In The Haunter, Hardy writes the poem as if it was his dead wife talking to him. He imagines Emma can see him and feel his emotions as a means of consoling himself. However, the main emotions which come out of this poem are Hardy’s guilt and regret and, although he adopts his wife’s voice, it is his emotions which come through strongly in the poem. He appears to be haunted by memories, which may be the reason for the title of the poem. Alternatively, it could be that he sees his wife as a ghost haunting him. Each stanza has the same words rhyming at the end of every second line; ‘know....go….do….thereto’. These are important as they show Hardy’s mains hopes about his wife; that she knows everything he’s doing and thinking, but the ‘go’ shows he knows she has gone for ever and there is nothing he can do to go there and be with her.
The poem opens with irony as “Emma” says ‘he does not think I haunt here nightly’, when he is writing the poem. This shows Hardy hopes she is there with him, but that he just can’t see her; but in reality he probably knows she is not really there and it is just wishful thinking. This line also starts the theme which continues throughout the stanza: that Emma is always there with him. The repetition of ‘hover and hover’ reinforces this point. Hardy is creating ideas which he hopes his wife would have about him, as a way of comforting himself.
Hardy’s feelings of guilt and regret come through strongly in the second stanza. He did not do many of the things he should when he had the chance and this is shown by the repetition of ‘when I could’ in the first two lines of this stanza. “Emma” says how she would ‘like to join his journeys’, which shows Hardy feels guilty that he didn’t let her go with him when he went away, and now blames himself that they didn’t spend enough time together. The voice of his wife tells us that ‘he misses me more than he used to do’ which means he didn’t realise how much he needed her when she was alive but now he knows that he did and he misses her even more. Emma is described as a ‘faithful phantom’, which suggests that she was loyal to him, and maybe that he was not as faithful to her. The alliteration is soft to suggest the kindness and beauty of Emma.
In stanza three, there is a large amount of imagery, as Emma tells us how she likes to ‘accompany him to places’. There is a strong sense of night time in the opening of this stanza, as ‘dreamers’, ‘shy hares’ and ‘night rooks’ are mentioned. “Emma” tells us she follows Hardy ‘into old aisles’, which show Hardy is still thinking about the past, which is ‘all to him’, because he is reminiscing the happy times when Emma was alive and with him, and he now thinks he will not get that happiness back. However, although she is ‘his shade’ – suggesting she is like his shadow and always with him – she is ‘always lacking the power to call to him’. We get the sense that, although Hardy is trying to believe his wife is near him, he is upset and frustrated that he can and will never talk to her.
In the final stanza of this poem, Hardy is trying to cheer himself up, as this is what he thinks his wife would want. The reader is told that if Hardy ‘but sigh’, Emma goes ‘straight to his side’. This shows that when Hardy is upset, he thinks of Emma to try to console himself. Hardy tries to make himself feel better by thinking that Emma would want him to be ‘in gloom no longer’. This show he wants to be happier but he cannot so now he has to think Emma wants him to be happier as well.
The Voice, also written in December 1912, is a much more eerie and less rhythmical poem than the first two. However, although there is less rhythm and structure to the poem, it still has a strong and continual rhyme. The title of the poem indicates that now Hardy can now hear Emma’s voice and the poem is written in the first person, as Hardy reveals his feelings and memories.
As The Voice opens, Hardy shows us his grief and sadness as he describes his wife as ‘woman much missed’. The sounds alliterate to draw attention to their importance right at the start of the poem, as this will be a continual theme throughout. The words ‘call to me, call to me’ are repeated at the end of the first line and this give the impression that although she is calling to him, like an echo to show how her voice is fading away from Hardy, along with his memories of her. This repetition also gives the impression that Emma is insistent to reach Hardy and will not give up. Hardy informs us that Emma tells him she is not the same as she was when she ‘changed from the one that was all’ to Hardy. Hardy believes Emma is saying to him that she is not now as she was when Hardy changed and maybe stopped loving her, but she is the same as she was when they were in love. This shows that this is how Hardy remembers Emma, when their ‘day was fair’ and their life was better than when they started to split apart. In the last line, Hardy changes from using ‘you’ and ‘me’ to ‘our’ to show that now he is thinking of them together and happy.
Hardy then looks back to the past and his memories of his wife, and imagines a perfect image of her in his head. He sees the memory very clearly and includes a lot of detail to show this. He can remember her ‘even to the original air-blue gown’, which is a pleasant and cheerful colour, showing the mood in the memory. It is one specific memory he is thinking about and, as he sees it more clearly, Hardy becomes exited and shows this through the caesura of ‘yes’ and the exclamation mark at the end of the line, as if he is becoming louder and more energised.
The transition between stanzas is a change between Hardy’s happiness in the past and his grief now. The sounds change from joyous to heavy, as does the mood of the poem. The whole stanza is a question, asking if it is really Emma talking or just the wind that Hardy can hear, although the reader will know that Hardy knows the answer to his own question. The ‘listlessness’ of the ‘breeze’ is a pathetic fallacy of Hardy’s mood, and the words such as ‘listlessness’ and ‘wet mead’ are onomatopoeic as they are heavy and sound tired, as if now he knows that his wife is fading away from him. Hardy tells Emma she is ‘being dissolved’ and dying away from him. This suggests he has realised her voice is not real and just in his mind and she will be ‘heard no more again’.
The lines in the last stanza of the poem are shorter than those in other stanzas. This gives the impression that the poem is fading away on the page, as Emma is ebbing away from Hardy’s memories. This stanza shows Hardy is now resigned to the fact that he is never going to hear her voice again and does not really make sense, maybe showing Hardy’s tiredness. The pathetic fallacy of ‘leaves around me falling’ gives an impression of things dying and coming to an end and the unpleasant assonance used in the ‘wind oozing thin through the thorn’ gives and unpleasant feel to the end of the poem. This stanza shows that Hardy feels he cannot move on because of his memories and ‘the woman calling’. This last line completes the eerie sense given in the poem and relates back to the start of the poem, giving the sense that what has happened in this poem keeps on happening to Hardy, and there is nothing he can do to stop it.
Beeny Cliff has a strong rhythm and strong rhyme, using the same sounds at the end of each line of each stanza. Beeny Cliff was a special place for Hardy and Emma that they visited together.
‘O’ at the start of the poem indicates Hardy’s happiness and excitement as he reminisces about him and Emma. The first line is full of description and imagery, and the ‘opal and the sapphire’ suggest preciousness and beauty - a description of the sea in the poem, but a description of his wife in Hardy’s mind. Hardy's description of Emma is almost angelic as she is described as ‘the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free’. The alliteration is an onomatopoeia of the wind and the high wind suggests high spirits between Hardy and Emma. Hardy also states that he loved Emma and she ‘loyally loved’ him, suggesting that, although they both loved each other, she was more faithful than he was. Hardy knows this and is therefore now regretting that he did not make the most of his time with her when she was alive.
In the next stanza Hardy concentrates on how when they were together, nothing or no one could touch them. Hardy tells us that birds were ‘plained below’ them and ‘seemed far away’, to show they were only concentrating on each other and nothing else could distract them. The waves are shown to be what could be a big distraction by the onomatopoeic sibilance of ‘engrossed in saying their ceaseless babbling say’, but Hardy and Emma were engrossed in each other thereby showing how close they were at this point in time. They ‘laughed light-heartedly aloft’ which reinforces their high spirits and again suggests their height above everything else happening. Pathetic fallacy is also used to show the mood ‘on that clear-sunned March day’.
This pathetic fallacy continues throughout the third stanza, as Hardy uses it to show that the mood is changing. ‘A little cloud cloaked’ them and there was an ‘irised rain’, which shows that this trip to Beeny Cliff is like their relationship. These small changes in weather show there are some bad times in the relationship between them, but it is never enough to force them apart and these blips are just a ‘dull disfeatured stain’, the same as the cloud is on the landscape. However, although the ‘sun burst out again’, the cloud was an indication to them that foreshadowed worse things to come, as now ‘purples prinked the main’.
The ‘--‘ at the start of the fourth stanza indicates to the reader that Hardy is going from the past into the present. Hardy tells us that ‘old Beeny’ is ‘still in all its chasmal beauty’. The use of ‘old’ shows familiarity and Hardy is showing that he is in a familiar place to contrast his unfamiliar emotions. In addition, this line shows that, although a lot has happened to him, the things and landscape around him are still the same as they used to be; huge and gaping but still beautiful. Hardy asks himself with a sense of wistfulness if ‘she and I [Hardy]’ could not go there again and repeat the ‘sweet things said in that March’. He does not use “we”, which shows he feels they will never be together again and, although he asks the question, he knows he cannot see her again.
The caesura of ‘Nay.’ at the start of the concluding stanza shows Hardy coming back to reality, and answering his own question. He repeats that Beeny has the same ‘chasmal beauty’ but this time it is a ‘wild weird western shore’. This tells us that things around him have stayed the same, but Hardy sees them differently now in a worse light, as this is the effect his wife’s death has had on him. Hardy says ‘the woman is now--elsewhere--‘; the pauses are showing he doesn’t want to say Emma is dead, and he is thinking of a euphemism. She ‘nor knows nor cares for Beeny’ and has moved on, but Hardy has not and is still stuck in the past. The end of the poem is very final, as if Hardy has eventually made up his mind; that she ‘will see it nevermore’.
In At Castle Boterel, written in March 1913, Hardy again remembers him and his wife together in happier times. Again, a strong sense of rhyme and rhythm appears throughout the poem. Most of the poem is a euphemism for Hardy’s thoughts, memories, feelings and emotions as he is writing.
The poem opens in the present as Hardy gives a description of himself driving through ‘the drizzle’ in a ‘wagonette’ ‘to the junction’. This suggests he will have to make a decision as to which path he should take, as he does in life to decide whether to move on from thinking about Emma. He looks ‘behind at the fading byway’; a euphemism for him looking back into the past.
His memories show him with ‘a girlish form’ - Emma - ‘in a chaise’ ‘in dry March weather’. Although he is looking into the past, he writes in the present tense, to show how involved he is in his own memory and how he wants it to be real and actually happening. The contrast between the ‘wagonette’, a heavy, large vehicle, in which he is driving in the present and the ‘chaise’, a small, light vehicle, which he was driving in in the past, is a reference to the happiness he felt then, and the gloom that hangs over him now that Emma is dead. The contrasting pathetic fallacies ‘drizzle’ and ‘dry March weather’ further reinforce this point. Hardy describes himself and Emma as we throughout the stanza, which indicates their togetherness.
Hardy goes on to tell us that it ‘matters not much’ what he and Emma talked about on that journey, and he also states it doesn’t matter ‘to what it led’. This is strange as it surely led to Hardy and Emma falling in love and getting married and he is now saying that this didn’t matter. He continues the point by saying what it led to is ‘something life cannot be balked of’, so love is an inevitable part of life. He tells us that it cannot be stopped until something happens so that ‘hope is dead, and feeling fled’. This is maybe a sign that Hardy is starting to recover from the death of his wife, and has maybe realised he could have done nothing to stop it.
Hardy reveals how much he treasured the moments he had with his wife, by telling us that there was never ‘a time of such quality, since or before, in that hill’s story’. He asks this as a question as if he is challenging anyone to disagree with his view, as he is right. The fact that Hardy thinks that this moment is the most important ever to happen on the hill, ‘though it has been climbed…by thousands more’ tells the reader that he is now extremely focused on himself and his wife, and cannot think of anything or anyone else but her, showing that the impression he gave in the previous stanza was false.
In the next stanza, Hardy states that their passing has been recorded in the ‘colour and cast’ of the ‘primeval rocks’ and will now be for always. He feels that although their passing, and therefore their relationship, is only ‘transitory in Earth’s long order’, so only happened for a short time, they have helped to change things happening on the Earth. He thinks these changes will be left behind after he is gone - she has gone already. This is a happy moment for Hardy as he thinks about the impact Emma and he had and this is shown through his pause in the middle of the last line, as he reflects on what he is saying.
In the penultimate stanza, Hardy comes back into the present and reflects that ‘Time’s unflinching rigour’ has taken his wife, and it cannot be stopped, so there is no way of going back once an event has passed. All that is left for him to see is ‘one phantom figure’, there is nothing real remaining, only his memories. He feels as if he has left Emma behind and is being forced further and further away from her; she is disappearing into the distance.
Hardy reverts to the use of ‘I’ in the final stanza. He looks back and sees the figure ‘shrinking, shrinking’. This repetition is like an echo fading away; to show that, although he is still having the memories, they are fading away and he will never get them back. He finishes with a great sense of finality; that he is now seeing her ‘for the very last time’. He says his ‘sand is sinking’, this reference to an hourglass meaning his time is nearly up, and he believes that he will soon die as well. The ending is very powerful and final, as Hardy states that he
‘shall traverse old loves domain
Never again’.
His use of ‘old’ suggests a familiarity; that he has revisited his memories too often, and now wants to move on. The caesura gives the statement a sense of finality so that it stands out as the main fact to come from this poem, that he now has accepted he cannot go back to Emma, and will not let his memories and grief overcome him.
The Phantom Horsewoman is written in the voice of a person observing the behaviour of Hardy, in the first person. There is a very regular and repetitive rhyming pattern throughout every stanza, which suggests that Hardy’s life has become repetitive, as all he does is think about his wife. Now Hardy himself knows he needs to move on but he shows this through an “observer”.
The whole of the first stanza is a euphemism for Hardy’s thoughts and feelings and how he, Hardy, describes himself as ‘queer’ which shows he knows the behaviour he is experiencing is not normal to him. He is described as ‘a man I know’ to show that it is not Hardy talking, but someone describing his ‘ways’. Hardy is portrayed as being ‘in a careworn craze’, which tells us that the emotions he is feeling have worn him down and are maybe even driving him mad. The next few lines suggest Hardy is looking back but what he sees is unclear. This is shown as he ‘looks at the sands’, suggesting time as this is a reference to an hourglass, but there is a ‘seaward haze’ so his memories are indistinct and vague. The use of ‘moveless hands’ in reference to a clock show time stands still when he looks into the past. When he ‘turns to go…’ Hardy pauses showing his regret to leave and regret to move back into the present. The use of rhyme in this stanza draws attention to the connected and important ideas: ‘stands’, ‘sands’ and ‘hands’ show the idea of time in reference to an hourglass and a clock and the impression that it stands still when Hardy looks back to the past; ‘craze’, ‘haze’ and ‘gaze’ are also connected, as they show how Hardy is looking back but is unsure what to make of what he remembers. The stanza ends with the question of what he sees ‘when he gazes so?’
The second stanza answers the question posed at the end of the first. There is a strong and clear contrast between the haze and indistinctness in the present as shown in stanza I and the clarity and deep description used in stanza II, looking back into Hardy’s memories of the past. This point is reinforced as we are told what he sees is ‘more clear than today’. The description used has a happy and joyous tone because his memories are ‘warm, real and keen’. Hardy sets a pleasant scene using a rhythmical tone, as if suggesting the rhythm of the sea. This shows that Hardy’s memories of the past are happier and he would much rather be living in the past than in his life now. The sibilance of the ‘sweet soft scene’ implies the softness of his past life and points to the sound and rhythm of the sea, as does the description of ‘that briny green’. The end of the stanza tells us that he sees in his memories ‘a phantom of his own figuring’; he is remembering the past but he knows it is not real now, no matter how much he wants it to be.
Hardy then tells us that ‘of this vision they might say more’ because there is more to him than a man looking at the sea. He sees his wife ‘not only there’ but he sees her ‘everywhere’ and all the time as shown by ‘day, night’. His memories are vivid and bright as if they ‘were drawn rose-bright’ ‘on the air’ and they are all consuming to him as if he is almost haunted by them. At the end of the stanza, Hardy pauses, as if to think, before reiterating the same point again that he has to ‘carry this vision’, to make this point clear to the reader.
At the start of the final stanza, Hardy describes what this vision is. He tells us he sees a ‘girl-ghost-rider’, using a compound word to describe exactly what he sees in his visions. The sounds in the alliteration are happy and soft when Hardy describes Emma, and contrast the harsh sounds Hardy uses to describe himself; ‘toil-tried’. Hardy also tells us that although he ‘withers daily’, and is always getting older, ‘time touches her not’ and she is always the same in his thoughts and memories of her. ‘She still rides gaily in his rapt thought’, which shows that his memories of her are when she was happy and free, and that he cannot think of anything else but her. The harsh sounds in the alliteration of ‘shagged and shaly’ drag him back to reality and back to the sea, which is the idea the whole poem revolves around. The last line of the poem shows that Hardy’s lasting memory of Emma will be a happy one; Emma is singing ‘to the swing of the tide’, and that the sea will always be in his memories of her, as it was a special place for them.
In conclusion, we can see clearly how Hardy attitude and response to the death of Emma changed over time through his poems. At first he is grieving and mourning her, and wishes he could bring her back; he thinks it is his fault that she has died and regrets that their relationship was not as happy as it had been and he wishes he had had a chance to say goodbye to her. However, he stops being so overcome by guilt and regret and focuses more on his memories of himself and Emma in happier times such as on Beeny Cliff. The main devices Hardy repeatedly uses are writing the poems sometimes not using himself as the first person and euphemism in place of saying what has actually happened, especially when referring to Emma’s death.