Beginning with an examination of The Voice(TM), consider some of the ways in which Hardy gives poetic expression to his personal grief.

Authors Avatar

Beginning with an examination of ‘The Voice’, consider some of the ways in which Hardy gives poetic expression to his personal grief.

     Throughout much of Hardy’s poetry there are various different connotations of grief presented, whether it is grievance for his late wife Emma or the diverse accounts of war that are shown. The poetic expressions of these poems provoke emotion to the reader and help them to relate to Hardy’s personal grief in some way.

     One of the poems where this effect is apparent is ‘The Voice’. The extended metaphor of the wind has taken the naturalistic entity of the wind and changed it into Emma’s voice haunting him and thus personifying it to be Emma. The wind also creates an idea of Hardy’s longing for her to return to him, this is portrayed by the way Hardy creates the effect of an echo, ‘call to me, call to me’ not only does the repetition demonstrate an echo it also helps the reader to grasp the fact that Hardy feels hopeless in his searching for Emma, as whatever he does he will not be able to retrieve her. This poetic expression of the wind is displayed with various free and loose punctuation to create the idea of Emma being now free and changeable, like the wind itself, ‘ you had changed from the one who was all to me’ she is now illusive and cannot be seen, causing Hardy’s grief to increase as it is shown in the poem that he will not be able to see her again.

Join now!

The way in which the poem is written shows an obvious regret, this was that Hardy took what he had with Emma whilst she was alive for granted and now she is no longer around her loss has reawakened his romance with her and he now sees her as he did when they first met, which he knows, is now too late. He sees he in the ‘air-blue gown’ that he did when he first met her, however, this also has another meaning, of how Emma is now all around and immortal, however, even though she is all around the ...

This is a preview of the whole essay