[Mistakenly posted in "poems," so here it is on the right board. Happy New Year to all and good night.]

I've just come back from a trip and find that a great deal has already been posted on this poem. If I repeat something already said, forgive me (and point me to the thread)--my admittedly incomplete sifting through previous comments did not turn up what follows.

1) I think the sense of separation from human consciousness and the transcendent realm so often symbolized by birds is already there in the Romantics (cf. Bryant's "To a Waterfowl," Shelley's "To A Skylark," and Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale"). What's new here, I think, is that that Hardy's thrush has lost its immunity to time. It is "aged" and "frail," subject to death and decay, unlike Bryant's waterfowl "swallowed up" in "the abyss of heaven," Keats's "immortal" bird that "wast not born for death," or Shelley's "spirit" that is not even a literal, embodied bird ("bird thou never wert"). Whereas the Romantic poets yearned to enter the unattainable realm the bird inhabits, Hardy's bird has come down toward our level. Like the speaker, it can only utter joy and hope in the face of obstacles, not in some blissful unawareness of them. (Hardy himself, as scholars of this poem have remarked, was "aged . . . frail, gaunt, and small.")

2) The ballad-like stanza may seem simple, but Hardy's use of it is interesting. In the first 16 lines, apart from the spondaic second foot of line 9, there is almost no variation (an easily-elided extra syllable in line 4, the weak last syllable of line 11 that is nonetheless stronger than the preceding syllable and therefore makes the last foot iambic, though very lightly so). The meter plods deterministically forward in the gloom.

And then, when the thrush appears, the movement of the poem becomes more varied and animated: the spondaic second foot of line 18, the pyrrhic-spondee sequence that opens line 19, the _very_ weak final syllable of "illimited" that makes the last foot a pyrrhic, the three consecutive strong stresses separated by spondees of "thrush, frail, gaunt," creating a spondaic second foot and a slowly-moving line.

After that, the poem again settles into regularity of movement, which in the context of the closing stanza registers not as resigned despair but as calm benediction.

3) I love the unusual word "illimited." It would have been easy enough to say "unlimited." But the liquid l softens the boundaries between syllables and makes the word sound less clipped, more fluid, which is appropriate both to its meaning (the phonemic boundaries or "limits" are blurred) and to its significance in this context (the bird's song as fluidly crossing the divide between nature and human consciousness). The semantic difference between "illimited" and "unlimited" is virtually nil; they are synonyms. But the difference in evocative power is very great.

BTW., Bryant also uses "illimited" in "To a Waterfowl." I can't recall seeing it in any poems but these two.

The other thing about "illimitable": it doubles the high-pitched short i, of the second syllable produced near the front of the mouth, instead of moving to the lower, throaty vowel in "un." Perhaps for that reason, I actually find it physically easier to say "illimited" than "unlimited." A humble version of the "full-throated ease" of Keats's nightingale, so to speak.

Whereas the Romantic poets yearned to enter the unattainable realm the bird inhabits, Hardy's bird has come down toward our level.

What especially 'dramatizes' this is the difference in pronoun usage. Shelley, Keats, and Bryant are all addressing their respective birds directly ("thee," "thou"), all taking an imploring or beseeching stance, with an honorific second-person pronoun, in search of wisdom or rescue or such. Hardy, perhaps as represented in his third-personizing of the thrush, seems decidedly not so 'romantic' as the earlier poets' wish for escapist merging, even while echoing some elements of Romantic attention to nature as (only) source of truth and/or beauty. Hardy doesn't seem to propose that his bird can guide him, or - as you say, "yearn to enter the unattainable realm the bird inhabits" -- any yearning (and I do think there is some) keeps his thrush more mysterious - almost like a voice in his head signaling full-throated life if not Hope, despite the effects even of aging. As I posited here yesterday, I do believe it's key that he acknowledges his own role in hearing ecstasy and Hope in the thrush - that he thinks it could signal Hope.

What I've come to sense is that Hardy is showing us the limits of both knowledge/reason (the science and technology of the ending Century that have brought as much blight as progress, not to mention infernal, ever-cropping up wars such as have bloodied the century he's adieuing - someone noted he was writing this during the 2nd Boer War) and the literal five senses as well, at least the visual one (seeing only blight on the horizon). Yes, he hears the thrush, but it's the narrator who perceives ecstasy in the thrush's sound (at another time, he might be irritated by it, or oblivious) ... And I think what emerges as the Hope here is emotional interpretation, his heart summoned by and summoning Hope where indeed there is "so little cause."

I very much like your observation about Hardy's choice of third rather than second person.

Thanks--I hadn't thought of that!

I'm having trouble keeping up will all the poetry referenced in the various threads (we could do an endlessly embedded mini-discussion and never come up for air). But just to add one more -- your post made me think of "Black Rook in Rainy Weather." -- which seems even another step removed (I'd say "alienated" but that might bring on Marx, and it's New Year's day). Plath is convinced of the possibility that miracles occur, sort of, but not particularly convinced by this bird -- which "grants/A brief respite from fear/Of total neutrality."

Hardy seems ahead of her on the hope scale.

Your point about pronouns is well taken.

I don't get the knowledge/reason point. Could you say a little more about where it shows up in the poem?

I don't know if there's a word for this, (and inspired a bit by zbig's post) but the rhymes in the first stanza are interesting. I guess it's both rhyme and assonance in the finals, and then the same thing repeated. And then the "i" and "ire" sounds recurr. So you get "dry" and "I" in the next stanza. In the final stanza the sounds seem quite briliant to me -- the final rhyme of "air" and "unaware" sounds to my ear like the "a"'s in the first bit of the first stanza have hooked up with the "lyre" and "fire." And in the same last stanza, but not at the end, "afar". "nigh" and "night" all feel like fusions to me as well.

Does that make any sense at all? I'm posting to you because it seems to me Hardy does to better effect what I think the Winters poem you posted was also enacting, sound wise. (I mean that as a compliment to Winters -- would that we all got mentioned in the same breath with "Darkling Thrush."

Sigh -- there must be a way to say that more clearly.

The first stanza has rhymes with long a and long i sounds (sometimes coupled with "r" in pleasant ways -- "gray", "lyre", etc.) -- the other stanzas have echoes or recurrences of these sounds, except for the third, the very one where you note that the appearance of the thrush is marked with a shift in the meter. I'm saying rhyme contributes to the effect, and also makes the ending aurally satisfying -- final -- despite Hardy's stated ambivalence about the thrush.

Hope that helps

hi back august
and, before i forget, happy new year to you and mrs. august and crew :-)

As to my knowledge/reason point, i'll try though i'm not sure how much i'm reading into Hardy: (I discussed a bit of it yesterday in this thread, most directly in my first post there but apparently i clarified some of it at least in my second post.)

Anyway, in brief and without recapping the comparisons I made there to "Dover Beach," I read the first stanza as being Hardy's despair over what his eyes beheld and then, with the introduction of "the Century's corpse," I heard him incorporating what his cognitions tell him too about the follies and laying wastes of "all mankind" - his knowledge of the havoc wrought throughout the century now done in. For the "land's sharp features" to be "the Century's corpse," to me suggests that he is thinking (operative word thinking) about what such things as the Industrial Revolution, wars, etc. - the consequences of "progress" and technology/science - have done to the landscape (in the broadest sense of the word). So that I see Hardy having moved from what he observes with his eyes to what he knows with his mind (i.e., the vision he sees both literally and figuratively), and he only finds despair - the cumulative "so little cause" for any caroling whatsoever. And it's only his heart, I believe, who hears hope in a sound that neither reason nor empirical observation can warrant. (Hm, that's my best weary-state articulation of what I meant I seem to come up with for now)

Another way of saying it might be that on the cusp of a new century, time as well as space seem to present him "little cause" for Hope ... but then, confoundingly, there is this carol in which he hears ecstasy and hope. His conclusion strikes me, not totally flippantly, as a century-ago equivalent poetic version of "Go figure."

Correction to brain-cramp in original post:

I meant three consecutive strong syllables separated by caesuras, not spondees (which would make for a total of seven consecutive strong syllables, something not found in art or nature).

Happy Holidays to your and yours as well!
I guess where I disagree is that I don't see the landscape at the beginning as particularly devastated by industrialization.
Your main point, " And it's only his heart, I believe, who hears hope in a sound that neither reason nor empirical observation can warrant" seems fully justified. My sense, though, is that the natural order (independent of human machinations) is just as bleak as the industrial one. The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-gray,
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.

My sense, though, is that the natural order (independent of human machinations) is just as bleak as the industrial one.

For the record, I fully agree, august, and didn't mean to suggest otherwise. My intended point was only that I hear him - if only by dint of reflecting on the Century itself (which is a human artifact and that the closing of that particular century being one of industrialization and wars galore) - responding not only to the bleakness in the natural world he visually sees before him on his horizon but also the bleakness of the manmade order he witnesses as offering "no cause" for ecstasy upon a momentous turning point in human history. (But I didn't intend to exclude one in favor of the other.)

There has been sporadic discussion here of the line "The ancient pulse of germ and birth / Was shrunken hard and dry" but that line too - to me - is an indirect allusion as I read it to industrialization (in the broadest sense). The "ancient pulse of germ and birth" strikes me as that of a more agrarian society and thus, indirectly, is a further lament of industrialization which contributed to my overall sense of the poem. There's also the choice of "haunted" to capture what "all mankind" have been doing and that verb contributes as well to a sense of sad cognition about the role of mankind in the landscape before him (but again, not to say that that was his sole focus, only alongside a lament at the sense of wintery doom he "inhales").

My sense, though, is that the natural order (independent of human machinations) is just as bleak as the industrial one.

hi august,

The natural order could be a stand-in for the people of the Industrial Age -- mankind "haunts their fires," "The tangled bine-stems scored the sky / Like strings of broken lyres," (even poetry is having a hard time), "the ancient pulse of germ and birth / Was shrunken hard and dry" (agriculture, which usually is fertile, is not, plus there's the 19th century focus on germs as disease)

People have been discussing whether the ending is hopeful or not; my sense is that Hardy deliberately left ambiguous. I think he is a "modern" in the sense that he wants us to embrace both despair and hope in this poem. (not sure "embrace" is the correct word)

Under Mark Doty's thread, Annie Finch suggested to Robert Pinsky that to make things on the PoemsFray easier, he establish 3 or 4 threads and not allow posters to start any others. I expressed my opinion of her idea. I hope you will find the time to do the same.

Best wishes for the new year, august.
Mary Ann

MA -- I responded to the Annie Finch thread.

MA, zin

In general, I don't think I've ever felt so in over my head on the Fray. Normally I'm quite happy to sound off on things I know little about. But, dang it, the nineteenth-century is my specialty (history, not poetry), and I still feel like I'm only barely keeping up.

Anyway, I'm still not certain that Hardy felt that industrialization was the issue. It's possible. But the haunting of the fires seems more like a reference to home and hearth than to smelting things, the germs are associated with antiquity, not modernity.

I mean, yes, the context in which Hardy is writing is the transformation of England, and industrialization was a huge part of that. But, hmm, I need to think of a way to say this better. He's talking about the state of humanity, about a certain kind of doubt and agnosticism (i'm repeating from something somebody else posted -- can't find link). It's a lot like Gerald Manley Hopkins in his dark sonnets. That poetry of doubt isn't exactly about industry and economy.

pklennon's response in this thread seems crucial to me. The portrait of hope. Or Don Bogen's response, here. The problem is "how to think with the bird?" Thinking with the bird is only a problem if you are convinced that thinking with the bird is irrational to begin with -- so it's as much affirmation as questioning of empirical knowledge.

Anyway, I'm still not certain that Hardy felt that industrialization was the issue. It's possible. But the haunting of the fires seems more like a reference to home and hearth than to smelting things, the germs are associated with antiquity, not modernity.

Maybe the hang-up is "industrialization" per se - i'm using it sort of synecdochally (!?) for all of mankind's history of progress/plunder at the same time that it would seem fittingly to stand for the whole on, of all time's, the last day of the 19th c. (curiously on the last day of the 20th c., various delusionary bubbles hadn't burst yet and so i think we were paradoxically more naive on our 12/31/00 than Hardy was on his 12/31/00). I didn't read it, however, as "haunting of the fires" as you state it here. I read him to be saying that "all mankind that haunted nigh" (i.e., had cast their shadow over the landscape in his purview) had abandoned responsibility for the havoc they had wrought and gone in refuge to their household fires (I noted elsewhere that I thought the choice of "household" was to actually minimize a sense of "home" or such other more affectively laden words for a more functionary, utilitarian adjective "household").

As to "germs" - well, he did say it in the singular and, while MaryAnn has made note of how the scientific concept of the plural was a 19th c. point of science, I do think he chose the singular to be purposely multi-targeted in his reference, where 'germ' also stands for creativity - and therein my further thinking of agrarian life (and hand-made as opposed to industrial-made). But not to push a point too far ... :-) ... We certainly agree about the agnostic flavor - I characterized it in 'agnostic' terms in a couple of posts as well as did Mark Halliday in his, and that seems to capture what several others have said in different terms.

Thanks for the link to that pklennon bit of very pertinent background, a post which i had missed in that thread. Very interesting - I read it almost as if the painter Watts could have been Hardy's thrush, similarly aged, gaunt ... but also an indication of Hardy's propensity to intuit (or project) -- which i think he does in hearing ecstasy in the caroling here -- in that passage of Hardy's quoted within a quote by pklennon, Hardy sees the artist as moving a frame away from a canvas "as if the figure could feel." What I hear in this is Hardy's sensitivity and perhaps hypersensitivity. An artist could have moved a frame because he knew the painting it touched was still wet or out of anal compulsiveness or several reasons, but Hardy reads into the gesture a (projected?) sensitivity by the Watts to feel for his painted subjects. Very interesting.

And I'd missed the Bogen post too - so thanks again. And it's a signal of how rich Hardy is (I've grown quite increasingly fond of him this week! I hadn't re-read him since college, I don't think) that I can agree quite fully with Bogen's articulation of the message at the same time I see a slightly alternate angle on the prism, which i just voiced a bit ago in reply to Doty here.

Pinsky, somewhere, has "germ" meaning "seed" -- maybe in the Doty thread?

I've just been told by a higher power (mrs. august) that I've been spending too much time on the internet, so I must sign off for a while. I think the hang-up was probably "industry" --- there's a thread of many Marks, above, in which one of the murder of Marks mentions that it's a poem rather than position paper. Overstated, but yeah, neither you nor I think he's simply addressing his social context, but to make our own positions clear we probably sound like our readings are more narrow than they should be.

I hope you are very well, and I hope Poems Fray continues to be blessed with such riches!