PRACTISING CLOSE READING IN CLASS

Here is an essay I wrote about this poem many years ago:

The poem retraces a memory of the poet’s past, when he was with a girl in spring on a hill at 'Castle Boterel'. (We know, in fact, that this person is Emma, whose "phantom" now haunts him so strongly in his memory.) Although he says that what they did or said there “matters not much”, it is the quality of the memory that is so important (“A time of such quality”) and it is so intensely recreated that he feels, as an old man, he can actually see the “phantom figure” of his past. The intensity of the emotion in the poem is due first to the happiness he felt and secondly to the feeling that his life is nearly over and that he will never experience anything like this ever again. The poem therefore ends on a melancholy note, which borders on despair even. 

The poem begins with a matter-of-fact description of the poet, who is driving to a highway in “drizzle”. The weather sets a sombre mood, perhaps symbolic of tears even (“glistening wet”) as he recalls the scene of long ago, when he and this "girlish form" stopped to climb the same hill on foot “to ease the pony’s load”. What he insists upon is the special quality of that moment and he does not share with us, or even comment upon, what they did or said, as if the moment were too private and personal. In the fifth stanza he emphasises how this “moment” can be imagined as becoming recorded in eternity, since the rocks beside the road have recorded “in colour and cast” their passage. It is as if nature has the power to record human instants, in the same way that footsteps can be recorded. Since the poet, too, is busy recording the moment, this offers a comforting parallel to the business of writing. What the poet is doing is as natural and as long-lasting as time itself.

Time, as an idea, figures very strongly in the poem. The memory is first located in March, very particularly, in spring, a traditional time of love and renewal. “Primaeval rocks” and “Earth’s long order” are referred to also, as if the poet were becoming increasingly aware of time and eternity at this stage of his life. Time is even personified like some tyrannical schoolmaster with “unflinching rigour In mindless rote”, suggesting that the cycle of life, “rote”, is as hard and senseless as having to learn things off by heart or by rote.

It is this awareness of time passing, so relentlessly and meaninglessly, which leads to the apparent despair of the last stanza. The repetition of the word “shrinking” suggests that not only is the vision of the girl fading, but that the poet’s whole life is vanishing. The rhyme with “sinking” accentuates this negative feeling, as the poet feels the sand in his hourglass running out. There is a resigned weariness about the last two lines, where he faces the fact that he will never fall in love again, described here somewhat heavily as “I shall traverse old love’s domain”. The Latinate words “traverse” and “domain” convey this weight of sadness, which is reinforced further with the last emphatic line of just two words, with a lot of stress on the first and last syllables of “Never again”.

When we look more closely at the way the poem is constructed, we notice a certain contradiction between the melancholy tone and the rhythms chosen. The rhythm is often anapaestic, as in the first two lines, which gives the writing quite a jaunty, lively appearance, more appropriate to a song, perhaps. This is particularly apparent, say, in such lines as,

-    /        -     -   /     -        -       /        -       / -

It filled but a minute. But was there ever

  -    /     -      -        /   -   -  / -      -   /

A time of such quality ever before

This musicality, however, which suggests the positive, lively vividness of their love springing up, is always interrupted by the heaviness of the final line of each stanza, with only two beats to the line, suggesting something limping or incomplete. The heaviness of the 5th lines is most fully exploited in the final stanza, as we have seen, with its terrible finality. 

The title of the poem seems to place it geographically, so that as well as being fixed in time, with a date at the end, even, it is also located in terms of space. This also gives a certain poignancy to the act of recalling this scene. The poet seems to want to assure himself, and us, that it really happened, and that not only he, the poet, has recorded it for eternity, but the rocks themselves have also done this. It is as if he feels that their love must have been so strong that it had the power to impress itself on the earth. This is the only really positive aspect of this memory: that it took place, really, and has been recorded not only by the poet but the natural world too. This may not be very reassuring, but it is the only reassurance offered in the poem.

In the end, it is a sad poem, recalling perhaps a moment of pure happiness but realising that the moment has gone forever and can never be repeated now except in a poem. It is a poem about love, but it is also very much about time, which is seen as a force of illogical destruction, capable of “ruling from sight The substance now”. Nevertheless, the act of remembering and recording is vitally important in the poem. Art and poetry, like the rocks the couple passed, records, reflects and remembers. This is the only way that “Time” can be combated, even though the sand in the hourglass will sink inexorably to the end.

Hardy's poetry is extraordinarily visual. Turn to the end of "The Noose" (Section 18) to discover a superbly dramatic and visually ' cinematic' poem called 'The Harbour Bridge'...