The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy is a poem written in December of the year 1900. This coincides with the themes of the poem itself, being a sadness and depression because it is the end of not only year, but also a century. However the poem is not all-negative, there is a sense of hope felt because of these new beginnings, a hope due to the curiosity of what the new era will bring.
             Stanzas one and two provide a setting of the poem in which the reader is placed in the position of the poet, and is made to feel what the person speaking feels on this eve of the new year. The poet is standing at a gate looking over a desolate scene. In this situation the gate may symbolise a barrier, the barrier possibly being a sense of despair of what the future may hold. The frost covering the scene is described as being ghost-like. This is depicted through the words 'spectre-grey'. The weight of the words 'winter dregs' furthers the effect of these words which in turn leads into the effect of reiterating the desolation that is being described by this individual character. The word 'dregs' forces the reader to pause in the line of verse, adding to this effect. The sun is depicted as the 'weakening eye of day', which is a personification. This not only symbolises the closing of a day in the form of a usual sunset, but also of a year and century.
             The first stanza ends with the individual speaker being conscious of other human beings, to which the scenery that is being witnessed is also familiar. However their effect on this scenery is diminished by the word 'haunted'. I believe the word haunted to be used as a technique the poet uses to associate the humans as being ghost-like beings who depart to the safety of their homes.
             'And all mankind that haunted nigh
             Had sought their household fires.'
             The scene of the first stanza depicts only the barest traces of life, what began as
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