Indeed, Hardy makes such a division more striking by picturing the persona’s surroundings as very extreme. Surrounded by deathly imagery, the persona imagines the landscape as “the Century’s corpse/ His crypt the canopy,/ The wind his death lament”. Even Hardy’s animate entities seem ghostly; “Frost was spectre-gray” and “mankind... haunted nigh”. Such is the state of decay that even “the ancient pulse of germ and birth was shrunken” – the regenerative power of life has itself died, leaving the persona as the sole animate existence.
A similar loneliness can be seen in ‘NC’, especially towards the end of the poem. In the aftermath of the car passing, the persona observes, “mute by the gate”, that he “stand[s] again alone.” The sudden silence and soft, finite ‘t’ sound of “mute” – in contrast to the onomatopoeic “whangs” – amplifies the persona’s loneliness; as does the empty assonance in the repeated ‘a’ sound, in “alone” and “again”. Equally, the present tense verb “stands” and “again” emphasizes that this is an ongoing and repeated state of isolation.
However, the persona in ‘Nobody Comes’ is not simply isolated in terms of being physically alone or the sole living creature – he is also isolated from modernity. Hardy again uses ‘supernatural’ imagery to explore this. The persona notes that “The telegraph wire... intones... like a spectral lyre/ Swept by a spectral hand”. Rather than see the telegraph wire as a means of communication, the persona rejects it in presenting an image of disassociation; the vagueness of the verb “intones” summons an image of faceless voices. He also creates negative supernatural connotations; there is an innate ghostliness about the archaic lyre – juxtaposed to contrast with the innate modernity of the telegraph wire – which is reinforced by the wraithlike “spectral”. Hardy repeats this for emphasis in “spectral hand”. In this phrase, he also creates an incongruity between the concrete verb “swept” and noun “hand” and the abstract concept of “ghostliness” – the ‘hand’ does not exist. Its invisible presence and visible effects are unnerving, making the modern telegraph wire an unpleasant image.
The persona’s rejection of modernity can be seen also in the depiction of “a car com[ing] up”. Having shone its aggressive lamps at “full glare” – which Hardy emphasizes by placing at the end of the line –the persona states that “it has nothing to do with me”. This maxim, in being so blunt, is very powerful. It operates to present a rift between the persona and the modern world and, given the unusually colloquial verb “whangs”, it indicates that the car is viewed as a callous representation of modern life from which the persona wishes to isolate himself. It leaves “leaving a blacker air”, which may indicate either a corruption of nature (in terms of polluting the otherwise fresh air) or a darkening in the persona’s emotions. Indeed, the poem concludes with the same negativity, with the word “nobody” in both the title and the last line. The persona is left “again alone” and isolated, prompting a large amount of sympathy from the reader.
By contrast, ‘TDT’ concludes with a hopeful note. At the appearance of the thrush, in the third stanza, the reader notes that the bird is similarly isolated and surrounded by death. In truth, the reader’s initial reaction to the “aged... frail, gaunt and small” thrush is to question whether the creature will survive the bleak conditions. There is a sense of desperation present “fling[ing its] soul/ Upon the growing gloom.” However, the persona notices “some blessed Hope” in the bird’s “happy good-night air”. Although “unaware” of why this may be – such “joy illimited” is unintelligible to the persona – this leads the poem to end in an optimistic fashion. Although both the persona and the thrush remain isolated from any other company (the persona fails to deeply associate with the bird) and the anxiety about the future lingers, Hardy does much to suggest that such deep rooted “fervourlessness” may change in TDT’s persona, as opposed to the ongoing isolation present in NC.
