During Wind and Rain by Thomas Hardy

I thought I’d post a poem by Thomas Hardy, as he’s been getting a lot of press lately (there is a review/essay in this week’s New Yorker and an article up on Slate today). You probably know him from novels like Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure, but many critics believe he was at least as successful as a poet.

While he didn’t die with his head in an oven, Hardy was an incredible failure at happiness. His wife stayed cloistered in their attic and wrote letters about how horrible he was. He despised the Victorian culture he nonetheless tried to succeed in. He believed that God was dead and wrote about his funeral, etc., etc. His collected poetry is 800 pages of, as the New Yorker puts it, his “magnificently sombre, completely disillusioned view of the world.” Get your copy now.

That said, his poetry is, by in large, very good. He’s skilled in all facets, and while he writes with strict metrical constraints, he’s a wizard within them, as you’ll see in the unorthodox but effective metrical scheme of During Wind and Rain. Hardy wrote the poem about his wife shortly after her death. In each stanza, he conjures up a memory that time sweeps in to destroy. I enjoy the poem, but you’ll understand how I can take about three of these before I want a scotch.


During Wind and Rain

THEY sing their dearest songs--
He, she, all of them--yea,
Treble and tenor and bass.
And one to play;
With the candles mooning each face....
Ah, no; the years O!
How the sick leaves reel down in throngs!

They clear the creeping moss--
Elders and juniors--aye,
Making the pathways neat
And the garden gay;
And they build a shady seat....
Ah, no; the years, the years;
See, the white storm-birds wing across!

They are blithely breakfasting all--
Men and maidens--yea,
Under the summer tree,
With a glimpse of the bay,
While pet fowl come to the knee....
Ah, no; the years O!
And the rotten rose is ripped from the wall.

They change to a high new house,
He, she, all of them--aye,
Clocks and carpets and chairs
On the lawn all day,
And brightest things that are theirs....
Ah, no; the years, the years;
Down their carved names the raindrop plows.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) the son of a stonemason, was born in Dorsetshire, England. Some of his novels, considered literary classics today, received negative reviews upon publication and Hardy was criticized for being too pessimistic and preoccupied with sex. He left fiction writing for poetry, and published eight collections, including Wessex Poems (1898) and Satires of Circumstance (1912).