Thomas Hardy – Page 4 – Interesting Literature

A Short Analysis of Thomas Hardy’s ‘A Broken Appointment’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘A Broken Appointment’ offers the delicious middle-ground of Thomas Hardy’s poetry, between the undeniably classic anthology pieces (‘The Darkling Thrush’, ‘The Ruined Maid’) and the numerous poems he wrote which are now not much read or analysed. ‘A Broken Appointment’ contains many of Hardy’s classic hallmarks: disappointment, thwarted love, and pessimism are all present and correct. But the addressee of the poem is not present. She has broken her appointment.

A Broken Appointment

You did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb,—
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure lovingkindness’ sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
You did not come.

A Short Analysis of Thomas Hardy’s ‘During Wind and Rain’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was a prolific poet as well as a significant Victorian novelist. ‘During Wind and Rain’, written in 1917, is about the big things: life and death, and the passing of time. In this post we offer a brief summary of ‘During Wind and Rain’, followed by an analysis of its language and themes.

During Wind and Rain

They sing their dearest songs—
He, she, all of them—yea,
Treble and tenor and bass,
And one to play;
With the candles mooning each face. . . .
Ah, no; the years O!
How the sick leaves reel down in throngs!

A Summary and Analysis of Thomas Hardy’s ‘In Time of “The Breaking of Nations”‘

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) wrote ‘In Time of “The Breaking of Nations”’ in 1915 when the First World War was raging, and the poem was published in January 1916 in the Saturday Review. The poem is one of Hardy’s most famous and popular war poems. Here we offer a short summary and analysis of ‘In Time of “The Breaking of Nations”’, focusing on its language and meaning.

A Short Analysis of Thomas Hardy’s ‘The Self-Unseeing’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘The Self-Unseeing’ is a short Thomas Hardy poem that originally appeared in his second volume of poems, Poems of the Past and the Present, in 1901. Like many of Hardy’s poems, ‘The Self-Unseeing’ seems to require no detailed unpicking or analysis; it can be understood on first reading fairly easily. Nevertheless, the poem raises certain questions which it isn’t so easy to answer.

The Self-Unseeing

Here is the ancient floor,
Footworn and hollowed and thin,
Here was the former door
Where the dead feet walked in.

She sat here in her chair,
Smiling into the fire;
He who played stood there,
Bowing it higher and higher.

A Short Analysis of Thomas Hardy’s ‘Hap’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Hap is one of Thomas Hardy’s earliest great poems, composed in the 1860s while he was still a young man in his twenties. Its theme is one that would return again and again in both Hardy’s poetry and in his fiction: the seeming randomness of the world, and the ways in which our fortunes (and our misfortunes) are a result of blind chance rather than some greater plan. Here is ‘Hap’, anyway, and a few words of analysis.

Hap

If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: ‘Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!’