The poem, “The Darkling Thrush”, by Thomas Hardy was written on December, 31st, 1899, in a spirit of anticipation of a brighter hope for a brand new century altogether. The poet was leaning against a coppice gate of a thicket grove of small trees and watching the grey frost dropped in the form of the spectre which gave the poet the idea of something very unpleasant about to happen in the near future. The deep freezing winter had settled every dreg of liquids all around the surroundings and the scene of desolation has made everything about empty, lonely and unhappy. The severe cold season had indeed weakened the heat of the sun and the sky looked cloudy and gloomy. The twisted stems that dropped down hanging from the tall trees and massive plants stood in awe of the cold dropping sky and looked like the broken strings of an ancient lyre. All people from their busy scheduled rushed home to seek the warmth of their household fire.
All the landscape of the nature around looked like a fresh corpse of the century standing up straight and leaning forward. The Nature’s tomb was the dark canopy of the cloudy sky which acted like a cloth cover suspended overhead. The cold wind blew as an expression of great disappointment about a death like scenery of the place. All life on earth right from the tiniest micro organism to the largest creature known to man seemed to have become smaller, drier and brittle and just like the poet himself, perhaps every lively spirit that walked the face of the earth now became skeptical of any religious belief.
Then suddenly, out of the dying twigs from the trees above the poet’s head, broke a sharp and wholehearted evening song of a lonely thrush. Though it was old-aged, frail, thin weak and small, yet it sung beyond the limits of utmost joy. To move through the plume of tall thin amount of dust and smoke rising high into the atmosphere, by the ruffling of the wind, this bird had made a good choice to sing out its soul to brighten up the growing gloom.
There was little or no reason for the thrush to sing with such enthusiastic songs to be sounded on all terrestrial creations pertaining to the earth, how near or how far that the poet could think that here could be any secret source of happiness running through the cold winter’s night. Maybe, somewhere laid some blessed hope that only the thrush could know and that the poet was unaware.