As Hardy does not accept the theory of heaven, he firmly believes that Emma is alive around him in the form of spiritual energy. Energy cannot be created or destroyed, but only converted to other forms. He believes that Emma’s soul has been converted to another form, one that is very much alive, or at least in his mind. Hardy cannot deal with his great loss, and so he recreates Emma in his subconscious. Emma’s ghost does not haunt him; it is he that makes the decision to “see” her. ‘Let me view you then’, he says. As Emma lives in the supernatural world, the persona has to move from the rational to the irrational world in order to ‘view’ her. He imagines her calling to him; ‘can it be (her) that (he) hear(s)’? The repetition of ‘call to me’ is a device used to signify how her voice echoes in his subconscious.
Emma tells him that she is ‘not as (she was)’ and that she has ‘changed from the one who was all to (him)’. He then decides to conjure up an image of her when they were courting, a time when she was young and vibrant with life. Every detail is cemented in his mind, ‘even to the original air-blue gown’. ‘Air-blue’ is a translucent, even transparent colour, one that ghost or spectre would appear as.
In the third stanza, the assonance in the words ‘wistlessness’ and ‘listlessness’ create a soft, mysterious and flowing sound to signify the sound the ‘breeze’ is making, hence having an onomatopoeic effect. Also, the ‘breeze’ is personified, but it is more the persona that is ‘listless’ than the breeze itself. The word ‘dissolved’ adds to the image of Emma’s soul being simply disintegrated in the wind. The ‘wet mead’ sets the perfect atmosphere for an illusion; mysterious, foggy and spooky.
The broken rhythm, as well as the alliteration of the line, ‘Thus I; faltering forward’ enhances the physical image of the persona stumbling and struggling along. The effect of the vision on the persona is physically and mentally draining and leaves him weak. This relates to the poem ‘The Going’, where enjambment of the word ‘I’ is used to show how the persona is on the edge of desperation. The ‘leaves ‘around (him) falling’ indicate that it is autumn, but rather creates the mental image that it is the persona falling. In the poem ‘the Shadow on the Stone’, the persona states that ‘summer brought (them) sweets, but autumn wrought division’ between him and Emma. Autumn is clearly a season of despair and sadness for the persona. Onomatopoeia is used in ‘wind oozing’, the ‘oo’ sound representing the wind and creating a ghostly and eerie effect. The ‘thorn from norward’ represents the pain and anguish the persona is experiencing, and the ‘wind’ carries it to him. And still he hears the voice of ‘the woman calling’.
Throughout the poem, there runs an echo of a supernatural force. The poem resonates with sadness and melancholy, and with the voice of a beloved woman long dead. The irrational world is the only realm where the persona can be rational and sane. The persona’s love for ‘the woman’ is so strong; he is willing to sacrifice his sanity in order to “meet” her. The poem has an extraordinary impact on the reader, and is proof that loves knows no boundaries and is not limited only to the physical world.