Thomas Hardy Poetry

Important points- Voices, places, time, characterisation and structure

The poem starts with a speech mark, showing that he is speaking either to us or someone else.

'Shroud of gray' - forgetfulness, a thinkening.

Lots of imagery of Time, 'I never' ' in the burn of august'

The second stanza is another speaker, we are not told who.

'we drank from that glass together' - symbolises there relationship

trying to retrive the glas is symbolism of him trying to remember the love the pair had, he finds it hard

Assuming it's a female speaker, apart from 17-20, which may be Hardy

'Silent interlocutor'- Replying to someone, you can tell someone is listening

the only real 'prime love rhyme' she knows is the power of water and waterfalls

Lost glass represents lost love, just out of reach 

(On the loss of the Titanic)

'In a solitude of the sea' - using 'a' shows that the Ocean in so massive it has many solitudes. 

'deep from human vanity' - Hardy promotes the idea of a 'unsinkable ship' as vain

'Steel chambers' - imprisonment

'Jewels in joy designed' - Happy and expensive imagery contrast with the 'ravish'

'Dim Moon faced fishes'- the simplicity of the fish contrast with the 'vaingloriness' of the Titanic.

'The immanent Will' - God 'stirs and urges' everything

'No mortal eye could see it' - Only the eyes of god forsaw it

Darkling-Becoming dark

A obvious movement from sadness to happyness in this poem

Gloomy Tone- A pathetic fallacy with winter perhaps

'Frost'- Personalised, perhaps like a ghost

It is about the end of a century and the beginning of a new one, he spots a bird who is whistling a tune. From this , he can tell that somewhere out there there is happiness and hope is not lost for the next century

'his crypt the cloudy canopy'- the clouds are his coffin

'the weakening eye of the day'- the sun going down 

'fling his soul upon the growing gloom'