?The Darkling Thrush? is a poem occasioned by the beginning of a new year and a new century. A movement of subject is apparent in the first two stanzas from an observation of a winter landscape as perceived by an individual speaker to a terrible vision of the death of an era that the landscape seems to disclose. The action of the poem lies in the apprehension of this particular moment of seeing changes as the emotional impact as the scene solidifies.

The diction here is simple and direct, and the tone is the quiet voice of private conversation. The spectral quality of ?Frost? is accurate in suggesting a s

The speaker has not been convinced or transported out of the ?growing gloom?, but his response has been to ?think?. The landscape is not rewritten, nor is the fact that an era is over, but his emotional response is to listen to the birdsong and think of hope. Although the ?blessed Hope?, as seen in the fourth stanza, is a knowledge the bird has and of which the speaker is yet unaware because he cannot see anything in the landscape that justifies it except the bird itself, his acceptance of the unexpected ?sign? emanating from a concrete reality is where the poem becomes the most humane.

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

The second stanza introduces the fact that this moment in time also marks the end of a century. The landscape?s features become an immense body. The first sentence shows the speaker?s mind encompassing huge spaces of land and sky into the frightening spectacle of the ?Century?s corpse? in its coffin. It is a vision of death and termination in elemental proportions. The sky is a lid. The image is the effect of a ?vision? that is boxing in the world and time.

Some topics in this essay:
Darkling Thrush, , weakening eye, growing gloom, darkling thrush, hard dry, speakers emotions, centurys corpse, poem speaker, real world, vision death, winters dregs,