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illustrate the gloomy scenes in the darkling thrush

illustrate the gloomy scenes in the darkling thrush

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    The poet starts the poem by setting the mood of a dark wintery scene. He is leaning against the “coppice gate” and watching the bleak scene around him unfold. The world seems to be sad and drawing to its close. The simile of the thick tangled stems of the plant soaring the sky as a broken lyre adds more to his sorrow and sadness around him. Against the background of this hopeless scene when coldness and darkness descends, the human beings retire to their homes to sit by the fireside. To make the dejected ambience more profound, the poet says the frost develops human like characteristics in a ghost like manner; “spectre-grey.” The land becomes a map of everything that has happened over the course of the century. It seem to embody the dying century. The sharp features of the land seem to be the Century’s corpse and the cloud works as as a canopy covering up the dead body. The speaker feels that because of the extreme cold, the rhythm of conception and truth has slowed down remarkably. Throughout these stanzas, the image of death and grief is quite prominent.

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