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DON BOSCO COLLEGE,
KOHIMA
Class Notes
B.A. ENGLISH
1st Semester
Assistant Professor : Dr. Adenuo Shirat Luikham
Paper Name : Poetry, Grammar and Language Skills
Subject Code : ELENG - 102
Date : 27-07-2021
Topic: Ulysses: Lord Alfred Tennyson
Pied Beauty: Gerard Manley Hopkins
The Darkling Thrush: Thomas Hardy
Unit 4: Poetry
Structure:
4.0 Objectives
4.1 Ulysses: Lord Alfred Tennyson
4.1.1 About the Poet
4.1.2 Critical Analysis
4.1.3 Summary
4.2 Pied Beauty: Gerard Manley Hopkins
4.2.1 About the Poet
4.2.2 Critical Analysis
4.2.3 Summary
4.3 Darkling Thrush: Thomas Hardy
4.3.1 About the Poet
4.3.2 Critical Analysis
4.3.3 Summary
4.4 Important Questions
4.4.1 Short Answer Questions
4.4.2 Essay Type Questions
4.5 Recommended Books
4.0 Objectives:
The aim of this unit is to give bio-details of the poets, in particular – Tennyson, G.M.
Hopkins, and Thomas Hardy. These poets belong to the Victorian Age. Critical analysis
of each of the poems are given in order to encourage comprehension and succinct
understanding of the texts.
4.1 Ulysses: Lord Alfred Tennyson
4.1.1 About the Poet:
Alfred Lord Tennyson was born in 1809 at Somersby, in a village in Lincolnshire,
where his father was a rector. At the age of seven he was sent to Grammar School and
when he returned home after completing his time there was educated by his father. In
1828, Tennyson entered Trinity College, Cambridge. There he won the University
Chancellor’s gold medal for a poem Timbuctoo. It was here that he formed a close
friendship with Arthur Henry Hallam whose death he memorialised in In Memorian.
In 1830, Tennyson published his Poems Chiefly Lyrical which included sixty poems.
Tennyson’s reputation as a poet was now established. And on the death of
Wordsworth in 1850, Tennyson succeeded him as the Poet Laureate. He died on
October 6, 1892, and was buried in Westminster Abbey near the grave of poet Robert
Browning.
4.1.2 Critical Analysis of Ulysses:
This poem was published in 1842. In Homer, Ulysses (Odysseus) longs to return from
his ten years at Troy and ten years of voyaging. Tennyson adapts the character of the
ever-restless explorer from Dante and gives him some of the qualities of his own age.
Ulysses embodies the feeling of the great Greek hero of that name in his old age as
conceived by Tennyson. He has come back to his rock-bound island home at Ithaca
and become king once more over his people. But the quiet life at home can give him
no peace to his mind. Life means activity for him. He must wander and gather new
experiences. So, he is thinking of handing over the charge of his kingdom to his son
Telemachus and going out on a fresh voyage of discovery.
To Ulysses, the life of adventure and discovery is the only life to be lived. Life is a
battle to be fought valiantly till one’s last days. A man, with undaunted spirit and will,
must strive, seek, find, and not yield. After long years of perilous sea-voyage, Ulysses
has come back home. He feels tired of the quiet at home and ruling over a barbarous
(uninspired) people. He has grown old, but he feels the urge to go out on a new
voyage and is confident of doing something noteworthy before his death. But his son,
Telemachus, stands for an opposite type of life. He is capable of discharging all his
duties and obligations of everyday life faithfully and successfully. He is also
competent to make the savage people civilized. In domestic circle, he can make his
mother happy by his loving piety. He can pay due adoration to the household gods.
He is well-able to fulfil all the requirements of the family and his kingdom. Thus, the
poem stands for two distinct ideals of life – the heroic and the domestic. One can have
a life of activity where the whole world is one’s playground while the other life is one
of home and domestic fulfilment. Both the ideals are admirable and essential for the
well-being of human beings.
Ulysses being tired of the dullness of home-life, describes the experiences of his long
wanderings in a sea-voyage. After a long and dangerous sea-voyage, Ulysses has
come back to his rockbound island home at Ithaca and become once more a king over
his savage people. But Ulysses finds it quite meaningless to lead an idle life among
the uncivilized people who cannot appreciate his ideal of life and pass their lives in
the pleasure of the senses. So, Ulysses feels the urgent need going out on a voyage to
explore the unknown and exhaust all its possibilities. All through his life he has been
actively engaged in the pursuit of knowledge. He has enjoyed and suffered
considerably alone and along with his friends and comrades. When a group of stars
called Hyades rise and the rains set in and the rains driven before the winds make the
sea look indistinct, he has become known everywhere. Through his extensive
wanderings with a mind thirsting after knowledge, he has seen many cities and their
people and become acquainted with their social manners and forms of government.
He has been held in high honour wherever he has gone. Apart from being acquainted
with many people and their ways of life, he has with comrades has the heroic pleasure
of battle on the windswept plains of Troy far away from Ithaca, his home. Thus,
Ulysses has acquired varied experiences if life. He has not had these experiences.
Thus, Ulysses has acquired varied experiences if life. He has not had these
experiences superficially but he has become a part of all that he has come across. Yet
all these experiences instead of satisfying his desire for new experiences have
intensified it all the more. They have formed a sort of arch before his mind’s eye
through which the unknown and hitherto unexplored world is tempting him to go
onward in search of knowledge. And the nearer he approaches it, further its margin
seems to recede just as the line of the horizon in the distance. Ulysses thinks it hardly
profitable to live an idle life at home surrounded by uncivilized people. All through
his life he has been actively engaged and acquired considerable knowledge. But the
ocean of knowledge is endless. Everybody should try to exhaust all possibilities to
explore the hidden treasure of knowledge. He feels that activity alone is life while
idleness means death. He feels that it is unworthy of him, if he, after all his deeds and
adventures over the pathless seas, just sits idling away his time at home in inglorious
repose. This sort of life will have no meaning for him while his mind is keenly
longing to explore the utmost limit of human knowledge. He will follow knowledge
like a star that sets in one hemisphere to reappear in another. As the star will be
receding before him for ever, he will also be pursuing knowledge with an ever-fresh
spirit until his last days.
Ulysses mentions the virtues of his son, Telemachus, and the type of life he is well-
fitted for, and then of the life he aspires after. Ulysses decides that he will hand over
the charge of his island kingdom to his loving and dutiful son. Telemachus, is
according to his father very well qualified to take charge. He will be able to discharge
all the obligatory duties and responsibilities faithfully and civilize the savage people
gradually by his loving piety. He will also pay due adoration to his house-gods and
fulfil the requirements of the family and the kingdom. Ulysses and his son have two
different spheres of activities and each will work in his own sphere. Ulysses is fitted
for the life of adventures and Telemachus for the life of peace.
Ulysses addresses his old sailors who were with him in his voyage in the past and
inspires them to go on fresh adventure even at the very end of their lives. The port is
there before Ulysses where the wind is swelling the sails of the ship. He tells his old
sailors that they have in the past worked with him in the perilous sea-voyage and
showed extraordinary strength of mind in foul and fait weather. Now they have grown
old and naturally, they have lost their former vigour of youth. But age has not been
able to snatch away their indomitable spirit which is still alive in their hearts. They are
yet possessed of that honour and glory. Death will put an end to their lives. Yet they
can do something miraculous – worthy of note before death by virtues of their
undaunted spirit of mind, because it is the mind that matters. In the Trojan War, the
Olympian gods had taken sides but heroes, though human, had to fight against them.
Similarly, the noble work done by them will be in conformity with the spirit of those
who had fought with gods in the Trojan War.
Ulysses, the great Greek hero, though devoid of his youthful vigour, is still possessed
of the indomitable spirit of mind that matters much. He is summoning his old sailors
who are equally spirited and courageous to come along and accompany him on a fresh
voyage as this is the very end of his life. Life is full of adventures and discovered and
idleness is death. It is possible that in the course of this adventure they may be buried
in the waves of the sea but never reach their destination. It may be that they will
successfully accomplish their voyage and reach the islands of the Blessed where
heroes after their death live in peace and happiness. There they may see the great hero
of the Trojan War, Achilles, whom they knew when he was alive. Once their youthful
vigour moved the earth and the heaven. Yet they retain the spirit and determination of
their hearts. Time and fate may make them physically weak, but have failed to damp
the spirit of their minds. So even in this old age they will exert themselves to the
fullest extent to achieve the highest limit of human knowledge and will not stop till
their object in life is achieved.
4.1.3 Summary:
Ulysses may be regarded as a highly representative poem of Tennyson in his last
phase. The melodious and pictures of earlier Tennyson are altogether absent here. The
poet here does not care for fine phrasing which we find, for example, in his Lotos-
Eaters. Here the poet writes in a simple, bare style that is bold. The poet does not
appear to be in a mood of world-weariness as we find him in the Lotos-Eaters. The
poet represents the spirit of the 18th century which is heavy with endless yearnings
and search after the discovery of truth. Ulysses has become old and come back to the
quiet and safety of his own kingdom after long wanderings in the pathless seas. He
should, therefore, be happy with his wife and only son. But what is tragic is that he
finds no joy in idling away his time at home. His varied experiences which he
gathered through long wanderings inspire him to acquire more knowledge with
undaunted mind. He expects to go out on a voyage to know the unknown and
undiscovered even in his extreme old age. Ulysses also appears to be a projection of
Tennyson’s own mind. All the aspirations and longings of the Victorian Age find
expression in Tennyson’s poetry. In Ulysses, we find the noblest expression of the
Victorian mind’s quest for exploring fresh fields of knowledge. The wonderful
advance made by science in the 19th century bears sufficient testimony to this truth.
4.2 Pied Beauty: G.M. Hopkins
4.2.1 About the Poet:
Gerard Manley Hopkins was born on July 28, 1844, in Stratford, Essex, England, to
Manley Hopkins, a marine insurance adjuster, and Catherine (Smith) Hopkins. He
was the first of their nine children. His parents were devout High Church Anglicans.
The family had a lively interest in religion and the creative arts. The young Hopkins
and his siblings involved themselves in literature, music, and painting. Stratford was
becoming industrialized during Hopkins's boyhood, and in 1852, the family moved to
the then more rural area of Hampstead, north of the city of London, in the belief that it
would provide a healthier environment. Hopkins attended Highgate Grammar school
from 1854 until 1863. He won the poetry prize and a scholarship to Balliol College,
Oxford, where he studied from 1863 to 1867.
At Oxford, he was strongly influenced by the aesthetic theories of the essayist and
literary critic Walter Pater, who was one of his tutors. It was during his Oxford years
that Hopkins began to question the religion in which he had been brought up. In 1866,
Hopkins, to the consternation of his parents, also converted to Catholicism and was
received into the Catholic Church by Cardinal Newman himself. The following year,
Hopkins graduated with a first-class degree in classics. In 1868, Hopkins joined the
Jesuits, with the aim of becoming a Jesuit priest. He gave up writing poetry and
burned his poems, believing that they had no place in the life of someone who was
committed to God. Only when he read the writings of the theologian Duns Scotus
(1265-1308) in 1872 did he decide that poetry might be compatible with his religious
vocation. He began to adapt the rhythms of Welsh poetry to his own poetry, evolving
a metrical system that he called sprung rhythm.
After he was ordained as a priest in 1877 and until 1881, Hopkins did parish work in
Sheffield, Oxford, and London, and then in the slums of the three industrialized cities,
Manchester, Liverpool, and Glasgow. He followed this work with three years of
teaching Latin and Greek at Stonyhurst College, Lancashire. In 1884, he was
appointed professor of Greek and Latin at University College, Dublin. This period of
his life was marked by depression, precipitated partly by his overly conscientious
marking of hundreds of student examination papers After suffering ill-health for
several years, Hopkins died in 1889.
Spring Rhythm in Hopkin’s Poetry:
Much of Hopkins's historical importance has to do with the changes he brought to the
form of poetry, which ran contrary to conventional ideas of metre. Prior to Hopkins,
most Middle English and Modern poetry was based on a rhythmic structure inherited
from the Norman side of English literary heritage. This structure is based on repeating
"feet" of two or three syllables, with the stressed syllable falling in the same place on
each repetition. Hopkins called this structure "running rhythm", and although he
wrote some of his early verse in running rhythm, he became fascinated with the older
rhythmic structure of the Anglo-Saxon tradition, of which Beowulf is the most
famous example. Hopkins called his own rhythmic structure sprung rhythm. Sprung
rhythm is structured around feet with a variable number of syllables, generally
between one and four syllables per foot, with the stress always falling on the first
syllable in a foot. Hopkins based his sprung rhythm on the metrical systems of Anglo-
Saxon and traditional Welsh poetry, and he used this rhythm for much of his poetry.
Sprung rhythm is based on the number of stressed syllables in a line and permits any
number of unstressed syllables. Each foot consists of a first strongly stressed syllable,
which either stands alone or is followed by unstressed syllables. Generally, there are
between one and four syllables per foot. An example from "Pied Beauty" is line 1,
which can be scanned thus: "Glory | be to | God for | dappled | things," with four
strong stresses falling on "Glo-" in the first foot, "God" in the third foot, "da-" in the
fourth foot, and "things" in the fifth foot. The strong stresses in all feet except the
second fall on the first syllable of the foot; even in the second foot, the stress is
stronger on the first syllable than the second. Most lines of this poem have four or five
strong stresses.
4.2.2 Critical Analysis of Pied Beauty:
In the poem, the narrator praises God for the variety of "dappled things" in nature,
such as piebald cattle, trout and finches. He also describes how falling chestnuts
resemble coals bursting in a fire, because of the way in which the chestnuts' reddish-
brown meat is exposed when the shells break against the ground. The narrator then
moves to an image of the landscape which has been "plotted and pieced" into fields
(like quilt squares) by agriculture. At the end of the poem, the narrator emphasizes
that God's beauty is "past change", and advises readers to "Praise him". This ending is
gently ironic and beautifully surprising: the entire poem has been about variety, and
then God's attribute of immutability is praised in contrast. By juxtaposing God's
changelessness with the vicissitudes of His creation, His separation from creation is
emphasized, as is His vast creativity. This turn or volta also serves to highlight the
poet's skill at uniting apparent opposites by means of form and content: the meter is
Hopkins's own sprung rhythm, and the packing-in of various alliterative syllables
serves as an aural example of the visual variety Hopkins describes.
In the opening line of the poem, Hopkins plays his homage to God for having created
“dappled things “in this world. These dappled things are an evidence of God’s glory.
The poet takes pleasure in the “pied beauty” of Nature – its dappled and variegated
appearance. Here the meaning of “dappled things” refers to the multi-coloured and
spotted things; mottled thing. Actually, the word “pied” in the title consists of the
same meaning.
From line 2 to 4, the poet then proceeds to give us examples of Nature’s pied beauty.
He first mentions the “skies of couple colour” which he compares to a brindled cow
or a cow on which the brown colour is mixed with streaks of another colour. Then he
mentions the trout swimming around with their rose-coloured skin spotted with black.
The meaning of “skies of couple-colour” is the double-coloured sky; the sky when it
looks double-coloured, while the meaning of “as a brinded cow” means a double-
coloured cow. Here “Brinded” means “streaked”. The comparison of the sky with a
streaked cow is rather odd. When the poet says “For rose-moles all in stipple”, he
means the rose-coloured markings spotted with black, while trout refers to a kind of
fish. Next, he mentions the windfalls from chestnut trees: having fallen on the ground
they break open, revealing the reddish-brown nut within, looking like fresh fire-coal.
He goes on to mention the finches with their multi-coloured wings. When he says:
“Fresh-firecoal chestnut-falls”, he means chestnuts that have fallen down from the
tree and which look like burning coals. This vision of Nature flowing from within
with radiant colours and life is characteristic of Hopkins in the time of his spiritual
formation. Finches’ wing means the wings of a bird that has multi-coloured wings.
From line 5 to 6, the poet says that but there are dappled things created by man, too.
Man divides land into small plots or fields, some being used as folds on enclosures for
sheep, others lying “fallow” for a time as meadowland, and yet others being ploughed
to raise crops. Then there are different kinds of industry, with their neat and well-
maintained equipment and apparatus. In line 7 to 9, the poet sums up the general
qualities he admires in such dappled things. He admires the co-existence of contrary
things: he admires their uniqueness and originality, their rarity which makes them
precious, and their oddness which differentiates each from the others. He likes their
very fickleness (that is, their irregularity in duration), and their freckled or speckled
appearance (which implies an irregularity in pattern). At the same time, he asks the
metaphysical question: “Who knows how?” He means to say that nobody can explain
the reason why these things are “freckled”. Some things are swift, others slow; some
are sweet, others sour; some are exceptionally bright, others lustreless. But nobody
knows why such contrasts exist. In line 10-11, the poet says that all these things have
their origin in God. His beauty is changeless and eternal. Let us praise God who
created all dappled things.
4.2.3 Summary:
The religious fervour of the poems is extremely remarkable. According to Norman H.
Mackenzie, “Hopkins praises God for brindled cows and the blacksmith’s anvil as
well as for the so-called poetic objects around him. He whose beauty is past change is
recognized as fathering forth the slow and the sour, the shade as well as the light,
pleasant little echoes ripple and lap through the poem – dappled, couple, stipple,
tackle, fickle, freckled, adazzle. Even though it is unwise and hard to categorize a
poet’s works, the poems of Hopkins can be divided into two categories: the poems
written between 1876 and 1879 as nature poems expressing joy, positive faith and
mystical perception and those written between 1879 and 1885 as poems on man trying
to adjust himself to a difficult world. But whether a poet of nature or of man God was
always supreme in the mind of Hopkins. Hopkins had great admiration for
Wordsworth. But Wordsworth was a pantheist; Hopkins, a true Catholic. So, God is
apart from Nature to Hopkins God is an artist, the Master-creator of beauty, for
Hopkins. And the beauty of created things is a message from God, that behind ‘Pied
Beauty’, varied and shifting, is the creator, changeless, eternal, One. The poem
expresses the poets’ joyous wonder at the beauty of the work, of joy enhanced
because creation is seen sacramentally and because he himself is using beauty to
praise his Maker. The beauty of created things, including the beauty of Nature, is not
permanent, but only by knowing transient beauty in the many, can the heart grasp the
‘Immutable Beauty’ of God. God is Beauty is itself. So, praise Him; let it be your
duty and your delight.
Hopkins uses the technique of enumeration in the poem. He is a poet of particulars,
here. He catalogues things which change form moment to moment, from season to
season: the changing patterns of the sky, the contrast between the rich, red-brown nut
of the fallen chestnut and the green husk or case which encloses it; the patchwork of
landscape changing according to time and place; the green pasture-land, the dull
fawn-brown fallow lands, the deep brown ploughed lands; the different implements of
artisans and workmen; he catalogues them all. Then he generalizes, contrasting the
antithesis of life, things set in opposition. All these things are products of God. Yet,
God, Himself is ‘past’ or above change. He creates, but He is not the same as His
creations. These things praise Him; are meant to praise Him. In his Nature poetry,
Hopkins betrayed as complete and unashamed a sensuousness as Keates himself. He
fuses a Keatsian immediacy of sense perception with the spiritual tranquillity of
Wordsworth and his sublime healing power. ‘Pied Beauty’ shows how alert and alive,
his sensuous faculties were. The poet is ‘adazzled ‘by different colours in Nature; his
physical feelings are stirred by thought of earthly occupation: he is aware of the
sweet-sour tastes of life. As for the power of concentration shown by the poet the
original poem has to be placed by the side of a paraphrase to understand the poet’s
‘nutty’ style. The compound words, like ‘Fresh fire coal, Chestnut-falls, are full of
force and meaning. At the same time, the poem is a good example of the violence to
syntax and grammar. To understand what ‘Inscape’ was to Hopkins, one need read-
only ‘Pied Beauty’. The poem is full of image to give an idea of the variety and
‘dapple’ of the world, giving experiences of inscape in nature. For ‘Cynghanedd’, the
Welsh art of making intricated and beautiful patterns of speech sound which Hopkins
turned to good use in his poems, lines like with swift, slow, sweet sour adazzle, dim
are good examples. This is the art of alliteration by which language unescaped. Like
Milton who rose to greatness by writing poetry to vindicate the ways of God to men’,
Hopkins, by nature a dreamer and a sensualist, only raises himself to greatness by
writing poetry for ‘great causes as liberty and religion’. In doing this, he had to
sublimate his poetic power. In a poem like “Pied Beauty,” we see how he did it. There
is sensualism in the poem; there is no asceticism. It is a tribute to God’s glory, as all
poetry must be; but they are tributes of the senses.
4.3 Darkling Thrush: Thomas Hardy
4.3.1 About the Poet:
Thomas Hardy was born on 2 June, 1840 in Dorsetshire, England. The rustic
surroundings made an impression on the child’s minds about primitive ideas, folklore
and superstition. Since his father was a master-builder, Hardy chose architecture as
his profession. He became an apprentice under a local architect. Later, he came to
London and followed the trade of an architect. Here, he was drawn to philosophy and
literature. He wrote many poems at this time, but later destroyed them. Hardy
acquired his extreme form of fatalism from the study of the inexorable destiny of
man, and also the class-distinction which he felt keenly in London. Hardy was a
prolific writer who wrote many important novels which includes Under the
Greenwood Tree, Far from the Madding crowd, The Return of the Native, The Mayor
of Casterbridge, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Jude the Obscure. His poetical volumes
include Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1898) and Poems of the Past and the
Present (1901).
Hardy as a Poet:
Hardy was one of the most foremost lyric poets of the twentieth century. The
influence of Browning is clearly visible on him. He wrote with self-assurance – words
are often used in their unfamiliar meanings, there are plenty of archaism and words
are often shortened to suit meter. Hardy said that his poems were “explorations of
reality”. Hardy had a keen sympathetic eye for nature and her creatures, wrote a few
immortal lyrics which constitute a rich addition to any anthology of poetry. Some of
Hardy’s beautiful poems were addressed to Florence Dugdale who became his second
wife. His elegies of his first wife are also touching. His poetry will continue to be read
for their economy in the use of word, expression of sensible ideas and the love and
sympathy for nature and nature’s creatures shown in them.
4.3.2 Critical Analysis of Darkling Thrush:
Originally titled "By the Century's Deathbed", it was first published on 29 December
1900 in The Graphic. The poem was later published in London Times on 1 January,
1901. Thomas Hardy is reputed to have written The Darkling Thrush on New Year’s
Eve, 1900, at the dawn of a new century. It commences in the personal, subjective
mode, but the poet’s feelings and mood are suggested by his observations of nature,
rather than by direct statements. The poem is written in the form of an ode,
conventionally a lyric in the form of an address to a particular subject, often written in
a lofty, elevated style giving it a formal tone. However, odes can be written in a more
private, personal vein, as in the reflective way that Thomas Hardy writes this one. The
title of a poem speaks volumes about it, because through it, the poem must convey the
mood and tone of the poem in a very precise and economic way. For The Darkling
Thrush, Thomas Hardy chose a word with tremendous history in poetry. ‘Darkling’
means in darkness, or becoming dark, for Hardy can still see the landscape, and the
sun is ‘weakening’ but not completely set. The word itself goes back to the mid
fifteenth century. Milton, in Paradise Lost Book III describes the nightingale: ‘the
wakeful Bird / Sings darkling, and in shadiest Covert hid / Tunes her nocturnal Note
…’ Keats famously uses the word in his ‘Ode to a Nightingale’: ‘Darkling, I listen
…’. Matthew Arnold, in Dover Beach writes about the ‘darkling plain’. In other
words, this title gives the poem a resonance of past poets and their thoughts and
feelings on a similar subject; it makes specific allusions to these poets and poems;
their echoes become a part of its tradition.
The poem begins with the poet-persona leaning upon a coppice (wooden) gate on a
wintry day. Everything seems to have a desolate and gloomy look about it, thanks to
the chilling effects of the winter which is given a ghost-like resemblance (spectre-
grey). A brilliant metaphor of the feeble sun (weakening eye of day) and a simile of
the leafless trees which wound the sky in a claw-like manner (the tangled-bine stems
scored the sky (Like strings of broken lyres) is used to describe the dull desolation
brought about by the winter. The deathly silence of the setting is heightened by the
simile “like strings of broken lyre “. The bine stems pierce the sky like the string of a
broken musical instrument which can no longer make any music and has been
rendered silent by the death-like winter. The lyre (a harp-like stringed instrument) was
the instrument of the Muses, the goddesses of Poetry in Greek Mythology. The
imagery of a broken lyre is symbolic not only of complete silence but also complete
ceasing of creative activity. No human being is in sight as people are warming
themselves in their respective homes. The use of “all mankind” suggests a universal
refusal to engage with the wintry surroundings. The only person who is standing
outside is the poet who is watching the “The Century’s corpse outleant”.
The speaker stands alone in the wintry evening, contemplating on the desolate
landscape of the century that was. It is the end of the day, the end of the year and the
end of the century. The imagery of desolation and despair is extended further into the
second stanzas wherein the theme of death is made explicit and is given a much
greater magnitude to encompass time and space. Because the poem was composed
around the end of the 19th century, the phrase “The Century’s corpse outleant” is
brilliantly employed to highlight the end of an age. The alliteration “his crypt the
cloudy canopy” heightens the gloomy atmosphere of the setting and the brooding
mood of the poem. The use of “crypt” to refer to the cloudy sky links the “Century’s
corpse” of the preceding line to the “death lament” of the wind in the succeeding one,
thus completing the sights and sounds of a funeral. The seed, which has been
representative of life since time immemorial has shrivelled up and has become hard
and dry, symbolizing the defeat of the ancient signifier of life to the deathly winter.
Elements of weather, the cloudy sky, the death-lament of the wind and life itself have
been overpowered by this deathly winter. Notice the increasing magnitude of
elements which have come under the grasp of this dreary winter – from the tangled
bine-stems, to men seeking warmth, to the corpse-like landscape, the sky, the wind,
the dry seed of life and eventually, “every spirit upon earth”: all seem helpless in front
of the hopeless winter. This makes the birdsong of the thrush in the third stanza all the
more powerful and lends a much greater significance to the hopeful challenge this
tiny bird poses against the mighty winter.
Hardy makes a great use of the element of surprise by beginning the third stanza with
a sudden “At once...”. This sharply contrasts with the first two stanzas of dull inaction
and effectively ushers the third and fourth stanzas, both replete with hope and life.
The first line of the stanza mimics the birdsong of a thrush through the use of
assonance (At once a voice arose among) and sibilance (Had chosen thus to fling his
soul). Furthermore, what is remarkable about the third stanza is that it solicits the
reader’s attention to both the song and its singer. The little bird is in no better shape
than his surroundings. It isn’t a young, stout, beautiful bird that is singing such a
joyous song. Rather, we are told that it is an aged thrush, “frail, gaunt and small”,
with a “blast-beruffled” plume. In short, this is a bird which is old and weak, has
possibly not eaten for days (thanks to the winter) and his feathers have received the
full blow of the winter wind (which has been likened to a death song in the second
stanza). The fact that this pitiable soul chooses to sing his optimistic song despite the
adverse situation is what makes his birdsong all the more impactful. When all hope
seems lost, and when death immobilizes all, it is the tiny, imperfect little bird which
sings a song of hope which becomes a testament of life. The word “blast-beruffled”
used in this stanza is a word invented by Hardy. The poet frequently came up with
new words meant be used for a single occasion in order to suit his literary needs.
Some such occassionalisms, also known as nonce words words can be seen
throughout the poem which include “darkling”, “spectre-grey”, “outleant” etc.
“Darkling” was popular one among Victorian poets and its use can also be seen in
Matthew Arnold’s Dover Beach.
The fourth stanza demonstrates the interplay of Hope and Despair vis-a-vis the human
subject. The poet says that no great reason for such a joyous song (carolings of such
ecstatic sound) was visible in the landscape (written on terrestrial things) far or near
him (afar or nigh around). Also, the use of the term ‘terrestrial’ may either refer to the
landscape or the sensory material reality as opposed to the extra-sensory spiritual
realm. An effective use of sibilance (successive use of c and s sounds which creates a
hissing / effect) is seen in the first line of this stanza which again mimics the birdsong
of the thrush:
So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
The use of the word evensong (evening prayer song) in the previous stanza and
carolling (joyful Christian songs) in this stanza bear a religious connotation in this
poem which was written in an age where religion was haunted by the spectre of
coldly-calculating rational thought overtaking its established authority. In the face of
this onslaught of doubt, the only resistance could be provided by the faith (Blessed
Hope) of a tiny thrush. The poet comes to the conclusion that the joyful song of the
tiny bird carried with it some Blessed Hope which the thrush could sense and of
which he was unaware. The probable existence of a blessed hope and the human
inability to comprehend it lends this poem a quasi-religious dimension and the poem
ends on a note of ambiguity.
4.3.3 Summary:
The 1st stanza describes in a few unpretentious words the blackness of winter. The
two apt similes tell volumes. The frost looks like a gray spectre, bleak, desolate and
discouraging. The binestems look like strings of broken lyres because they are totally
leafless and this one simile describes economically the ravages made by winter. The
2nd stanza has also a telling simile. The snow-covered uneven land is the corpse of
the dying 19th century brought out into the open. Hardy says that the corpse will have
a crypt which is the canopy of the clouds. The idea of a dark cloudy sky is used as a
grave. It reflects the depression and dejected state of mind of the poet. And the inner
conviction, the faith in the structure of things is lacking. Only a supernatural of
logically inexplicable phenomenon can temporarily break the spell of his
unhappiness. In the poem, it comes in the sudden outburst of singing of an old
weather-beaten thrush “upon the growing gloom”. It is a great hope for the future that
produces such limitless joy. The bird knows it instinctively, the poet does not. Man is
at the feet of the bird for the inkling of intuitive knowledge. This is what comes of
abandoning faith in God and in his Messiah. Had Hardy not abandoned the faith, had
he not embittered his own mind by constantly dwelling on the sadder aspects of life,
he would have derived a lot of faith, hope and courage from a single saying of Christ
in this crisis. It is not for man to understand all of God’s ways.
4.4 Important Questions:
4.4.1 Short Answer Questions:
1. What can Ulysses and his mariners still do though they are old?
2. How is the Nineteenth Century personified by Hardy in The Darkling Thrush?
3. How can you relate the desolation around the poet and in his heart with the
joyous song of the thrush which has strikingly been built up in The Darkling
Thrush?
4. Comment on the theme of Tennyson’s Ulysses.
5. Why does Hopkins ask us to praise God?
6. What is the central theme of Tennyson’s Ulysses?
7. Give a brief description of the landscape as portrayed by Hardy.
8. How does Hopkins glorify God?
9. “The tangled bine-stems scored the sky like strings of broken lyres.” Explain.
4.4.2 Essay Type Question:
10. What is Hardy’s attitude to the new century? What conclusion does he arrive at?
11. What is Ulysses’ Philosophy? How is he an inspiration to his mariners?
12. Hopkin’s poem, Pied Beauty celebrates difference and variety. What are the
various things of nature for which Hopkins praises God?
13. Compare and contrast the characters of Ulysses and Telemachus.
14. “To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.” Critically comment on the acclaimed
last line from Tennyson’s Ulysses.
15. Give a pen-picture of the landscape as depicted by Hardy in the poem, The
Darkling Thrush.
16. What is a dramatic monologue? Consider Ulysses as a dramatic monologue.
17. How does Hopkins explore the breath-taking variety of nature in its many forms
in the poem, Pied Beauty?
18. The poem, Pied Beauty centres on the glory of God and His manifold
multicoloured creation. Discuss.
19. Comment on the idea of desolation and disintegration in Thomas Hardy’s The
Darkling Thrush.
4.5 Recommended Books:
1. Wings of Poesy: NU Anthology of Poetry
2. Arthur Compton-Ricket: A History of English Literature (UBS, 2005)
3. Edward Albert: A History of English Literature 5th Edition (OUP, 2004)
