Storytelling Starters ~ Loss and longing
Saturday, April 9th, 2022
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. (more…)