Thomas Hardy: Poems Literary Elements

"The Darkling Thrush," "The Voice," and "Afterwards" all have a first-person speaker.

"The Darkling Thrush" is made up of four octets (stanzas of eight lines each), which follow an ABABCDCD rhyme scheme. The poem is written using "iambs," or phrases consisting of one short, unstressed syllable and one long, stressed syllable. It alternates between lines of "iambic tetrameter," or lines made up of four iambs, and "iambic trimeter," lines of three iambs. "Afterwards" is made up of five stanzas of four lines each, each written using an ABAB rhyme scheme. "The Voice" is made up of four stanzas of four lines each which follow an ABAB rhyme scheme. The first and third lines of each stanza are twelve syllables, the second and fourth ten.

Line 6 of "The Darkling Thrush" uses simile to compare tangled stems to the "strings of broken lyres," suggesting that the death of classical poetic tradition is part of the poem's mourning for the past.
Lines 9-10 of "The Darkling Thrush" use metaphor to compare the winter landscape to the end of the nineteenth century.
Line 10 of "The Darkling Thrush" uses metaphor to compare the nineteenth century, now over, to a corpse.
Lines 11-12 of "The Darkling Thrush" use metaphor to compare the world to a gravesite, with the "cloudy canopy" as a "crypt" and the "wind" as a "death lament."
Line 19 of "The Darkling Thrush" uses metaphor to compare the song of a thrush to "evensong," or the music at an evening Christian church service.
Line 1 of "Afterwards" uses metaphor to compare the present to a building with a latched door.
Line 2 of "Afterwards" uses simile to compare leaves to wings.
Line 3 of "Afterwards" uses simile to compare the delicacy of the leaves to silk.
Line 5 of "Afterwards" uses simile to compare the flight of a hawk to a silent blink .
Line 31 of "Afterwards" uses simile to compare the sound of the wind to the "boom" of a bell.
"The Voice" is structured around an extended metaphor between the sound of the wind and the sound of a woman's voice.

Alliteration of /d/ sounds in "dregs made desolate," "The Darkling Thrush" line 3
Alliteration of /k/ sounds in "crypt the cloudy canopy," "The Darkling Thrush" line 11
Alliteration of /b/ sounds in "blast-beruffled," "The Darkling Thrush" line 22
Alliteration of /g/ sounds in "growing gloom," "The Darkling Thrush" line 24
Alliteration of /m/ sounds in "May month," "Afterwards" line 2
Alliteration of /g/ sounds in "glad green leaves," "Afterwards" line 2
Alliteration of /g/ sounds in "glad green leaves," "Afterwards" line 2
Alliteration of /s/ sounds in "as new-spun silk," "Afterwards" line 2
Alliteration of /c/ sounds in "comes crossing," "Afterwards" line 2
Alliteration of /w/ sounds in "wind-warped," "Afterwards" line 2
Alliteration of /w/ sounds in "Where you would wait for me," "The Voice" line 7
Alliteration of /f/ sounds in "faltering forward/ Leaves around me falling," "The Voice" line 13-14
Alliteration of /th/ sounds in "oozing thin through the thorn," "The Voice" line 7

The third stanza of "Afterwards" depicts an ironic situation in which the speaker worked to protect innocent creatures from harm, but ultimately ended up dead himself.
All of "Afterwards" is somewhat ironic in that it concerns the death of its own speaker; if that speaker was really dead, the poem could not exist.

The first stanza of "The Voice" features situational irony. The speaker misses the woman not as she was when she died, but as she was when she was young and he was still in love with her. Ironically, then, her death actually brings her closer, because it allows him to remember her as she was. Yet her death also makes her forever inaccessible. The speaker can hear her voice but never be near her again, in any of her guises.

"The Darkling Thrush" and "The Voice" are both lyric poems. "Afterwards" is an epitaph.

"The Darkling Thrush" is set in the countryside in winter, at the edge of a wood. "Afterwards" is set in the countryside in spring. "The Voice" is set on a cold day in autumn, out in a damp meadow.

"The Darkling Thrush" is pessimistic and mournful. "Afterwards" is reflective, yearning, hopeful. "The Voice" is yearning and dark.

The speaker is the protagonist in "The Darkling Thrush," "Afterwards," and "The Voice."

The major conflict in "The Darkling Thrush" is between the desolation and barrenness of the world, as perceived by the speaker, and the hopeful song of the thrush, which represents the capacity for hope in intangible things beyond the terrestrial sphere, such as the soul or the heavens.

The major conflict in "Afterwards" is between the speaker's desire to be remembered and the impossibility of determining how one is remembered after one's death.

The major conflict in "The Voice" is the speaker's impossible desire for his dead wife as she was when she was young.

The climax of "The Darkling Thrush" occurs between lines 25 and 30, when the speaker believes he can hear "some blessed Hope" in the song of the thrush, despite the complete hopelessness he perceives in "terrestrial things"

The climax of "Afterwards" occurs in lines 11 and 12, where we see the greatest conflict between the speaker and the way his survivors remember him.

The climax of "The Voice" occurs in lines 13 and 14, where the speaker ceases to speculate in order to abruptly acknowledge the bleakness of his own surroundings, and the loss of his wife.

The phrase "specter-grey" in line 2 of "The Darkling Thrush" foreshadows the poem's depiction of the landscape as the death of the century in the second stanza.

The first line of "The Voice," "Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me," foreshadows the last line, where her call returns.

"Afterwards" understates the cold reality of death through the flowery and euphemistic phrase, "When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay" (1)

The word "darkling" in "The Darkling Thrush" is an allusion to Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale" and Milton's "Paradise Lost." The poem alludes to the Greco-Roman lyrical tradition by referring to the "strings of broken lyres." Critics have also traced references to Shelley's "Ode to a Skylark," as well as to the nineteenth-century poets John Keble and W.H. Hudson.

In line 15 of "Afterwards," Hardy employs synecdoche by having the speaker's face stand in for his full person.

"The Darkling Thrush" personifies Frost and Winter as acting upon the world and rendering it desolate. The poem also personifies the "Century" as a corpse, referring to the dead figure using masculine pronouns. Finally, the poem personifies "Hope" as a force present in the "good-night air."

"Afterwards" personifies the Present as the owner of a manor in line 1.

"The Darkling Thrush" uses hyperbole when the speaker states that "every spirit upon earth/Seemed fervourless as I" (15-16).

The sound of the phrase "blast-beruffled" in line 22 of "The Darkling Thrush" echoes the sharp sound of a "blast" of wind, and the softness of "beruffled" feathers.

The word "boom" in line 31 of "Afterwards" echoes the sound of a bell.

The word "oozing" in line 15 of "The Voice" suggests seeping with the round "oo" sound.