Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy’s life can be divided into three phases. The first phase (1840-1870) embraces childhood, adolescence, apprenticeship, first marriage, early poems and his first unpublished novel. The second phase (1871-1897) is marked by intensive writing, which resulted in the publication of 14 novels and a number of short stories. In the third phase (1898-1928), the period of the writer’s rising fame, he abandoned writing novels and returned to poetry.

Thomas Hardy was an English poet and novelist, famous for his depictions of the imaginary county "Wessex” . He was born on 2 June 1840 .Hardy's work reflected his sense of tragedy in human life. He is considered by literary historians to be the most important late Victorian/ Edwardian poet,.
In the beginning of his writing career, Hardy was regarded as a great novelist and short story writer. In
1898 Hardy published his first volume of poetry, Wessex Poems, a collection of poems written over 30 years. Hardy claimed poetry as his first love and after a great amount of negative criticism erupted from the publication of his novel Jude The Obscure, Hardy decided to give up writing novels permanently and to focus his literary efforts on writing poetry. After giving up the novel form, Hardy continued to publish poetry collections until his death in 1928. Although he did publish one last novel in 1897, that novel, The
Well-Beloved, had actually been written prior to Jude the Obscure.
Most of Hardy's poems, such as "Neutral Tones'" and "A Broken Appointment", deal with themes of disappointment in love and life ,which were also prominent themes in his novels , and mankind's long struggle against indifference to human suffering. A few of Hardy's poems, such as " The Blinded Bird", display his love of the natural world and his firm stance against animal cruelty.

"A Broken Appointment" was one of his most well-known poems. This poem is about the realities and ideals which can surround romantic love and rejection. He describes his thoughts as he waits for this woman who will never come. In “A Broken Appointment” the speaker addresses a woman who has left him waiting for her.

You did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb.
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure loving kindness' sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
You did not come.

Hardy begins the poem with a very powerful and definitive line, “You did not come.” His words reaches the reader and allows them to feel what he is feeling. It also shows that he has accepted this woman's lack of interest. Hardy describes his sadness at this revelation.

You love not me,
And love alone can lend you loyalty;
I know and knew it. But, unto the store
Of human deeds divine in all but name,
Was it not worth a little hour or more
To add yet this: Once you, a woman, came
To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be

You love not me.

Hardy highlights these lines, allowing the reader to feel just how rejected and abandoned the speaker feels. "A Broken Appointment" described the very sad and desperate situation of a man who wanted somebody to love.

(The rest of the lines are written in iambic pentameter. Although he sets these lines apart, the rhyme scheme of the poem (aabcbcaa eedfdfee) still manages to make it flow as a whole. There are also ideas within the poem which Hardy gives emphasis to by using consonance and alliteration.)

The Self –Unseeing and composed of three quatrains.

The major theme of the poem deals with the poet’s happy childhood that he spent in his parental home with his mother and father that had become, unfortunately, a history to recollect over the ruined house.

The poem opens in a ruined room with no door, the poet looks around him in the room and tries to recollect the places where his mother and father were sitting and the activities they were doing; his mother was sitting “in her chair smiling to the fire” while his father was playing the violin “bowing it higher and higher”.

She sat here in her chair,
Smiling into the fire;
He who played stood there,
Bowing it higher and higher.
The poet describes himself “childlike” while dancing cheerfully over his father’s playing.
Childlike, I danced in a dream;
Blessings emblazoned that day;
Everything glowed with a gleam;
Yet we were looking away!

The poet seems to be overwhelmed with feelings of sadness and remorse over his childhood home. there is the loss of the childlike and innocent emotions of happiness that have gone altogether with his parents. "The Ruined Maid" is a satirical poem by Thomas Hardy. The poem depicts a young country girl who has become a rich man's mistress to escape her own poverty. Her position is contrasted with that of her old friend who is still a respectable but poor country farm worker. It takes the form of a dialogue between two girls who previously worked together on a farm. The girl who speaks first is still a farm- hand, and she has just met the other girl, Amelia, by chance in town. She says-
O 'Melia, my dear, this does everything crown!
Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town?
And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?" —

She is surprised at how different Amelia looks since she last saw her, but Amelia explains that she has been 'ruined'. This term actually means that she has become a prostitute. She says-
"O didn't you know I'd been ruined?" said she.

The Ruined Maid" portrays a conversation between two adolescent women living in Victorian England.
While the farm girl has decided to remain true to her roots and continue living in a rural environment,
Amelia has left for the city in search of new meaning and has become sexually involved with a man in the city.. The poem is full of contrasts between the two speakers, as well as between the past life and present situation of the 'ruined maid'.

"Neutral Tones" is a poem written by Thomas Hardy in 1867. it is the most widely praised of his early poems.[1] It is about the end of a relationship and the parting of two people who were in love.
Hardy uses a variety of techniques to highlight sadness and emotions. the theme of the poem is "the death of love" or that "love deceives". He says –

WE stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod,
--They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

It describes where the memory took place (the setting) but everything in the scene in dying too: it's a winter's day the time of year when most plants die , the sun is white it's no longer burning with light or warmth, as if it's dying, and white is often the colour of death the sod is starving ("sod" is just the grass, and the grass is dying of starvation), and a few leaves lie on the ground and are gray (the leaves have died and have fallen on the ground, showing that all the leaves on the tree are dying. the tree is an "ash" and the leaves are "gray" - it is as if a fire has died and burnt out, leaving only gray ash..

The second stanza describes how the speaker and his "love" communicate: she looks at him as if he was "a tedious riddle solved long ago", which tells us that she is no longer interested in him.In the final stanza, the speaker shifts perspective from the memory, and reflects on the bitter lesson that he has taken from it: 'keen lessons that love deceives.'
It is a sad, pessimistic poem that portrays love as painful and doomed.
“Neutral Tones” comprises four four-line stanzas, with an ABBA rhyme scheme. The emphasis throughout is on coldness and lack of colour, with the scene matching the emotions of the two people involved. In the poem To an Unborn Pauper Child Hardy considers the probable fate of a child soon to be born into poverty. The poem begins startlingly with an opening line in which Hardy addresses the child as “hid heart” because it is as yet unborn in its mother's womb, and advises it not to be born - to
“Breathe not” and to “cease silently. He says-
Breathe not, hid Heart: cease silently,
And though thy birth-hour beckons thee,
Sleep the long sleep:

Hardy develops the idea of the destructiveness of time urging the child to note how time destroys all such natural positive values as “laughter”, “hopes”, “faiths”, “affections” and “enthusiasms”.
But Hardy immediately, and forcefully, rejects this as a futile vow, for neither he nor anyone can explain to the child what will happen to it when it is born. The poem ends with the recognition that the child must come and live on earth, and the hope that - in spite of the evidence - it will find health, love and friends and “joys seldom yet attained” by people.says

I can hope
Health, love, friends, scope
In full for thee; can dream thou'lt find
Joys seldom yet attained by humankind!