It's good to read "The Darkling Thrush" in this context, at this time, and at this juncture; I'm glad Robert has posted it here again, because I also feel that now is the verge of the true beginning of the new century. And this is a poem about edges, shadowy beginnings. . . my heart wants to say that we are now at the other side of the field bounded by that coppice gate, looking back at the blasted century that lay ahead of Hardy, and forward into a more fertile field. But I wonder if the poem itself, how it reads now, supports that feeling.

I've long loved this poem as a bittersweet comment on the eternal wellspring of hope; for decades I've read the ending as a humble admission that even for the famously pessimistic Hardy, there still remained evident in nature some hidden source of blessing and mystery. But this time--perhaps spurred by Robert's apt observation that there is something comic about the thrush!--I've gone down a whole different path.

Tonight, I can't help seeing the thrush as a figure for "the poet" himself, the self-deluded nineteenth-century Romantic, finding his meanings in the landscape as if the landscape were all laid out for his sole benefit. And the last line is a strong anticlimax, a kind of wry punchline, at once self-deprecating and proud; by confessing that he is unaware of the hope, Hardy puts himself above that shopworn idea of poetry, and casts himself as a more sophisticated and truthful, if sadder, type of poet than the one the bedraggled thrush signifies.

If you read the poem this way, Hardy's distancing himself from that bird was indeed prophetic of the role of the poet in the 20th century.

But what about the 21st?

Do we still want to be unaware of the hope? Do we still notice and hear the song of the thrush? Or is there another sound we are listening for as we lean upon our own coppice-gate?

Thanks for the thought-provoking poem, Robert.

Seriously, Annie, there's so much to support your reading of the poem -- when I went back and read it thinking that way, two lines in particular jumped out at me:

"An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small" which Mark pointed out as well -- Hardy was 60 when he wrote this poem, and "Was written on terrestrial things," the metaphor of writing can of course be thought of as not a metaphor at all! One of my favorite pieces of critical writing for understanding Romanticism is Ruskin's "Of The Pathetic Fallacy," and I think this concept applies of course directly to the Hardy poem.Thanks, that makes the poem even better (which seems to me like the purpose of criticism).

One of the reasons I've enjoyed all of these discussions so much is that they give the lie to the conventional line that Hardy is difficult to teach or criticize because "he's so clear, so straightforward." Larkin has that little essay, "Wanted: Good Hardy Critic." He might have appreciated these exchanges. And although I'm sometimes suspicious of criticism that puts too much pressure on the poem to be about poetry, the possibility of poetry, the role of poetry, etc., I agree with Annie and Matt that there's a lot of that going on in "The Darkling Thrush." A poem that bids farewell to the 19th century by breaking lyre strings in its first stanza is pushing strongly in the direction of "The age demanded an image..."

Yes, Eric-- there's something especially pleasing about Annie's idea of relating this poem both to poetry (on the one hand) and to our moment in political and cultural history (on the other!)

In large degree the landscape of Hardy's England was "all laid out for him in advance" by 6000 years of human habitation, use and misuse, stewardship -- as Hardy recognized; it's a main topic in his work.

Annie Finch, I enjoy your translations of Louise Labe's three Elegies -- I think that's you? -- you catch her veering sense of fun & daring handling of her traditions.

Larkin must have been thinking about the fate of his own poetry too, when he wrote that essay. . .

There is a fine line between having having a discussion about a poem and analyzing it. It seems to me that a poet like Hardy is honest in two ways at once: the way of conscious clarity (verbally), and the way of openness to the complexity of the unconscious (emotionally). This honesty seems to allow us to walk that fine line, and may open the door for the kind of discussion among both poets and readers that Robert in another thread said he is aiming for in this fray. . .

And thank you Jim--that is especially nice to hear you enjoy the Labe, since I'm a big fan of your Sappho translations as well--I feel they truly capture the music.