What does the phrase I leant upon the Coppice Gate signify?

Thomas has greatly established the tone and setting of the poem in its very first opening lines: “I leant upon the coppice gate/ When Frost was spectre-grey”. This provides us with the very notion of misery as ‘frost’ and ‘grey’. Both signify wearing away or the slow approach of death in the form of winter.

What is the significance of the metaphor to strings of broken lyres?

The use of the simile which compares the ‘bine-stems’ like ‘strings of broken lyres’ indicates that there is no happiness or music. Everything is dead. Lines 7-8 – ‘And all mankind that haunted nigh had sought their household fires’.

What does the word coppice meaning in the first line of the poem The Darkling Thrush?

The opening lines of “The Darkling Thrush” establish the tone and the setting of the poem. Hardy underscores the speaker’s meditative mood by describing him leaning upon a “coppice gate,” meaning a gate that opens onto the woods.

What is the message of The Darkling Thrush?

Answer: The main theme of “The Darkling Thrush “written by Thomas Hardy is despair and isolation. In this meditative poem, the poet describes the dying of the old world at the turn of the century.

What is the main conflict in the poem The Darkling Thrush?

the main conflict of the poem the darkling thrush is that of it”s the very end of the day. In fact, it’s the very end of the year. The countryside is frozen into an icy, unwelcoming landscape. It’s not quiteHoth, but it’s close.

What is ironic about the song of the thrush in The Darkling Thrush?

What is ironic about the song of the thrush in “The Darkling Thrush”? It is ironic that only the thrush is singing with so many birds around. It is ironic that the speaker bothers to notice the thrush outside. The thrush is old and frail and shouldn’t be able to sing at all.

What does the expression spectre grey mean?

For example, the speaker describes the “Frost” as “spectre-grey,” meaning it looks like a ghost or a spirit. The speaker interprets the frost as a sign that the world is dead, lifeless, and hopeless.

What is meant by the century’s corpse?

In the second stanza the imagery is extended to include the “Century’s corpse” such that the leaden sky becomes the roof of a crypt in which the century’s tomb might be placed and the wind is its “death lament”. It is not just the century that has died; it has taken with it the certainties of the Christian religion.

What makes the sight from the coppice gate so depressing in The Darkling Thrush?

The view from the coppice gate is so depressing because it is a dreary winter day in the late afternoon (the speaker refers to this time as the “weakening eye of day”) as the sun is beginning to go down. Everything looks gray and desolate. It is cold, and the frost covering the landscape is a ghostly “spectre” gray.

Why did Hardy wrote Darkling Thrush?

Thomas Hardy wrote ‘The Darkling Thrush’ to express his feelings about the world when it was about to enter the twenty-first century. As the title suggests, the poem is about a bird, a bedraggled thrush that is singing a song on a gloomy evening of the last day of the year.

What does spectre GREY mean?

What does the century’s corpse mean?