as that seems, is particularly relevant to our current situation, it sadly seems to hopeful me.

Hello Matthew, Thanks for ignoring my spelling mistake in the header, adding that extra "l" to caroling. And thanks also for referring me to Erin Belieu's comment. I appreciate your sad hopefulness -- it couldn't be more Hardy-esque! And just to keep the hope/not hope discussion going: A.E. Stallings has a marvelous essay on "The Darkling Thrush" at
<link> where she reminds us that "the poem closes not on 'knew,' but on 'unaware.'"

Thanks for the A.E. Stallings link in your second post here; that was quite a rich and useful contribution to this discussion. I agree with Stallings in the "wishfulness" of "That I could think ..." And "trembled" is such a rich verb choice. Ending on "unaware" also seems so apt given the attention throughout the poem to the limits of knowledge. I do read it as an agnostic ultimate conclusion, that we are all unaware, regardless of where we fall individually (and temporarily) on the spectrum of gloom to hope, making it all the more miraculous to hear trembling tones of hope against the backdrop of gloom.