Imagery throughout the first three stanzas of the poem creates feelings of sadness. In stanza one, words like "spectre," "grey," "desolate," "weakening," and "broken lyre" create sadness by reminding us of miserable weather and brokenness. These images continue even more strongly in stanza two, in words such as "corpse," "crypt," and "death-lament," followed by words that remind the reader of extreme old age: "ancient," "shrunken," and "fervourless." In the next stanza, Hardy uses "bleak," "frail," "gaunt"...
Imagery throughout the first three stanzas of the poem creates feelings of sadness. In stanza one, words like "spectre," "grey," "desolate," "weakening," and "broken lyre" create sadness by reminding us of miserable weather and brokenness. These images continue even more strongly in stanza two, in words such as "corpse," "crypt," and "death-lament," followed by words that remind the reader of extreme old age: "ancient," "shrunken," and "fervourless." In the next stanza, Hardy uses "bleak," "frail," "gaunt" and "gloom." This pile-up of adjectives creates a cumulative effect of unrelenting sadness and gloom.
This use of such sad words for three consecutive stanzas works to highlight the hope in the last stanza. The poet wonders how the thrush can sing such a beautiful song of "ecstatic sound" in such a bleak world of ageing and death. In fact, the contrast is so great that the poet questions whether the thrush has some knowledge of "blessed Hope" of which the poet is "unaware."
Though the song of the thrush brings a "happy" note of hope to the bleak scene, the thrush's hope contrasts sharply with the hopelessness the poet feels.
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