Question

2. In “The Darkling Thrush,” a bird sings in the midst of winter. Which of the following lines from the poem supports Thomas Hardy’s theme that the close of the nineteenth century feels hopeless?

Answer 1

The entirety of the second stanza discusses the hopelessness Hardy feels at the end of the century. 

In the second stanza, Hardy notes "the Century's corpse," "the death-lament" of the century and how every "pulse of germ and birth" is shrunken. In this stanza, he says that all is dead and bleak; everything that would give rise to new life is "hard and dry." This is a bleak and hopeless stanza.