Lord Anthem Poem Analysis

A comparative analysis of two poems within the same poetic subgenre, showing how similar conventions may be used variously

Thomas Hardy’s, ‘The Ruined Maid’ and ‘Lord Randal’ from the collection of Early modern ballads, both are ballads which use similar conventions. Although they are not poems that stick to the exact ballad traditions, they carry out many of the traits. Thomas Hardy was known to be musically inclined and his influence in ballad writing came from his various musical talents. In this specific poem, Hardy seems to use ballad conventions to make a statement about the position of women in society. Although there are similarities between ‘The Ruined Maid’ and ‘Lord Randal’ in terms of the conventions used, the subject matters of
Specifically, the poem is an anapaestic trimetre; anapaestic means that there are two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed syllable and trimetre means that there are three stresses in that line. The poem opens with the first speaker, ‘who could have supposed I should meet you in town’ (line 2), where ‘who’ is unstressed followed by ‘could’ which is stressed and the line is continued in the conventional anapaestic metre. The opening of this line, is an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed which is known as an iamb. This suggests that this poem is not a completely traditional ballad as it is not fully anapaestic. Hardy places an iamb right at the start of this line in order to grab the reader’s attention. An iamb in contrast to an anapaestic metre is a shorter beat and therefore it keeps the reader interested, this is Hardy’s attempt in trying to bring light to the situation of the ruined woman. In contrast, ‘Lord Randal’ from the Early modern ballads, does not have a clear metre that transcends throughout the whole or even most of the poem. ‘Lord Randal’ is written in a non-traditional ballad form; the stresses of each line are not organised in an ordinary way, rather they are scattered randomly in the poem. However, the poem does have four stressed syllables in each line which means it is written with a tetremetre. This is noticeable in, ‘where ha’ you
This is not only a somewhat typical ballad theme but also a theme that Hardy seems to write about often in his poems. The repetition of the word ‘ruined’ is used to describe ‘Melia, however, Hardy makes it apparent that the second speaker is envious of her ‘fair garments’(line 3) and ‘prosperi-ty’(line 3) because even though, it is suggested that she is a prostitute, she is in a better position than the second speaker. Hardy uses satire to express the conventional thoughts of women and prostitution in the Victorian era; ‘Melia is completely opposite to what would be acceptable and yet still the second speaker envies her. Furthermore, Hardy presents two different women; one who is materially comfortably due to prostitution and is therefore condemned from society, and the other, who lives in poverty that leaves her face ‘blue and bleak’(line 13). This illustrates the degrading way in which women were looked upon and Hardy criticises that. Both women are treated in a degrading manner no matter how they work to earn their