Storytelling Starters ~ Loss and longing
I’ve always loved the work of Thomas Hardy, the novels as well as the poems. Recently, I’ve been returning to the poems, appreciating both the rhythms and the sense of them. Today, I make no apology for devoting this blog to perhaps my most-loved of Hardy’s poems, which was written during the First World War in December 1912. Maybe it’s the sense of loss that permeates it that most moves me, the sound of the breeze travelling across the wet mead and the wind oozing thin through the thorn.
From what I’ve read, Thomas Hardy was quite a one for the ladies. This poem has something so poignant about it. Its repetitions – ‘how you call to me, call to me’ – and also the repetitions of sound as in the faltering forward of the last verse, leaves falling and the wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward.
So here’s the poem. Let it speak for itself.
The Voice
Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.
Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!
Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?
Thus I: faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling.
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.
PS: A generic sort of picture today. The pictures are all in the words of the poem.
Tags: Loss and longing, Thomas Hardy
April 10th, 2022 at 1:08 am
Beautiful Mary,
So evocative
I send much love to you from far over the sea.
Arohanui
Felice
April 10th, 2022 at 6:45 pm
Oh thank you Mary – that is so poignant.
Lots of love. Annalee x