BY: Thomas Hardy

 Thomas Hardy, who was unusual in being both a great novelist and a great poet, was born in Dorset, a region of southwest England on June 2 nd in He used this region as the basis for the imaginary country of Wessex that is the setting of many of his novels.  Early life : The son of a stonemason, Hardy grew up in a rural cottage near a tract of wasteland.He received a fine education at a local school, although he never went on to study at a university. As a teenager, he began working for a local architect, and later he became a draftsman for an architect who specialized in churches. While on a business trip to Cornwall, Hardy met a women who later became his first wife. She encouraged him in his literary activities and he soon committed himself to writing.  When Hardy’s early poetry did not gain notice he turned to writing novels. Far from madding crowd was the first to gain success. Hardy used his fiction writing to elaborate his own pessimistic view of life. In tragic novels like Tess of the D’urbervilles(1891) and Jude the obscure (1895), he showed the difficulty people experience when trying to rise above their circumstances.

 Hardy’s poetry marks a transition from Victorian verse to the Modernist movement of the twentieth century. In his use of strict meter and stanza structure, hardy was clearly Victorian. However his nonpoetic language and odd rhymes, his devotion to English countryside, and his fatalistic outlook inspired twentieth-century poets like Philip Larkin.

 In the opening lines of "The Darkling Thrush" Hardy establish the tone and the setting of the poem. Hardy underscores the speaker's mood by describing him leaning upon a "coppice gate," meaning opens onto the woods.  I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-grey, And Winter's dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day

 In this poem Thomas Hardy, uses the literary devices of Alliteration, Assonance, Allusion, Connotation, Personification, Rhythm, that describes his own pessimistic view of life.

 The theme & tone in the speaker’s attitude change from hopeless to hopeful came as the result of the singing thrush. The thrush, representing firm hopefulness, helps express the theme of hope and faith. Through his spiritual revelation, the speaker sees the goodness and happiness in the future and he is able to be at peace with the passing of time.

 Basically my poem is about the ending of a century. The speaker is very pessimistic. Until this song bird comes along singing an joyful song. From the speaker description the bird is very old looking,like it has been beating. The speaker now wonders if the bird knew something that he didn’t know about the up coming century.

 Prentice Hall Literature :The British Tradition