Compare and Contrast a selection of Thomas Hardy's Poetry

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Orla Keefe 11w

                                                                                                                                                         

Compare and Contrast a selection of Thomas Hardy’s Poetry

Thomos Hardy was a profound poet and novelist of his time, being influenced by writers such as William Wordsworth. He was born in 1840 on the Egdon Heath in Dorset. His interest in Latin poets was influenced by his Mother, who provided for his education. He began reading, more intensely, studying French and Latin, as well as other work. When he was 22, he travelled to London, visiting art galleries, attending evening classes for French at King’s college, attending operas and reading works of Charles Darwin, John Stuart Mills and Herbert Spencer, who all influenced his work.

This is where Hardy, became influenced  by his surroundings, and well known writers, so he began writing poetry in earnest. In 1865 Hardy published his first article, ‘How I built myself a house’. In 1870 Hardy was sent to plan a church restoration at St. Juliot in Cornwall. There he met Emma Gifford, sister-in-law of the vicar of St.Juliot. She encouraged him in his writing, and they were married in 1874. Many of his novels, and poems reflect his relationship and love for Emma.

Emma Hardy died in November 1912, and was buried in Stinsford churchyard. Thomas was stricken with guilt and remorse, but the result was some of his best poetry, expressing his feelings for his wife of 38 years. All was not gloom, however, in 1914 Hardy remarried, to Florence Dugdale, his secretary since 1912. Thomas Hardy died on January 11, 1928 at his house of Max Gate in Dorchester.

I have read a selection of Hardy’s poems including ‘The Voice’, ‘The Visitor’, and ‘At Castle Boterel’. I will be comparing ‘Domicilium’, ‘The Going of the Battery’, and ‘The Haunter’ for this assignment. The first poem I am going to analyse is ‘Domicilium’, meaning home. This poem, is very descriptive, giving us the rich images of Hardy’s childhood home. Throughout the poem, we enter Hardy’s thoughts on his garden, and beyond. Nature is an element brought out often in this century, through poetry. He was thirteen when he wrote this poem, and we can see throughout the poem, Hardy’s natural qualities for writing, for someone so young

The poem opens, setting the image of the surroundings around the garden, and he gives many references to trees, ‘High beeches, bending, hang a veil of boughs’. He uses run-on-lines to emphasize his continueing thoughts. He uses personification, with the use of parenthesis to give the trees life ‘(if we may fancy a wish of trees’ and plants)’. The opening of the poem, is very beautiful and tranquil, and creates the image of the wild, open, and free garden, which reflects his own free spirit. We can sense from the first stanza, that Hardy loved nature, in its natural pure state.

As the poem moves on into the second stanza, Hardy’s love for flowers, and the vast knowledge of them is shown, ‘Red Roses, lilacs, varieagated boxes are there in plenty, and such hardy flowers’. He begins to describe the life beyond the controlled garden, into the wild and remote land beyond, ‘..farther still a field; then cottages and last the distant hills and skys’. Hardy portrays that wild flowers have their own significant beauty. People were very much isolated, and through his rich imagery creates the impression that people were often much closer to the land, than they were to people.

As we are introduced to stanza three, the tone changes, as does the scene, as a human element is brought into the poem with his ‘..father’s mother, who is now blest with the blest, would take me out to walk.’ He uses poetic language to make the poem flow here with a euphenism for death, which gives the poem different types of language, and texture to the poem. Poets usually wrote poems, thinking they would be spoken aloud to audiences, so they found different ways of saying things, to create a more interesting poem to read, and hear. The land beyond the cottage, when his grandmother first settled there was ‘O’er grown with bramble bushes, firze and thorn: that road a narrow path shut in by ferns, which almost trees, obscrued the passer-by.’ The setting is such a contrast to how the land is now. Hardy gives us the feeling of change, as well as people growing, he reminds us that the land gradually grows with us too. This stanza shows us Hardy’s wonder and awe of the nature growing around him.

The fifth and final stanza, opens with the continuous speech of his grandmother’s garden fifty years go, when she first settled there, ‘Our house stood quite alone’, shows us the personal thoughts and ideas that went into the poem, and how the clear memory for him was a happy one to look back on. ‘…those tall firs and beechs were not planted’, is probably difficult to imagine, that the tree seed was ‘…dropped by some bird a hundred years ago.’ His grandmother’s memories are enriched with fondness of pleasant days gone by. ‘..nightly bats would fly about our bedrooms,’ I think, is exagerated on the grandmother’s part. He gives us the images of how ‘wild it was when first we settled here’. It is a happy, tranquil poem, with rich images of Hardy’s thoughts, and his Grandmother’s memories. It is a happy memory for him, and shows the strong family bonds he had, and the happy childhood spent at his ‘Domicilium’.

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The next poem I have decided to analyse by Thomos Hardy is ‘The Going of the Battery’, which is an evident contrast from the happy tranquil tone of ‘The Domicilium’.’The Going of the Battery’ is a song-like poem, with elements of sadness, and loss, as the poem examines, from the soldiers wives, and loved ones, being left behind as they go off to war. The thought of whether they will ever come back, ever see them again, is always there, and cannot be taken away.Hardy's concern in this poem is not really with war, but more with the effect on ...

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