In the following essay excerpt, Maynard explores the themes of death and a life without hope in "The Darkling Thrush," especially as they relate to similar conclusions in nineteenth-century thought.

The poem offers two complementary portraits of the "senselessness" of nature. One is literal and the other figurative, corresponding to the two meaning of "darkling": "in the dark" and "obscure."

In the first two stanzas, the world appears physically dead. The first suggests the exhaustion of sense experience. There is little to see in the "spectre-gray" landscape; the "eye of day" is weak. "Winter's dregs" offer little to satisfy the sense of taste or smell. Heaviness characterizes the sense of touch, as suggested by Hardy's use of "leant" to describe his own physical posture in the scene. Finally, there is no sound at all. The image of tangled bine-stems resembling strings of broken lyres vividly conveys the...