February 13, 2019
This poem was a private diary entry, and so perhaps only ever intended for Byron to explore his own private thoughts and inner psychology. However, as he was about to go into battle and expected to die and attain the status of a hero, it could also be said that he intended the poem to be found and published after his death.
This analysis is tailored towards IGCSE, GCSE, and A-Level students, but it’s useful for anyone studying the poem at any level (including the CIE / Cambridge, WJEC / Eduqas, Edexcel, OCR, and CCEA exam boards).
Thanks for reading! If you find this page useful, you can take a look at our full courses here:
CIE Poetry A Level: https://scrbbly.teachable.com/p/cie-a-level-poetry-anthology
Link to all our English courses: https://scrbbly.teachable.com/courses
THE POEM
On this Day I Complete my Thirty-Sixth Year
January 22nd, 1824 Missolonghi (Greece)
’Tis time this heart should be unmoved,
Since others it hath ceased to move:
Yet though I cannot be beloved,
Still let me love!
.
My days are in the yellow leaf;
The flowers and fruits of Love are gone;
The worm — the canker, and the grief
Are mine alone!
.
The fire that on my bosom preys
Is lone as some Volcanic Isle;
No torch is kindled at its blaze
A funeral pile.
.
The hope, the fear, the jealous care,
The exalted portion of the pain
And power of Love I cannot share,
But wear the chain.
.
But ’tis not thus — and ’tis not here
Such thoughts should shake my Soul, nor now,
Where Glory decks the hero’s bier,
Or binds his brow.
.
The Sword, the Banner, and the Field,
Glory and Greece around us see!
The Spartan borne upon his shield
Was not more free.
.
Awake (not Greece — she is awake!)
Awake, my Spirit! Think through whom
Thy life-blood tracks its parent lake
And then strike home!
.
Tread those reviving passions down
Unworthy Manhood — unto thee
Indifferent should the smile or frown
Of beauty be.
.
If thou regret’st thy Youth, why live?
The land of honourable Death
Is here: — up to the Field, and give
Away thy breath!
.
Seek out — less often sought than found —
A Soldier’s Grave, for thee the best;
Then look around, and choose thy Ground,
And take thy rest.
Lord Byron
VOCABULARY
’Tis — it is (colloquial, conversational)
Unmoved — not bothered, not emotionally disturbed
Hath — has
Ceased to move — been unable to affect / stopped affecting
Yet — but
Beloved — loved by someone
Canker — rot, disease
Bosom — chest, breast
Lone — alone, lonely
Isle — island
Kindled — set alight and encouraged to burn, as in with firewood
Funeral pile — a pile of wood that a corpse is burned on top of
Exalted — in a high position, high status, or extreme happiness
Thus — this way
Bier — a frame that coffins or corpses are placed on
Binds — wraps up tightly
Tread down — step heavily upon
Manhood — masculinity, the condition of being a man
Thou regret’st — you regret
Honourable — bringing or deserving honour
Unto thee — to you
Indifferent — not affected, not bothered
STORY/SUMMARY
The speaker says that it’s time for his heart to stop being so emotional since it has failed to affect the hearts of others (either through love or by being inspirational). (Stanza 2) His days are in the season of Autumn, where the vibrancy of life is fading. He has lost the flowers and fruits of love, and now he only has the worm and rot to look forward to — images of death and decay. (Stanza 3) The fire that takes hold of his chest is lonely as if it were an isolated volcano on an island. No one goes to set light to a torch there, it is like a funeral pile that will burn only to destroy his own body. (Stanza 4) He feels a range of extreme emotions — hope, fear, jealousy that springs from caring, uplifting pain, powerful Love that he cannot share with anyone, but which he is bound by nonetheless. (Stanza 5) But it is not the right time for these kinds of thoughts to disturb the speaker’s soul, when Glory is going to be covering his coffin frame and across his forehead. (Stanza 6) The speaker reminds himself that he is in Greece, where great wars took place by heroes in ancient times — Spartans killed in battle who were brought back home on shields were as free as he is now because they died in glory. (Stanza 7) He commands his spirit to wake up, noting that Greece is already awake. He tells himself to think of his ancestors, who are Ancient Greek if you go back to Classical times — to the ‘parent lake’ of his bloodline, he asks it to be emotionally moved by this thought. (Stanza 8) He commands his spirit to stamp down upon the earlier intense emotions that he felt, otherwise his masculinity (‘manhood’) is not worthy of glory or respect — he should remain unbothered by the smiles and frowns of beauty. (Stanza 9) He asks himself: “If you regret your youth, why continue living?” The land of Death (war) stretches before him, he should step up to battle and willingly give his life. (Stanza 10) He tells his soul to look for a soldier’s grave — this is something more often found than actively looked for because soldiers usually don’t go into battle expecting or wishing to die. In the speaker’s case, he is happy to die and will choose his resting spot on the ground during the battle.
SPEAKER/VOICE
This is a personal poem, written by Byron in his journal in Missolonghi, Greece, just before he was about to lead a battle for Greek independence against the Ottomans (Turkish). It is likely intended only for himself, or perhaps close friends to read after his anticipated death. The speaker is therefore Byron himself, who explores a complex range of feelings before steeling himself and mentally preparing to die in battle. He resolves that he has not found love or happiness in life, so to die in battle may give a noble end to his wasted youth. There is a mixture of heroism and depression in his thoughts, and so the poem oscillates between a courageous and disconsolate tone, giving a disconcerting and uneasy feeling to the lines.
LANGUAGE
Synecdoche — ‘this heart should be unmoved’ — the poem opens with an image of the heart, which stands as a placeholder to represent Byron’s emotions and feelings.
Extended metaphor — ‘My days are in the yellow leaf; / The flowers and fruits of Love are gone; / The worm — the canker, and the grief/ Are mine alone!’ — the second stanza uses an extended metaphor, Byron visualizes his life as passing through seasons, as nature does, concluding that he is in ‘the yellow leaf’ at thirty-six years old — he is passing into the autumn of his life, past the times of Summer where Love was plenty. He only has the tripartite structure of ‘The worm- the canker, and the grief’ to look forward to, images of decay and misery.
Simile — ‘lone as some Volcanic isle’ — the ‘fire’ in the speaker’s heart is lonely, Byron uses both a metaphor and a simile here to demonstrate the idea that his emotions are passionate but they have nowhere to go, no outlet to pour into.
Listing- ‘The hope, the fear, the jealous care / The exalted portion of the pain/ and power of Love I cannot share’ — the poet uses a list of abstract nouns to exemplify the extreme range of positive and negative emotions he is feeling, including the oxymoron ‘jealous care’, which emphasizes how some of these emotions are contradictory. There is also a kind of truth in the fact that caring for someone or something can turn into jealousy when the situation is not reciprocated and the love is unreturned. The phrase ‘exalted portion of the pain’ is also contradictory, as the adjective ‘exalted’ can refer both to extreme happiness, or to a person in a high position. The double nature of this word is likely used deliberately, to suggest that Byron partly enjoys the state of sadness he’s in, as if it is comforting or comfortable to him, and it also implies that he idolizes his pain, placing it on a pedestal and allowing it to frequently consume his thoughts and dictate his actions.
Personification — certain abstract nouns are personified, such as ‘Love’ and ‘Glory’, to imply that they are high states of being to which we should always aspire. This is also a technique that is commonly used in Classical Greek and Roman literature, and as Byron is in Greece and feels indebted to Greek culture and history, it is fitting for him to use the same technique in his writing.
Tripartite structure — ‘The Sword, the Banner and the Field’ — Byron appears to be in front of a battlefield, envisioning the battle that is about to take place there — he perhaps feels as though he will be a significant figure in history by partaking in this battle. The tripartite structure is a rhetorical device that almost acts persuasively on himself as if he is trying to rouse himself from a state of introspection and depression into action and confidence.
Rhetorical question — ‘If thou regret’ st thy youth, why live?’ the question furthers the persuasive intent of the poem, using logic to build an argument against the idea of continuing to be miserable and in decline, Byron resolves that it is better to die for a noble cause than to continue living in a state of despair; this seems to have a positively persuasive effect on his mind and encourages him to seek Glory in death if in life he is unable to find Love.
STRUCTURE / FORM
Subtitle — January 22nd, 1824 Missolonghi (Greece) — the subtitle of the poem gives it a documentary-style, historical and monumental feeling, as if the poem marks a significant turning point in Byron’s life, and perhaps history — as he was about to go to war with the Turkish Empire and fight for Greek independence. It also implies the epistolary form of the poem — the fact that it was a private journal entry, intended for Byron to express his thoughts and explore his own psyche, rather than to be read publicly by others. Although, on the other hand, Byron did know that he was famous and that there was a chance his private thoughts would have been published after his death, so he may also have been writing the poem as a preparation for those the public to commemorate him heroically after his death in battle.
Elegy — If we believe that Byron intended the poem to be found and published posthumously (after his death), then it could also be considered a kind of elegiac poem, one intended to commemorate the dead — curiously this would also make it Byron’s own elegy to himself, as elegies are typically written about other people. Tragically, Byron caught a fever and died before ever reaching battle, and so his death was not the one which he envisioned for himself — although he is still revered today as a hero in Greece, with a part of Athens being named after him (Vyronas).
ABAB rhyme scheme — the alternate rhyme of the poem perhaps implies an oscillation between the two conflicted states of Byron’s mind — he is torn between succumbing to his intense emotions and wallowing in a state of depression as he tries to carry on with his life, or actively seeking out death in battle and being remembered as a hero.
Iambic tetrameter / iambic dimeter — the first three lines of each stanza use iambic tetrameter — four feet per line, arranged in unstressed-stressed syllables. They get shorter towards the end of each stanza, ending in dimeter — two feet per line. This has the effect of each stanza feeling as though it’s cut short — perhaps to anticipate Byron’s life being cut short, or else his attempt to stop his intense emotions from taking over his mind by regaining some control over his thoughts. Furthermore, the use of half-rhyme indicates death/decay, for instance ‘move’ and ‘Love’, or ‘gone’ and ‘alone’ look the same visually, but phonetically have slight differences in pronunciation.
Volta — ‘But ’tis not thus’ — the stanza beginning with these lines signifies a volta — a turning point in the tone of the poem; Byron’s thoughts turn from being self-destructively consumed by conflicting emotions into projecting outwards, convincing himself that he can use his feelings to fight for Glory and regain his honor and nobility. The use of italicizations — thus, here, now — is also highly emphatic, they provide stress or emphasis on time and place, helping to enhance the argument that it is neither the time nor place to wallow in self-pity, as it is the time for action.
Parenthesis — ‘Awake(not Greece — she is awake)’ — the use of parenthesis here provides a comical interlude to a serious poem about life, death, and glory. Byron seems aware that the subject of his previous stanza was ‘Greece’ itself, and so the imperative verb ‘Awake’ reads at first as though it still refers to Greece. He offers the correction ‘Awake, my soul’ in the second line, which also serves as anaphora — a repetition of the word ‘Awake’ at the beginning of the line. This suggests a self-critical nature and that Byron is playfully as well as painfully aware of his shortcomings, as he is criticizing himself for unclear writing even as he writes the poem.
CONTEXT
This was the final entry in Byron’s journal before he died (aged 36, which for the time was middle-aged for most people). He was in Missolonghi, Greece, waiting to receive battle orders for an attack that he had planned against the Ottoman army — at the time, Greek was under Turkish occupation, and so Byron was fighting for Greek independence and saw himself as an honorable savior of the Greek people. He was not directly Greek himself but trained extensively and very much influenced by Classical Greek literature and history, and so (as he acknowledges in his poem) he felt a kinship and solidarity with the people of Greece, some of whom returned his feelings of kinship and some who sought to exploit his wealth and generosity. Byron had exiled himself from England at this point in his life due to several scandals and figures in society who sought to ruin his name, and so he settled for a time in Greece and became involved in the politics there. He sold some of his property and amassed debts in order to fund the political campaign he orchestrated against the Ottomans. Though tragically Byron died of a fever before entering battle, the Greeks were successful in their war of Independence and to this day acknowledge Byron’s contribution to their successful campaign, naming a part of Athens ‘Vyronas’ in his honor.
Spartan borne upon his shield — dead Spartan soldiers were carried back home on their shields as a sign of honor; it was common knowledge in Ancient Greece that Spartans (who had a warrior culture) never gave up their shields — they either returned to Sparta carrying their shields or if they died the other soldiers carried them back to Sparta on their shields as a sign of respect and honor.
Byronic hero — The concept of a ‘Byronic hero’ exists in literature and stories even today, and it stems from Byron and his crazy antics. A conflicted figure who once famously stated ‘I am such a strange mélange of good and evil that it would be difficult to describe me’. The antithetical extremes of good and evil, darkness and light were inherent in Byron’s nature, and they can be seen in this poem as motivating factors behind his actions and life decisions. He is torn between the ‘exalted’ pleasures and pains that the experiences in life, and the idea that in death he could give up his life for a cause greater than himself. He seems to view the decision as partially altruistic — for the greater good of the Greek people — and partially restorative — to regain his own honour after becoming infamous in England and self-imposing an exile.
The poem also explores the Classical Greek notions of heroism, most notably psuche — the Greek concept of the soul or ‘spirit’, and kleos — the type of fame and glory attained after dying on a battlefield.
ATTITUDES
It is a kind of weakness to be ruled by our emotions — Throughout the poem, there is a battle between the heart — emotions — and the mind — logic/reason and the poem progresses structurally from emotional outbursts to calm, logical and determined thinking. It also psychologically shifts from the internal to the external, from introspection and passivity to action.
Death can restore nobility that a person has lost in life — As mentioned in the context, the concept of kleos seems central to the poem — Byron feels that it is not too late to regain his honor and to be remembered as a positive figure in history, rather than a ruined and villainous one. At the time he had been involved in various scandals in England and was very unfavorably portrayed in the public eye (having been positively famous previously, he found this hard to take), he left England never to return alive and with this transition he also seems to have felt he could still gain the positive glory and fame that he always sought, though this time it would require a sacrifice of his own life in order to do so.
The stages of life are like seasons — it is common in the literature to portray a person’s life as occurring in seasons or various natural stages — spring is often childhood and early adulthood, summer is the prime of a person’s life, autumn a time for calming down and reflecting — perhaps teaching or passing on knowledge, and wintertime for rest, enjoyment and peace. Byron feels that he is past his prime, he is ‘in the yellow leaf’ stage of his life, but having not settled down or married (although he did have several children with different women and also adopted a Muslim girl whose parents had been killed in war), he is not at the typical point of an ‘autumn’ stage, so he resolves to choose a different ending for himself, as he chose an alternative and unusual path in life too.
All Western culture has its roots in Ancient Greek and Roman traditions — Byron pays hommage to Greek literature and history that he was educated in by living in Greece and fighting for the independence of modern Greek people from the Ottoman empire. He calls this the ‘parent lake’ of his bloodline, acknowledging that all Western culture in a sense comes from this Greek origin, as Athens was the creator of democracy on which modern politics and social structures are founded.
THEMES
- Emotion vs Logic
- Love
- Beauty
- Death
- Aging
- Youth vs Maturity
- Glory
- Heroism
- War
- Western History
- Nobility
- Sacrifice
- Fame
Thanks for reading! If you find this page useful, you can take a look at our full courses here:
CIE Poetry A Level: https://scrbbly.teachable.com/p/cie-a-level-poetry-anthology
Link to all our English courses: https://scrbbly.teachable.com/courses
In essay writing for English, English Literature, and a lot of other humanities subjects (History, Classics, Sociology, Philosophy, Politics, etc) it is very important to be able to write a clear, precise paragraph that expresses your thoughts and analysis in detail. In order to do this, most schools and colleges teach something called a ‘PEE’ paragraph structure. Below, you’ll find a breakdown of the different types of ‘PEE’ paragraphs that you can do — including some basic and some more advanced examples.
This document is useful for anyone studying at school, high school, college, or university level, particularly on the following exam boards: AQA, OCR, Edexcel, WJEC / Eduqas, CIE / Cambridge, CCEA.
Thanks for reading! If you find this page helpful you can take a look at our full essay writing course here: https://scrbbly.teachable.com/p/basic-essay-writing
*** Bear in mind that you only use this structure for the middle paragraphs of your essay. Don’t use it in the introduction or conclusion!
PEE Structure (Beginner level)
Point — your ‘topic sentence’ of the paragraph. This should set the topic — explain an idea or opinion that you want to explore further. Your topic should not just describe the story, it needs to be a personal opinion or idea that deals with one aspect of the essay question.
Evidence — this is a quotation, several short quotations, or a reference that backs up your point. You are giving evidence to prove that your idea/opinion that was already stated in the first sentence of the paragraph is right. The evidence should be as clear and concise as possible, and it should perfectly illustrate your point.
Explanation — this is the analysis part of your paragraph. It shouldn’t just be one sentence; be sure to make it as long as possible — at least 2–3 sentences beyond your point and evidence. This bit is where you explain how and why your evidence proves your point. Don’t just describe the evidence, go deeper into exactly what it implies or suggests about the point and question. You can use techniques and zooming in on a specific word or phrase from the evidence to boost your grade.
Once you’ve mastered a PEE paragraph, there are ways to extend it further and make it more personal, developed, and sophisticated. If you’re aiming for around a C grade at GCSE / High School level then you only need to go as far as the PEE paragraph. For anything higher than that, you should learn these two examples below:
PETAL Structure (Intermediate level)
Point — your ‘topic sentence’ of the paragraph. This should set the topic — explain an idea or opinion that you want to explore further. Your topic should not just describe the story, it needs to be a personal opinion or idea that deals with one aspect of the essay question.
Evidence — this is a quotation, several short quotations, or a reference that backs up your point. You are giving evidence to prove that your idea/opinion that was already stated in the first sentence of the paragraph is right. The evidence should be as clear and concise as possible, and it should perfectly illustrate your point. Several short quotations grouped together to prove the same point is also called ‘synthesized quotations’, students that know how to do this usually are working at a higher level — as examiners, we look out for this as one indication of someone that is deserving of a B-A* grade.
Technique — you should always add in a technique whenever you quote or reference something. The best techniques to use are poetic devices (metaphor, simile, alliteration, etc) or rhetorical devices (repetition, rhetorical question, emotive language, etc). If you can’t think of a poetic or rhetorical technique you can also use grammatical devices (noun, verb, adjective, etc). Several techniques at once can also be more effective than just finding one and then moving on quickly. To learn more about techniques, take our ‘Basic Language Devices’ course here: https://scrbbly.teachable.com/p/basic-language-devices
Analysis — this is the same as ‘explanation’. Talk about how and why your quotation or reference proves the point of the paragraph, and how all of that answers the question. Don’t retell the story or describe what happens, you don’t get many marks for doing that in an essay. Instead of just finding the techniques and moving on, you also want to analyze them — why did they choose to use repetition, for example? Think about the detailed and specific effects of the evidence and how that links back both to the writer themselves and the question you’re trying to answer. To get extra marks, zoom in to some of your evidence and find more techniques/analysis there to go even deeper into the question. The more analysis you have, the higher your grade tends to be.
Link — finally, link back to the thesis that you wrote in the intro; the thesis is a one-sentence answer to the question that summarises your main opinion on the question and the writer’s purpose. Once you’ve set a thesis, you need to keep going back to it throughout the essay. Ideally, everything you write after the intro should just be a deeper way to prove your thesis is correct.
PEEDL Structure (Advanced level)
Point — your ‘topic sentence’ of the paragraph. This should set the topic — explain an idea or opinion that you want to explore further. Your topic should not just describe the story, it needs to be a personal opinion or idea that deals with one aspect of the essay question.
Evidence — this is a quotation, several short quotations, or a reference that backs up your point. You are giving evidence to prove that your idea/opinion that was already stated in the first sentence of the paragraph is right. The evidence should be as clear and concise as possible, and it should perfectly illustrate your point. Several short quotations grouped together to prove the same point is also called ‘synthesized quotations’, students that know how to do this usually are working at a higher level — as examiners, we look out for this as one indication of someone that is deserving of a B-A* grade.
Explanation — this is the same as ‘analysis’. Talk about how and why your quotation or reference proves the point of the paragraph, and how all of that answers the question. Don’t retell the story or describe what happens, you don’t get many marks for doing that in an essay. Instead of just finding the techniques and moving on, you also want to analyze them — why did they choose to use repetition, for example? Think about the detailed and specific effects of the evidence and how that links back both to the writer themselves and the question you’re trying to answer. To get extra marks, zoom in to some of your evidence and find more techniques/analysis there to go even deeper into the question. The more analysis you have, the higher your grade tends to be.
Development — this is a crucial aspect of your paragraph for anyone studying at a higher level or aiming for a top grade. You need to develop and expand what you’re talking about so that it feels like it’s not just your own ideas, but it’s actually informed by your wider reading and knowledge of the text. There are several ways to develop: go deeper into the context of the text and use that to analyse (explain how / why) the question and back up your point; go deeper into the themes and messages behind the story — explain what the writer’s main aims were and how these link to the question, how were they trying to persuade us to think or feel about an important theme? What is their overall intention in terms of how they aim to influence their audience?; explore alternative interpretations (at a high level this includes critics’ quotes) — how might a modern audience interpret an older story differently from the original audience? If someone is religious or atheist, what would their reaction be to the messages of the story? Understand different perspectives and also have a sense of your own personal opinion and why you think that you’re correct.
Link — finally, link back to the thesis that you wrote in the intro; the thesis is a one-sentence answer to the question that summarises your main opinion on the question and the writer’s purpose. Once you’ve set a thesis, you need to keep going back to it throughout the essay. Ideally, everything you write after the intro should just be a deeper way to prove your thesis is correct.
Thanks for reading! If you find this page helpful you can take a look at our full essay writing course here: https://scrbbly.teachable.com/p/basic-essay-writing
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In essay writing for English, English Literature, and a lot of other humanities subjects (History, Classics, Sociology, Philosophy, Politics, etc) it is very important to be able to write a clear, precise paragraph that expresses your thoughts and analysis in detail. In order to do this, most schools and colleges teach something called a ‘PEE’ paragraph structure. Below, you’ll find a breakdown of the different types of ‘PEE’ paragraphs that you can do — including some basic and some more advanced examples.
This document is useful for anyone studying at school, high school, college, or university level, particularly on the following exam boards: AQA, OCR, Edexcel, WJEC / Eduqas, CIE / Cambridge, CCEA.
Thanks for reading! If you find this page helpful you can take a look at our full essay writing course here: https://scrbbly.teachable.com/p/basic-essay-writing
*** Bear in mind that you only use this structure for the middle paragraphs of your essay. Don’t use it in the introduction or conclusion!
PEE Structure (Beginner level)
Point — your ‘topic sentence’ of the paragraph. This should set the topic — explain an idea or opinion that you want to explore further. Your topic should not just describe the story, it needs to be a personal opinion or idea that deals with one aspect of the essay question.
Evidence — this is a quotation, several short quotations, or a reference that backs up your point. You are giving evidence to prove that your idea/opinion that was already stated in the first sentence of the paragraph is right. The evidence should be as clear and concise as possible, and it should perfectly illustrate your point.
Explanation — this is the analysis part of your paragraph. It shouldn’t just be one sentence; be sure to make it as long as possible — at least 2–3 sentences beyond your point and evidence. This bit is where you explain how and why your evidence proves your point. Don’t just describe the evidence, go deeper into exactly what it implies or suggests about the point and question. You can use techniques and zooming in on a specific word or phrase from the evidence to boost your grade.
Once you’ve mastered a PEE paragraph, there are ways to extend it further and make it more personal, developed, and sophisticated. If you’re aiming for around a C grade at GCSE / High School level then you only need to go as far as the PEE paragraph. For anything higher than that, you should learn these two examples below:
PETAL Structure (Intermediate level)
Point — your ‘topic sentence’ of the paragraph. This should set the topic — explain an idea or opinion that you want to explore further. Your topic should not just describe the story, it needs to be a personal opinion or idea that deals with one aspect of the essay question.
Evidence — this is a quotation, several short quotations, or a reference that backs up your point. You are giving evidence to prove that your idea/opinion that was already stated in the first sentence of the paragraph is right. The evidence should be as clear and concise as possible, and it should perfectly illustrate your point. Several short quotations grouped together to prove the same point is also called ‘synthesized quotations’, students that know how to do this usually are working at a higher level — as examiners, we look out for this as one indication of someone that is deserving of a B-A* grade.
Technique — you should always add in a technique whenever you quote or reference something. The best techniques to use are poetic devices (metaphor, simile, alliteration, etc) or rhetorical devices (repetition, rhetorical question, emotive language, etc). If you can’t think of a poetic or rhetorical technique you can also use grammatical devices (noun, verb, adjective, etc). Several techniques at once can also be more effective than just finding one and then moving on quickly. To learn more about techniques, take our ‘Basic Language Devices’ course here: https://scrbbly.teachable.com/p/basic-language-devices
Analysis — this is the same as ‘explanation’. Talk about how and why your quotation or reference proves the point of the paragraph, and how all of that answers the question. Don’t retell the story or describe what happens, you don’t get many marks for doing that in an essay. Instead of just finding the techniques and moving on, you also want to analyze them — why did they choose to use repetition, for example? Think about the detailed and specific effects of the evidence and how that links back both to the writer themselves and the question you’re trying to answer. To get extra marks, zoom in to some of your evidence and find more techniques/analysis there to go even deeper into the question. The more analysis you have, the higher your grade tends to be.
Link — finally, link back to the thesis that you wrote in the intro; the thesis is a one-sentence answer to the question that summarises your main opinion on the question and the writer’s purpose. Once you’ve set a thesis, you need to keep going back to it throughout the essay. Ideally, everything you write after the intro should just be a deeper way to prove your thesis is correct.
PEEDL Structure (Advanced level)
Point — your ‘topic sentence’ of the paragraph. This should set the topic — explain an idea or opinion that you want to explore further. Your topic should not just describe the story, it needs to be a personal opinion or idea that deals with one aspect of the essay question.
Evidence — this is a quotation, several short quotations, or a reference that backs up your point. You are giving evidence to prove that your idea/opinion that was already stated in the first sentence of the paragraph is right. The evidence should be as clear and concise as possible, and it should perfectly illustrate your point. Several short quotations grouped together to prove the same point is also called ‘synthesized quotations’, students that know how to do this usually are working at a higher level — as examiners, we look out for this as one indication of someone that is deserving of a B-A* grade.
Explanation — this is the same as ‘analysis’. Talk about how and why your quotation or reference proves the point of the paragraph, and how all of that answers the question. Don’t retell the story or describe what happens, you don’t get many marks for doing that in an essay. Instead of just finding the techniques and moving on, you also want to analyze them — why did they choose to use repetition, for example? Think about the detailed and specific effects of the evidence and how that links back both to the writer themselves and the question you’re trying to answer. To get extra marks, zoom in to some of your evidence and find more techniques/analysis there to go even deeper into the question. The more analysis you have, the higher your grade tends to be.
Development — this is a crucial aspect of your paragraph for anyone studying at a higher level or aiming for a top grade. You need to develop and expand what you’re talking about so that it feels like it’s not just your own ideas, but it’s actually informed by your wider reading and knowledge of the text. There are several ways to develop: go deeper into the context of the text and use that to analyse (explain how / why) the question and back up your point; go deeper into the themes and messages behind the story — explain what the writer’s main aims were and how these link to the question, how were they trying to persuade us to think or feel about an important theme? What is their overall intention in terms of how they aim to influence their audience?; explore alternative interpretations (at a high level this includes critics’ quotes) — how might a modern audience interpret an older story differently from the original audience? If someone is religious or atheist, what would their reaction be to the messages of the story? Understand different perspectives and also have a sense of your own personal opinion and why you think that you’re correct.
Link — finally, link back to the thesis that you wrote in the intro; the thesis is a one-sentence answer to the question that summarises your main opinion on the question and the writer’s purpose. Once you’ve set a thesis, you need to keep going back to it throughout the essay. Ideally, everything you write after the intro should just be a deeper way to prove your thesis is correct.
Thanks for reading! If you find this page helpful you can take a look at our full essay writing course here: https://scrbbly.teachable.com/p/basic-essay-writing
This is a sad poem about war, death, and the grief of those who survive. Hardy speaks poignantly from a female perspective, imagining how a wife must feel when she receives news that her husband has been killed in battle. This poem is tailored towards anyone studying the poem at a higher level, from GCSE upwards — particularly for the following exam boards: WJEC / Eduqas, OCR, Edexcel, CIE / Cambridge, CCEA, AQA.
Thanks for reading! If you find this poem useful, you can take a look at our full CIE English Literature A Level Poetry course here: https://scrbbly.teachable.com/p/cie-a-level-poetry-anthology
Our WJEC GCSE poetry course is coming soon, in the meantime, please take a look at all of our other English Literature and Language material here: https://scrbbly.teachable.com/courses
A Wife in London
December 1899
I The Tragedy
She sits in the tawny vapour
That the Thames-side lanes have uprolled,
Behind whose webby fold-on-fold
Like a waning taper
The street-lamp glimmers cold.
.
A messenger’s knock cracks smartly,
Flashed news in her hand
Of meaning it dazes to understand
Though shaped so shortly:
He — he has fallen — in the far South Land…
II The Irony
’Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker,
The postman nears and goes:
A letter is brought whose lines disclose
By the firelight flicker
His hand, whom the worm now knows:
.
Fresh — firm — penned in highest feather —
Page-full of his hoped return,
And of home-planned jaunts of brake and burn
In the summer weather,
And of new love that they would learn.
Thomas Hardy
VOCABULARY
Tawny — a yellow brown colour
Vapour — steam
Uprolled — moving upwards as something rolls
Webby — like a web
Waning — disappearing, fading
Taper — a shape that reduces in side towards one end, like a candle
Glimmers — shimmering with light
Smartly — double meaning, neat, tidy and firm but also can refer to a sharp, harsh pain
Dazes — confuses / makes dizzy
’Tis the morrow — it is the next day (tomorrow)
Nears — comes near
Disclose — tell information
Penned in highest feather — written down with the most expensive feather quill pen
Jaunts — trips, journeys
Brake and burn — old fashioned words for green pastoral scenery (brake) and a fresh-water stream (burn)
STORY/SUMMARY
Part One: The Tragedy
From the title, we know that the subject of the poem is a woman, somebody’s wife, who lives in London. She is sitting in her house near the river Thames, surrounded by vapors — likely the pollution of the city, as London at this time was known to be extremely polluted and full of smog. Behind the thick smog, which looks like a web, a streetlamp faintly gives off a cold light.
A messenger knocks at the door, sharply. In his hand he carries a quick bit of news — the news is difficult for the woman to process, even though it is phrased so shortly: He (her husband) has been killed in battle — in the ‘far South Land’, an unspecified war that took place further South in the world than England, likely the Boer War (see the context for more info).
Part Two: The Irony
It is the next day, and the fog seems thicker, the postman delivers a letter and leaves. It is a letter from the dead husband, likely sent before he died. The wife reads it by the light of the fire, reading the lines that were written by his hand — which is now lifeless and being eaten by worms.
The writing is fresh and firm, written with the very best pen. It is full of hope for the future, planning trips to take with the wife into the countryside in summer weather, hope of rekindling their love anew once they have been apart for so long.
SPEAKER/VOICE
The third-person limited narrative perspective provides a focus on the ‘Wife’, the subject of the poem, whilst also remaining detached from the situation. It is as if the speaker is commenting generally on the situation, particularly as the unnamed ‘Wife’ is not described in detail, she comes to represent the status of many women at the time of writing who were at home while their husbands were at war, fighting in far off lands. At any time, they could be delivered a letter similar to the one which the wife in the poem receives, stating that their husband had been killed in action.
LANGUAGE
- Visual Imagery — ‘Tawny vapour’ / ‘street-lamp glimmers cold’ — the imagery in the first stanza paints a picture of London as a dirty, over-industrialized, and cold place with no warmth or sense of community. The ‘messenger’ and ‘postman’ that arrive are equally cold and matter-of-fact, not offering condolences or comfort to the wife. The visual imagery of the countryside directly contrasts this.
- Extended metaphor — the fog is used as a metaphor for isolation, and perhaps depression, in the poem. The woman is sitting ‘in the tawny vapour’ of the river Thames, the brown mists or fog that rolls off the dirty London river — which at the time of writing in 1899 was highly polluted. After the news of the husband’s death, the ‘fog hangs thicker’ as if it has increased around her. This suggests that she is quite lonely and isolated, she doesn’t seem to have other families to comfort her in her time of need as she is always presented as alone. It is also implied that the sadness she feels is a result of her husband’s absence, that she is placed into a state of waiting and not knowing whether he will ever return, which makes her somber and reflective rather than able to enjoy life.
- Foreshadowing — The streetlamp is described as ‘Like a waning taper’, a simile which suggests that the light is disappearing or growing dimmer through the fog; it is also ‘cold’ which adds to the stark atmosphere of the poem as it implies that the husband’s death is happening at that moment. This also symbolically prefigures the lamp as looking a little like a candle — such as that lit when a night vigil is kept for a dying person (where people light candles, pray and watch over them through the night). Street Lamps in the 1800s were made of gas, not electric, and they were lit nightly by lamplighters — so they did also look more like candles flickering than modern-day electric lights.
- Consonance — ‘A messenger’s knock cracks smartly’ — the excessive consonance of the plosive ‘k’ sounds in the phrase ‘knock cracks’ emphasizes the sharp brusqueness with which the messenger delivers the letter. Although he may be behaving in this manner because he believes it to be professional, it is also quite insensitive from the wife’s point of view — he merely delivers the news that her husband is dead, and leaves. Perhaps also he is busy and has a lot of husbands to report on, and therefore cannot stay or spend too long with the wife.
- Alliteration — the wife reads her late husband’s letter ‘by the firelight flicker’, the fricative ‘f’ and ‘l’ sounds playing within the visual image to imply a sense of softness and warmth, which is even more tragic as the husband is no longer alive and will never be able to provide true warmth and comfort again to the wife.
- Symbolism — ‘home-planned jaunts… in summer weather’ — the thoughts of the lovely times they will spend together when the soldier returns to fill his mind whilst he’s out in battle. The use of the adjective ‘summer’ implies that the couple’s relationship is now in a wintry state — perhaps with lost love or affection between them, or just a lack of closeness due to the physical separation. The images of summer — ‘brake and burn’ — create a sense of hope and symbolically imply that their love is like the seasons, it will pass into a passionate, joyful phase once again when the soldier returns. There’s a sense also of antithesis, as these summery, pastoral images of the countryside are directly contrasted with the ‘cold’ streetlamp, the darkness and dirtiness of London and its ‘fog’.
STRUCTURE / FORM
The poem is split into two parts, titled ‘The Tragedy’ and ‘The Irony’. The first section is tragic because it starts with loneliness, and ends with news of death — and the realization that the woman’s life will never be the same again. The second is ironic — but bitterly rather than comically — because the day after the wife learns of her husband’s death, she receives a happy, hopeful and enthusiastic letter from him promising her that they will have a bright and joyful future together. The cheeriness of the letter after the fact of his death only serves, ironically, to heighten her sadness.
Characterization — the woman is unnamed, characterized solely as ‘A Wife in London’, this lack of specificity and detail in some ways distances us from the character, but it is intended to demonstrate that she is a typical, everyday woman and many women in Britain had to suffer a similar experience. In this sense, Hardy’s poem is more about the social state of Britain than any individual person, he is more critiquing the social structure and the imperialist agenda of Victorian society.
Volta: ‘He — he has fallen — in the far South Land…’- the final line of the first section provides a volta — a turning point in the poem as the wife is hit with the news that her husband ‘has fallen’ — a euphemism used often by soldiers to indicate death. The news comes between to caesurae — dashes in the center of the line which creates dramatic pauses before and after the statement. This provides suspense at first, and then afterward the feeling of shock.
The stanzas are regularly arranged into quintets with an ABBAB rhyme scheme, although the meter is slightly variable. The fourth line in each stanza always feels a little hypermetric — as if it is unnaturally shorter, therefore drawing attention to itself with its abruptness. This perhaps imitates the regularity of the wife’s mundane and repetitive life, contrasted with the shocking news she’s received.
CONTEXT
Boer War (1899–1902) — Hardy was considered an ‘Anti-war poet’, who spoke out against the cost of war and Imperialism on the individual — concerned in particular with the permanent psychological trauma that it caused for both soldiers and their families back home. The poem is dated 1899, which is the same date as the start of the Boer War — a war fought in South Africa, which was one of the most costly wars ever fought in the name of the British Empire. The British had around 500,000 men, and the Boers (the Dutch settlers in South Africa) had only 88,000, and so it was a British victory. However, many British people at the time — Hardy included — felt that the war was both a pointless waste of money and of British lives, in particular Hardy criticised the idea that younger Victorian men were fed propaganda and told that they would die and always be remembered as noble heroes, whereas in reality they would never be properly buried and no one would remember their names, as well as the fact that they would die fighting for a cause that they didn’t personally believe in or particularly understand. Hardy explores this aspect of the Boer War further in poems such as Drummer Hodge. The war was partially about imperialism — maintaining the extent and influence of the British Empire — and also about claiming resources, such as gold and land. Hardy himself also felt that the Boers had a fair claim to the land, and that they were defending their homeland. None of these reasons had any direct effect on the individual British soldier, yet they were expected to die for their country and blindly follow orders anyway. Wars around the turn of the 20th century were also becoming more brutal due to technological developments in warfare, such as the beginning of machine guns.
Tragedy — Hardy’s writing is often tragic in tone, exploring degrees of sadness and depression. In this case, the tragedy is that the wife’s husband is killed, and she is placed into a state of shock. She seems to have no children, and we can assume that she and her husband are still quite newly married — as there are talks of the ‘new love that they would learn’ at the end of the poem, implying perhaps that they have not fully settled or become comfortable with one another yet. There is also perhaps an implication that children were part of their future plans, which further heightens the sense of tragedy. Hardy himself had an extremely unhappy first marriage to a woman named Emma Gilford, and so elements of the tragedy in the poem may be taken from his own circumstances — for instance, he and Emma also never had children, and she was a recluse, preferring to stay in the attic rooms of their house rather than spending time with him.
London — in the 19th Century London was not only the capital of England, but also of the British Empire — a vast collection of countries around the world that had been colonised by Britain. It was the largest city in the world at this point, but it also had a host of problems — many intellectual Victorians felt that it was hypocritical to have such poverty and dirtiness (from pollution and industrialisation) in their own capital city, yet at the same time professing to be superior and the most civilised country in the world.
ATTITUDES
- War is as difficult for the families at home to cope with as the soldiers who are out fighting — we are provided in the poem with a different perspective on war, rather than focusing on the action of battle or the emotional and physical impact on the soldiers, Hardy chooses instead to focalise his narrative around the wife who stays at home and lives alone. The wife is deliberately unnamed, demonstrating how she universally represents the state of all wives and partners who struggle psychologically with the impact of war.
- Death can be sudden, unexpected and disruptive — the poem is about grief and loss as much as it is about war, there is a sense that the woman is already extremely lonely and isolated, and then she is left to think of her husband and process his death in isolation. The tragedy is not just that he dies, but that he also sends a letter of all the times that they will share in the future together — thoughts which are now impossible to turn into a reality.
- Modernism and technological progress takes us further away from living in an idyllic state in harmony with nature — Hardy often writes of the difference between country and city living in his poems and novels, for him the countryside is a beautiful, idyllic and peaceful place where one can live in harmony with nature. The city on the other hand — and London in particular — is large, unfriendly, dirty, mechanical and encourages people to live in a disconnected state, where they are no longer in tune with the natural environment. We can see this criticism of the city inherent in the descriptions of the fog and polluted vapours of the river, all of which are signs that the city is overcrowded and unpleasant — there is also a sad irony inthat the wife, even living in a place with such a high population as London, could feel so alone and be so lacking in comfort.
- Soldiers in war often use thoughts of home to keep themselves motivated — the soldier’s letter arrives later than his death note, implying a greater cosmic irony to the situation; as if it isn’t hard enough for the woman to process hsi death, because of the time delays of letters she is presented the day after with his own voice, as if still alive, full of hopes and wishes of their future together.
THEMES
- Love
- War
- Death
- Life’s Purpose
- Nature
- City vs Country
- Industrialization
- Loneliness
Copyright © 2020 Scrbbly
Thanks for reading! If you find this poem useful, you can take a look at our full CIE English Literature A Level Poetry course here: https://scrbbly.teachable.com/p/cie-a-level-poetry-anthology
Our WJEC GCSE poetry course is coming soon, in the meantime please take a look at all of our other English Literature and Language material here: https://scrbbly.teachable.com/courses
This is a sad poem about war, death, and the grief of those who survive. Hardy speaks poignantly from a female perspective, imagining how a wife must feel when she receives news that her husband has been killed in battle. This poem is tailored towards anyone studying the poem at a higher level, from GCSE upwards — particularly for the following exam boards: WJEC / Eduqas, OCR, Edexcel, CIE / Cambridge, CCEA, AQA.
Thanks for reading! If you find this poem useful, you can take a look at our full CIE English Literature A Level Poetry course here: https://scrbbly.teachable.com/p/cie-a-level-poetry-anthology
Our WJEC GCSE poetry course is coming soon, in the meantime please take a look at all of our other English Literature and Language material here: https://scrbbly.teachable.com/courses
A Wife in London
December 1899
I The Tragedy
She sits in the tawny vapour
That the Thames-side lanes have uprolled,
Behind whose webby fold-on-fold
Like a waning taper
The street-lamp glimmers cold.
.
A messenger’s knock cracks smartly,
Flashed news in her hand
Of meaning it dazes to understand
Though shaped so shortly:
He — he has fallen — in the far South Land…
II The Irony
’Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker,
The postman nears and goes:
A letter is brought whose lines disclose
By the firelight flicker
His hand, whom the worm now knows:
.
Fresh — firm — penned in highest feather —
Page-full of his hoped return,
And of home-planned jaunts of brake and burn
In the summer weather,
And of new love that they would learn.
Thomas Hardy
VOCABULARY
Tawny — a yellow brown colour
Vapour — steam
Uprolled — moving upwards as something rolls
Webby — like a web
Waning — disappearing, fading
Taper — a shape that reduces in side towards one end, like a candle
Glimmers — shimmering with light
Smartly — double meaning, neat, tidy and firm but also can refer to a sharp, harsh pain
Dazes — confuses / makes dizzy
’Tis the morrow — it is the next day (tomorrow)
Nears — comes near
Disclose — tell information
Penned in highest feather — written down with the most expensive feather quill pen
Jaunts — trips, journeys
Brake and burn — old fashioned words for green pastoral scenery (brake) and a fresh-water stream (burn)
STORY/SUMMARY
Part One: The Tragedy
From the title, we know that the subject of the poem is a woman, somebody’s wife, who lives in London. She is sitting in her house near the river Thames, surrounded by vapours — likely the pollution of the city, as London at this time was known to be extremely polluted and full of smog. Behind the thick smog, which looks like a web, a streetlamp faintly gives off a cold light.
A messenger knocks at the door, sharply. In his hand he carries a quick bit of news — the news is difficult for the woman to process, even though it is phrased so shortly: He (her husband) has been killed in battle — in the ‘far South Land’, an unspecified war that took place further South in the world than England, likely the Boer War (see context for more info).
Part Two: The Irony
It is the next day, and the fog seems thicker, the postman delivers a letter and leaves. It is a letter from the dead husband, likely sent before he died. The wife reads it by the light of the fire, reading the lines that were written by his hand — which is now lifeless and being eaten by worms.
The writing is fresh and firm, written with the very best pen. It is full of hope for the future, planning trips to take with the wife into the countryside in summer weather, hope of rekindling their love anew once they have been apart for so long.
SPEAKER/VOICE
The third person limited narrative perspective provides a focus on the ‘Wife’, the subject of the poem, whilst also remaining detached from the situation. It is as if the speaker is commenting generally on the situation, particularly as the unnamed ‘Wife’ is not described in detail, she comes to represent the status of many women at the time of writing who were at home while their husbands were at war, fighting in far off lands. At any time, they could be delivered a letter similar to the one which the wife in the poem receives, stating that their husband had been killed in action.
LANGUAGE
- Visual Imagery — ‘Tawny vapour’ / ‘street-lamp glimmers cold’ — the imagery in the first stanza paints a picture of London as a dirty, over-industrialised and cold place with no warmth or sense of community. The ‘messenger’ and ‘postman’ that arrive are equally cold and matter-of-fact, not offering condolences or comfort to the wife. The visual imagery of the countryside directly contrasts this.
- Extended metaphor — the fog is used as a metaphor for isolation, and perhaps depression, in the poem. The woman is sitting ‘in the tawny vapour’ of the river Thames, the brown mists or fog that rolls off the dirty London river — which at the time of writing in 1899 was highly polluted. After the news of the husband’s death, the ‘fog hangs thicker’ as if it has increased around her. This suggests that she is quite lonely and isolated, she doesn’t seem to have other family to comfort her in her time of need as she is always presented as alone. It is also implied that the sadness she feels is a result of her husband’s absence, that she is placed into a state of waiting and not knowing whether he will ever return, which makes her sombre and reflective rather than able to enjoy life.
- Foreshadowing — The streetlamp is described as ‘Like a waning taper’, a simile which suggests that the light is disappearing or growing dimmer through the fog; it is also ‘cold’ which adds to the stark atmosphere of the poem as it implies that the husband’s death is happening at that moment. This also symbolically prefigures the lamp as looking a little like a candle — such as those lit when a night vigil is kept for a dying person (where people light candles, pray and watch over them through the night). Street Lamps in the 1800s were made of gas, not electric, and they were lit nightly by lamplighters — so they did also look more like candles flickering than modern day electric lights.
- Consonance — ‘A messenger’s knock cracks smartly’ — the excessive consonance of the plosive ‘k’ sounds in the phrase ‘knock cracks’ emphasises the sharp brusqueness with which the messenger delivers the letter. Although he may be behaving in this manner because he believes it to be professional, it is also quite insensitive from the wife’s point of view — he merely delivers the news that her husband is dead, and leaves. Perhaps also he is busy and has a lot of husbands to report on, and therefore cannot stay or spend too long with the wife.
- Alliteration — the wife reads her late husband’s letter ‘by the firelight flicker’, the fricative ‘f’ and ‘l’ sounds playing within the visual image to imply a sense of softness and warmth, which is even more tragic as the husband is no longer alive and will never be able to provide true warmth and comfort again to the wife.
- Symbolism — ‘home-planned jaunts… in summer weather’ — the thoughts of the lovely times they will spend together when the soldier returns fills his mind whilst he’s out in battle. The use of the adjective ‘summer’ implies that the couple’s relationship is now in a wintry state — perhaps with lost love or affection between them, or just a lack of closeness due to the physical separation. The images of summer — ‘brake and burn’ — create a sense of hope and symbolically imply that their love is like the seasons, it will pass into a passionate, joyful phase once again when the soldier returns. There’s a sense also of antithesis, as these summery, pastoral images of the countryside are directly contrasted with the ‘cold’ streetlamp, the darkness and dirtiness of London and its ‘fog’.
STRUCTURE / FORM
The poem is split into two parts, titled ‘The Tragedy’ and ‘The Irony’. The first section is tragic because it starts with loneliness, and ends with news of death — and the realisation that the woman’s life will never be the same again. The second is ironic — but bitterly rather than comically — because the day after the wife learns of her husband’s death, she receives a happy, hopeful and enthusiastic letter from him promising her that they will have a bright and joyful future together. The cheeriness of the letter after the fact of his death only serves, ironically, to heighten her sadness.
Characterisation — the woman is unnamed, characterised solely as ‘A Wife in London’, this lack of specificity and detail in some ways distances us from the character, but it is intended to demonstrate that she is a typical, everyday woman and many women in Britain had to suffer a similar experience. In this sense, Hardy’s poem is more about the social state of Britain than any individual person, he is more critiquing the social structure and the imperialist agenda of Victorian society.
Volta: ‘He — he has fallen — in the far South Land…’- the final line of the first section provides a volta — a turning point in the poem as the wife is hit with the news that her husband ‘has fallen’ — a euphemism used often by soldiers to indicate death. The news comes between to caesurae — dashes in the centre of the line which create dramatic pauses before and after the statement. This provides suspense at first, and then afterward the feeling of shock.
The stanzas are regularly arranged into quintets with an ABBAB rhyme scheme, although the metre is slightly variable. The fourth line in each stanza always feels a little hypometric — as if it is unnaturally shorter, therefore drawing attention to itself with its abruptness. This perhaps imitates the regularity of the wife’s mundane and repetitive life, contrasted with the shocking news she’s received.
CONTEXT
Boer War (1899–1902) — Hardy was considered an ‘Anti-war poet’, who spoke out against the cost of war and Imperialism on the individual — concerned in particular with the permanent psychological trauma that it caused for both soldiers and their families back home. The poem is dated 1899, which is the same date as the start of the Boer War — a war fought in South Africa, which was one of the most costly wars ever fought in the name of the British Empire. The British had around 500,000 men, and the Boers (the Dutch settlers in South Africa) had only 88,000, and so it was a British victory. However, many British people at the time — Hardy included — felt that the war was both a pointless waste of money and of British lives, in particular Hardy criticised the idea that younger Victorian men were fed propaganda and told that they would die and always be remembered as noble heroes, whereas in reality they would never be properly buried and no one would remember their names, as well as the fact that they would die fighting for a cause that they didn’t personally believe in or particularly understand. Hardy explores this aspect of the Boer War further in poems such as Drummer Hodge. The war was partially about imperialism — maintaining the extent and influence of the British Empire — and also about claiming resources, such as gold and land. Hardy himself also felt that the Boers had a fair claim to the land, and that they were defending their homeland. None of these reasons had any direct effect on the individual British soldier, yet they were expected to die for their country and blindly follow orders anyway. Wars around the turn of the 20th century were also becoming more brutal due to technological developments in warfare, such as the beginning of machine guns.
Tragedy — Hardy’s writing is often tragic in tone, exploring degrees of sadness and depression. In this case, the tragedy is that the wife’s husband is killed, and she is placed into a state of shock. She seems to have no children, and we can assume that she and her husband are still quite newly married — as there are talks of the ‘new love that they would learn’ at the end of the poem, implying perhaps that they have not fully settled or become comfortable with one another yet. There is also perhaps an implication that children were part of their future plans, which further heightens the sense of tragedy. Hardy himself had an extremely unhappy first marriage to a woman named Emma Gilford, and so elements of the tragedy in the poem may be taken from his own circumstances — for instance, he and Emma also never had children, and she was a recluse, preferring to stay in the attic rooms of their house rather than spending time with him.
London — in the 19th Century London was not only the capital of England, but also of the British Empire — a vast collection of countries around the world that had been colonised by Britain. It was the largest city in the world at this point, but it also had a host of problems — many intellectual Victorians felt that it was hypocritical to have such poverty and dirtiness (from pollution and industrialisation) in their own capital city, yet at the same time professing to be superior and the most civilised country in the world.
ATTITUDES
- War is as difficult for the families at home to cope with as the soldiers who are out fighting — we are provided in the poem with a different perspective on war, rather than focusing on the action of battle or the emotional and physical impact on the soldiers, Hardy chooses instead to focalise his narrative around the wife who stays at home and lives alone. The wife is deliberately unnamed, demonstrating how she universally represents the state of all wives and partners who struggle psychologically with the impact of war.
- Death can be sudden, unexpected and disruptive — the poem is about grief and loss as much as it is about war, there is a sense that the woman is already extremely lonely and isolated, and then she is left to think of her husband and process his death in isolation. The tragedy is not just that he dies, but that he also sends a letter of all the times that they will share in the future together — thoughts which are now impossible to turn into a reality.
- Modernism and technological progress takes us further away from living in an idyllic state in harmony with nature — Hardy often writes of the difference between country and city living in his poems and novels, for him the countryside is a beautiful, idyllic and peaceful place where one can live in harmony with nature. The city on the other hand — and London in particular — is large, unfriendly, dirty, mechanical and encourages people to live in a disconnected state, where they are no longer in tune with the natural environment. We can see this criticism of the city inherent in the descriptions of the fog and polluted vapours of the river, all of which are signs that the city is overcrowded and unpleasant — there is also a sad irony inthat the wife, even living in a place with such a high population as London, could feel so alone and be so lacking in comfort.
- Soldiers in war often use thoughts of home to keep themselves motivated — the soldier’s letter arrives later than his death note, implying a greater cosmic irony to the situation; as if it isn’t hard enough for the woman to process hsi death, because of the time delays of letters she is presented the day after with his own voice, as if still alive, full of hopes and wishes of their future together.
THEMES
Love
War
Death
Life’s Purpose
Nature
City vs Country
Industrialisation
Loneliness
Copyright © 2020 Scrbbly
Thanks for reading! If you find this poem useful, you can take a look at our full CIE English Literature A Level Poetry course here: https://scrbbly.teachable.com/p/cie-a-level-poetry-anthology
Our WJEC GCSE poetry course is coming soon, in the meantime please take a look at all of our other English Literature and Language material here: https://scrbbly.teachable.com/courses
