Answer the following briefly.

Identify the following:

• time of the day

• time of the year

• place where the poet finds himself

• time of the day – The poem is written in the evening. The opening lines of "The Darkling Thrush" establish the tone and the setting of the poem.

• time of the year – The poem is written on the last day of the century. The poem uses a bleak and wintry landscape as a metaphor for the close of the nineteenth century and the joyful song of a solitary thrush as a symbolic image of the dawning century.

• place where the poet finds himself – The poem "The Darkling Thrush" embodies the writer's despair and pessimism. The speaker's despair echoes Hardy's own world-weariness and loss of hope for humanity's future. he speaker's connection to the past has been severed, and he cannot find meaning in the present, and the dawning century, symbolized by the thrush's song, offers little in the way of meaning.