Analysis Of After A Journey By Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy, one of the 19th century’s most well known poets, was a man of many talents, at least writing-wise. He was an author of novels and short stories, as well as such poetic works like “Tess of the d’Urbervilles,” “Jude the Obscure,” and “The Darkling Thrush.” Hardy was fond of hiding more serious and deep thoughts behind more simple sounding poetry. His voice of weariness and sad resignation sometimes disarms his readers, but his depth draws them in. His influence on the Movement poets of the mid-1900s was well noted. The themes of culture, society and language are at play in Hardy’s works, and his oeuvre was a small part of a much larger discourse. One of the most often cropped up themes in Hardy’s poetry is that of time.

In “After a Journey,” the theme of time is used to underline how much can change after the death of a loved one. In this poem, ideas are explored about what responsibilities ones that have been left behind have. While it is difficult to dredge up the painful memories that we have of a person while they were alive, it can also be healing and comforting to remember them. This remembrance of the past can help cement our emotions towards the future.

This poem was included in a set of poems from the years 1912 and 1913, fittingly titled “Poems of 1912-1913,” a time of grief for Hardy, after he experienced the loss of his wife Emma in 1912. Stanzas two and three of the poem focus on time and place. Words like "re-entered," (line 9) "years," (line 10) "past," (line 11) "summer," (line 13) and of course, "Time," (line 16) set a series of life events that these two (the speaker and the ghost) have experienced. The use of the word "haunts" (line 9) here reminds us of this ghost without a voice, and can be refer...

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...ed in his poetry, for example, “The Shadow of the Stone,” he also held tightly to time. Hardy used the past and the present, fusing them together in his poetry to create a vision of the future, albeit sometimes a scary one to him.

Hardy’s volumes of poetry, coming to around a thousand poem at the time of his death, cemented him in American history as one of the most renowned poets in our history. His works are a big part of his life, reflecting his emotion, mindset and deepest beliefs, in which he attempts to come to terms with his actions, his ways of moving on after losing Emma and dealing with his guilt at having married another woman after his wife’s death. Life is something that Hardy takes very seriously throughout his poetry and novels, and at the heart of Life is Time: something we are all limited with, and must make the most of before it is taken from us.