The Dead Man Walking by Thomas Hardy

The Dead Man Walking

BY THOMAS HARDY

BIOGRAPHY

They hail me as one living,

But don't they know

That I have died of late years,

Untombed although?

I am but a shape that stands here,

A pulseless mould,

A pale past picture, screening

Ashes gone cold.

Not at a minute's warning,

Not in a loud hour,

For me ceased Time's enchantments

In hall and bower.

There was no tragic transit,

No catch of breath,

When silent seasons inched me

On to this death ....

— A Troubadour-youth I rambled

With Life for lyre,

The beats of being raging

In me like fire.

But when I practised eyeing

The goal of men,

It iced me, and I perished

A little then.

When passed my friend, my kinsfolk,

Through the Last Door,

And left me standing bleakly,

I died yet more;

And when my Love's heart kindled

In hate of me,

Wherefore I knew not, died I

One more degree.

And if when I died fully

I cannot say,

And changed into the corpse-thing

I am to-day,

Yet is it that, though whiling

The time somehow

In walking, talking, smiling,

I live not now.

The Man He Killed by Thomas Hardy

 

The Man He Killed

BY THOMAS HARDY

"Had he and I but met

            By some old ancient inn,

We should have sat us down to wet

            Right many a nipperkin!

            "But ranged as infantry,

            And staring face to face,

I shot at him as he at me,

            And killed him in his place.

            "I shot him dead because —

            Because he was my foe,

Just so: my foe of course he was;

            That's clear enough; although

            "He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,

            Off-hand like — just as I —

Was out of work — had sold his traps —

            No other reason why.

            "Yes; quaint and curious war is!

            You shoot a fellow down

You'd treat if met where any bar is,

            Or help to half-a-crown."

I Said to Love by Thomas Hardy

I Said to Love

By Thomas Hardy

BIOGRAPHY

.......I said to Love, ........
'It is not now as in old days
When men adored thee and thy ways
         All else above;
Named thee the Boy, the Bright, the One
Who spread a heaven beneath the sun,'
         I said to Love.

         I said to him,
'We now know more of thee than then;
We were but weak in judgment when,
         With hearts abrim,
We clamoured thee that thou would'st please
Inflict on us thine agonies,'
         I said to him.

         I said to Love,
'Thou art not young, thou art not fair,
No faery darts, no cherub air,
         Nor swan, nor dove
Are thine; but features pitiless,
And iron daggers of distress,'
         I said to Love.

         'Depart then, Love! . . .
-- Man's race shall perish, threatenest thou, 
Without thy kindling coupling-vow?
The age to come the man of now
         Know nothing of? --
We fear not such a threat from thee;
We are too old in apathy!
Mankind shall cease. -- So let it be,'
         I said to Love.

The Masked Face by Thomas Hardy

 

The Masked Face
BY THOMAS HARDY

BIOGRAPHY

I found me in a great surging space,

At either end a door,

And I said: "What is this giddying place,

With no firm-fixéd floor,

That I knew not of before?"

"It is Life," said a mask-clad face.

I asked: "But how do I come here,

Who never wished to come;

Can the light and air be made more clear,

The floor more quietsome,

And the doors set wide? They numb

Fast-locked, and fill with fear."

The mask put on a bleak smile then,

And said, "O vassal-wight,

There once complained a goosequill pen

To the scribe of the Infinite

Of the words it had to write

Because they were past its ken."

The Ruined Maid by Thomas Hardy

 

The Ruined Maid

BY THOMAS HARDY

BIOGRAPHY

"O 'Melia, my dear, this does everything crown!

Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town?

And whence such fair garments, such prosperity?" —

"O didn't you know I'd been ruined?" said she.

— "You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks,

Tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks;

And now you've gay bracelets and bright feathers three!" —

"Yes: that's how we dress when we're ruined," said she.

— "At home in the barton you said thee' and thou,'

And thik oon,' and theäs oon,' and t'other'; but now

Your talking quite fits 'ee for high company!" —

"Some polish is gained with one's ruin," said she.

— "Your hands were like paws then, your face blue and bleak

But now I'm bewitched by your delicate cheek,

And your little gloves fit as on any lady!" —

"We never do work when we're ruined," said she.

— "You used to call home-life a hag-ridden dream,

And you'd sigh, and you'd sock; but at present you seem

To know not of megrims or melancholy!" —

"True. One's pretty lively when ruined," said she.

— "I wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown,

And a delicate face, and could strut about Town!" —

"My dear — a raw country girl, such as you be,

Cannot quite expect that. You ain't ruined," said she.

 

A Short Analysis of Thomas Hardy’s ‘A Popular Personage at Home’

BIOGRAPHY

Hardy’s classic dog poem – analysed by Dr Oliver Tearle

‘A Popular Personage at Home’ was one of two poems Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) wrote about his beloved dog of 13 years, Wessex, who died in 1926, two years before Hardy himself. However, what makes ‘A Popular Personage at Home’ especially notable is that Hardy wrote the poem from the perspective of the dog, allowing ‘Wessex’ to speak for himself.

A Popular Personage at Home

‘I live here: “Wessex” is my name:
I am a dog known rather well:
I guard the house but how that came
To be my whim I cannot tell.

‘With a leap and a heart elate I go
At the end of an hour’s expectancy
To take a walk of a mile or so
With the folk I let live here with me.

‘Along the path, amid the grass
I sniff, and find out rarest smells
For rolling over as I pass
The open fields toward the dells.

‘No doubt I shall always cross this sill,
And turn the corner, and stand steady,
Gazing back for my Mistress till
She reaches where I have run already,

‘And that this meadow with its brook,
And bulrush, even as it appears
As I plunge by with hasty look,
Will stay the same a thousand years.’

Thus ‘Wessex.’ But a dubious ray
At times informs his steadfast eye,
Just for a trice, as though to say,
‘Yet, will this pass, and pass shall I?’

This is an uncharacteristically witty and playful poem. Thomas Hardy wrote a great deal of poetry, and some of it,such as ‘The Ruined Maid’, demonstrates a playful irony while addressing one of the most serious issues of Victorian England (the way ‘fallen’ women are viewed by society). But on the whole, although he is alive to what he called ‘life’s little ironies’, Hardy is not fond of archness in his poetry. ‘With the folk I let live here with me’: the canine speaker takes on an almost feline idea, viewing the humans who dwell with him as within his control rather than vice versa.

But the poem is not just a twee piece of doggerel (the pun, perhaps, is inevitable): its final two stanzas seem to hint at grander thoughts. Although it looks as though the landscape (with which, of course, Wessex the dog shares his name) will ‘stay the same for a thousand years’, in that final stanza a nagging doubt creeps in, as a ‘dubious ray’ appears in the dog’s ‘steadfast eye’. W. B. Yeats may have said that ‘Nor dread nor hope attend / A dying animal’, concluding that ‘Man has created death’, but in the last line of Hardy’s poem, his ‘popular personage at home’ almost appears to have gained that knowledge supposedly denied to animals: awareness of one’s own mortality. But it’s more than this: will everything else pass as well, including the landscape? Thomas Hardy was deeply conscious of the geological changes that the Earth had undergone over millions of years (which we now know to be billions), and his amusing poem about the family dog is haunted by the same concerns which plague his novels and poetry elsewhere.

The author of this article, Dr Oliver Tearle, is a literary critic and lecturer in English at Loughborough University. He is the author of, among others, The Secret Library: A Book-Lovers’ Journey Through Curiosities of History and The Great War, The Waste Land and the Modernist Long Poem.

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