The darling thrush

There is so much to your question. The poem does not represent this winter day in particularly flattering terms. Instead, Hardy presents the natural world as bleak and barren. The first stanza is especially geared towards creating a vivid image of the outdoors through dense visual imagery. The speaker refers to the “spectre-grey” frost, the “dregs” of winter, and the “desolate,” “weakening eye” of the sun, all in a few brief lines (2-4). In a more extended simile, he describes “the tangled bine-stems,” or criss-crossing twigs of some dead plant, as the “strings of broken lyres” (5-6). All this imagery combines to create a vivid picture both of the general scene, and the exact place where the speaker is standing. We understand that the poem is concerned both with the state of the world, and with the perspective of an individual speaker.

You can check out more at the analysis section below:

https://www.gradesaver.com/thomas-hardy-poems/study-guide/summary-the-darkling-thrush