Hardy then reveals his disappointment over not being given the chance to remedy their marriage, this time not only blaming Emma, but himself as well. He again questions her lack of communication; “Why then, latterly did we not speak..?” and entertains the idea that they could have rebuilt their relationship by revisiting “those places that once [they] we visited.” He seeks closure from Emma, wanting to know whether they could have been happy in the end if he had just been given the chance. But he understands that Emma would have withered away even if she had stayed alive, ”Darkening... dankness... yawning blackness” which shows us his realization that he was never there for Emma and that she was gradually going to disappear and one day fade away.
The poem is structured in a way that all stanzas have a separate focus; stanza 1 is focuses on blame and urgency, stanza 2 on guilt, stanza 3 on torment and memories, stanza 4 on positive memories, stanza 5 on what could have while the last stanza conveys more resentment towards her unseen departure. “Not even I – would undo me so!” He reiterates here angrily that what she did was unforgiveable and that even he would never do something like that to her.
In “After A Journey”, Hardy revisits where he first courted Emma where he conveys his mourning for the woman he once loved. He encounters a “voiceless ghost” there, obviously the old Emma with her “nut-colored hair, and grey eyes…” the playful Emma who behaved the way young girls in love would: enticing her lover to chase and catch he and playing hide and seek around the rocks and cliffs. The poem is lively and sensual at first, suggestive in its employment of words like “ejaculations” linking the water-abundant scenery to sexual union. This shows how attracted Hardy was to Emma in the beginning and how as she grew older, he found himself to be more and more indifferent to her, emotionally and physically. He again compares this young Emma to the dead one, recalling her “when [you] were all aglow, and not the thin ghost that [I[ now frailly follow!”
He once again expresses the control Emma has over him in her death, prompting him to return to their “old haunts” and reminding him of what they were. But contrary to “The Going”, he feels no resentment toward her. Instead, he is merely lamenting her absence and mourning the loss of their youthful passion. “I am just the same as when// Our days were a joy and our paths through flowers.” This can be interpreted as Hardy’s gentle insistence that it was Emma who changed, not him, once more portraying Hardy’s state of denial.
Hardy again addresses Emma directly, accusing her of bringing him to their special places, asking if she is trying to send him a message; “What have you now found to say of our past…?” But this time he draws his own conclusions, claiming that she is “leading him on to the spots [they] haunted together.” The use of the word “haunt” in this poem is used both to describe the familiar places where they would stay as well as referencing the “voiceless ghost”. In fact, Hardy is also depicting himself as a lifeless being as he does in “The Going”, upon Emma’s death. Hardy also sees himself as a guest in a place that belongs to Emma (“your olden haunts”) but is recalling a time that belonged to both of them (“our past”).
The “I” of the poem emphasizes the loneliness that plagues the narrator as he travels “up the cliff, down.” Hardy appears to thoroughly explore the setting, and the further he travels, the further he is lost as his search continually proves fruitless. “Across the dark space where [he has] lacked,” Hardy will continue to search to fulfill the empty void that has been opened by the absence of Emma and events that are specifically linked to the setting of the poem. For him, it is enough that these old “haunts” still exist, that he may continue to resurrect Emma’s ghost until he finds his much sought after closure.
This idea of closure is visited in “I Found Her Out There” which is another journey into the past to Hardy and Emma’s first meeting in Cornwall. The only difference in this particular journey is that Hardy entirely blames himself for Emma’s withdrawal from their marriage and even her death. He claims that by taking her from Cornwall and bringing her to Dorset, he took her away from her natural environment, much like a fish out of water, thus condemning her to slowly die.
He uses the scenery and diction in the poem to depict the change in Emma’s personality before and after her arrival to Dorset; the “salt-edged air” and “shaking hurricanes” of Cornwall describe her once vibrant personality while “the noiseless nest” that is Dorset describe her elderly self. Hardy states that Emma felt as if she did not belong in Dorset, that it was like a “loamy cell” from which she could not escape. This is also a metaphor for her grave which is in Dorset, thus suggesting that Hardy did indeed bring her to her death: “I brought her here// And have laid her to rest…” He understood that she was too far from the ocean, from “the waves long heard// And loved so well”
Hardy uses the settings of Tintagel (“Dundagel”) and Lyonesse, both fictional places from Arthurian Legend, in order to mythologize his romance with Emma; that is, the two locations are from fabled pasts, and as time goes by, the old Emma fades from Hardy’s memory, becoming nothing more than a tragic fictional love story. He described her as being an inquisitive creature, who would “sigh at the tail// Of sunk Lyonesse…Or listen at whiles//With a though-bound brow//To the murmuring miles// She is far from now,” suggesting that she slowly lost her curiosity in the dull countryside.
“I Found Her Out There” gives yet another instance of denial towards Emma’s departure as Hardy presumes that due to her grave being in Dorset, so far from the Ocean, her shade still haunts him and may never quite be at peace, thus never letting him release his guilt over unknowingly causing her death: “So she does not sleep//By those haunted heights...” The “haunted heights” mentioned here is an alliteration to denote fear; that is, Hardy always found the cliffs of Cornwall to be frightening, contrasting with Emma’s love for them. This is a reference to “After A Journey” with Emma’s “old haunts.”
But in the final stanza of the poem, Hardy reaches what might be closure; while he accepts that he will always love Emma, and that she may always hold some control over him, he hopes that her spirit may move on and return to the shores of Cornwall. “Yet her Shade maybe,//Will creep underground// Till it catch the sound// Of that western sea…And joy in its throbs// With the heart of a child.” This idea of Emma returning to Cornwall “with the heart of a child” gives the impression that Hardy wishes for Emma to be reincarnated as a child.
In all three poems Hardy is remembering Emma in different ways, some of which is a journey and some of it which is not. Hardy remembers the days of which they were together, until they drifted apart. What is interesting is that Hardy never mentions Emma’s names, always speaking directly to her of about her, showing that he is so ashamed and regrets the way he treated her.