Thomas Hardy

Hardy's works take place in Wessex (named after the Anglo-Saxon kingdom which existed in the area). One of his distinctive achievements is to have captured the cultural atmosphere of rural Wessex in the golden epoch that existed just before the coming of the railways and the agricultural and industrial revolutions that were to change the English countryside for ever. His works are often deeply pessimistic and full of bitter irony, in sharp contrast to the prevalent Victorian optimism.

The Rejected Member's Wife

We shall see her no more
On the balcony,
Smiling, while hurt, at the roar
As of surging sea
From the stormy sturdy band
Who have doomed her lord's cause,
Though she waves her little hand
As it were applause.

Here will be candidates yet,
And candidates' wives,
Fervid with zeal to set
Their ideals on our lives:
Here will come market-men
On the market-days,
Here will clash now and then
More such party assays.

And the balcony will fill
When such times are renewed,
And the throng in the street will thrill
With to-day's mettled mood;
But she will no more stand
In the sunshine there,
With that wave of her white-gloved hand,
And that chestnut hair.

January 1906.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...: How very apt for the Americans' 'Super Tuesday' day!
Strikes me again, too, the scope of topics Mr. Hardy addressed-- though here the political arena is, I suppose, just another setting for some of the same human stories that WILL be everywhere, and a sense of the sea washing over the sand and erasing one's traces, an intimation of man's likeness to 'the flowers of the field'... it comes and goes and its place remembers it no more.

(And that is quite enough ponderous pondering from me for one morning tea-break!); 11:16 am