A New Start

I cant help but draw parallels between The Darling Thrush and The Circus Animal’s Desertion. Both poems are looking back at the past with mixed emotions. The Darling Thrush glances at the entire state of literature at the cusp of a new era, and Yeats does the same thing only on a more personal level. The drive to produce something new and exciting seem to be a difficult task and they imply that past work was just good enough but needs a push in a new direction. Hardy is a little more optimistic as he stands at the coppice gate and sees the wilderness that can be cultivated into entirely new forms of literature. Yeats reflects on a past career and turns his back to the sharp horizon that he helped build. It is a much easier feat to comment on the literature in its entirety, but something completely different when putting yourself in that mix. Both men see different values of the past and both accept the challenge of starting fresh; putting pen to paper and cultivate the untouched land that stands before them.