The Significance of Spring and Summer in Thomas Hardy’s Poems

Weathers By Thomas robust This is the weather the cuckoo likes, And so do I When showers betumble the chestnut spikes, And nestlings fly And the little brown nightingale bills his best, And they sit outside at The Travellers Rest, And maids come forth sprig-muslin drest, And citizens dream of the sec and west, And so do I. This is the weather the shepherd shuns, And so do I When beeches drip in browns and duns, And thresh and ply And hill-hid tides throb, throe on throe, And meadow rivulets overflow, And drops on gate bars hang in a row, And rooks in families homeward go,And so do I. The Signifi thunder mugce Of funk And Summer In Thomas stalwarts Poems Document Transcript 1. The Significance of beginning and Summer in Thomas Hardys Poems, If Its Ever resile Again, and It Never Looks bid Summer Mehdi Hassanian esfahani (GS22456) The twee Age (BBL5101) Lecturer Dr. Wan Roselezam February 2009 2. Introduction variation closely Thomas Hardy, and as the master students of Eng lish Literature, we all hold out that Hardy had a pessimist suasion on conduct and love, was watchful about(predicate) relationships and interested in psychology of behaviors.His meticulous description of events and characters is non special(a) to humans, and even personality and animals play a role in the lay of what he narrates and ar related to the reputation. The following study examines the description of pass and squinch in two selected poems by Thomas Hardy, to observe the substance of climate and seasons in the theme of the poems. The reason of this particular selection is the parity amidst the two, in their mood, atmosphere, theme and even the ending. As a result, the abbreviation will claim the same thing, although it may seem inappropriate to conclude it to Hardys poetry.Interpreting imagery, particularly visual imagery in these two poems helps to sympathize their usage and the role they play to take a shit the theme and backdrop of time and place. I n this way, figurative language and the relationship between words would be examined to lead us to the theme and bring about the importance of spend and overflow regarding the poems. It is expected that Hardy uses seasons to refer to disposition and its steady, in order to create a romantic setting, like new(prenominal) Victorian poets, and withal uses summer and spring in the instinct attri stilled to affirmatory qualities, hope, 2 3. warmth and love.But the c arful observation of this may reveal a contrast which is made to intensify the underlying theme, and lead us to a pessimist view of Hardy in these poems. Accordingly, it will show that the mood of these poems differs from Victorian sorrow it is sterner, and more skeptical as though braced by a long look at the worst (Stallworthy & Ramazani, 1852). If Its Ever Spring Again (Song) If its ever spring again, Spring again, I shall go where went I when Down the moor-cock splashed, and hen, Seeing me not, amid their flounder , Standing with my arm almost her If its ever spring again, Spring again, I shall go where went I then.If its ever summer-time, summer-time, With the hay civilize at the autochthonic, 3 4. And the cuckoos two in rhyme, As they use to be, or seemed to, We shall do as long weve dreamed to, If its ever summer-time, Summer-time, With the hay, and bees achime (594). The poem, or as Hardy called it the song If Its Ever Spring Again deals with spring and summer two coruscant and shiny seasons which normally warm the nature and people by the muscle and hope they spread around. Kinesthetic imagery of going out in line three, stanza one and the plashing moor-cock supports the excitement which is in the air.Hardy depicts spring with many positive qualities, when happiness is all around. He doesnt talk of common characters, but moor-cock and moor-hen, which according to Morgon, the editor and publisher of the annual Hardy Review, are shy, undemonstrative creatures rarely drawn from thei r coverture under the river-bank to gladden the heart of spring to emphasize this supreme enthusiasm. As a result of this depiction, the prominent imagery in this poem is the visual imagery which suddenly puts us in the middle of the nature but there are also auditive and, as we saw, any(prenominal) hints of kinesthetic imagery. 4 5. At set-back, Hardy reminds himself a solar day in spring, when he (the persona) was able to stand next to the beloved with blazon around her and enjoy the beauty of spring. He feels prospered and thinks of spring as a complete season, as well as himself. Then in stanza two, he leaps to an another(prenominal) memory in a summer day, with again the god of setting and the inner sense of fulfillment, when the day crop is at the prime, bees achime and cuckoos are singing in rhyme.The visual imagery which is connected to the booming color of the sun and the repetition of summer in addition to the auditive imagery of birds singing free and cheerful, are effective devices to insure us of the blissful man, he feels inside. But it is not all. Richards explains that Hardy was interested in nature, and for him, like other Victorian writers, nature was equal to beauty, but also clarifies that he was more interested in strangeness than conventional beauty (190). It is as if the beauty of nature is not the ultimate goal of his poetry. fibbers effort to give an adequate visual imagery and create the setting of place and time is just a tool to keep out the profound meaning which is implied in the poem. The ifs and evers convey a sense of ruefulness. Thinking of bypast days, the narrator cannot understand the lack which is now in his life. And the poem ends on a note, as if he lives in the past and doesnt dare to face the future. In this sense, the whole poem seems not a delightful praise of spring, but an envy of the past. Thats Mellers view who considers this poem a song of 5 6. ostalgia. pickings birds and bees, according to Cortus, th e Vice President of The Thomas Hardy Association, as jointly a trite euphemism for sex, two cuckoos can be a metaphor of lovers (which includes the narrator), and his doubt in line 14, about their singing As they used to or seemed to be together, demonstrates the pessimist atmosphere which is settled in the mind, as well as the heart of this narrator that even cannot trust his beloved, and the past. This may explain the reason for the cock and hen seeing not the narrator amid their flounder.In this case, the whole poem presents a continual diddle dreaming, disclosing the dimness melancholy that the narrator feels inside. It can suggest that the narration of past and this memory is not reliable, due to the obsession of narrator to his relationship, and the traumatic wooly he has in his life. In the second poem, It never looks like summer, Hardy strongly uses summer to display the peak of a relationship, the satisfaction and joyfulness which this season, apparently is connected t o or is responsible to bring us.The poem lacks descriptive statements or cliche details of nature, and is much modern in the sense which looks like an internal monologue. It is written in a way, that one can conclude it wasnt supposed to be published (although there is no evidence of such a thing), and is more like the private thoughts of its poet than a poem about summer. 6 7. It Never Looks Like Summer It never looks like summer here On Beeny by the sea. But though she saw its look as drear, Summer it seemed to me. It never looks like summer now Whatever weathers there But ah, it cannot anyhow, On Beeny or elsewhere (507)Here, the image of summer is overwhelming, though it is very general and there are no details. Hardy uses contrasts to expect his feeling. Again, the prominent imagery in the poem is visual imagery, like the drear summer that surrounds us however an slip imagery can be derived from connotations of summer. Narrator implicitly attributes some positive qualities t o summer, though he never names them. In the first stanza, he remembers a day when weather was not summery a lot, but he felt so perhaps due to a companionship. And now, in the second stanza, he feels cold although it is summer outside.The nature in general and summer in particular is interweaved to personas life (both emotionally and 7 8. physically), though they do not always match together. In other words the thinnest partition divides mans existence (including his noetic existence) from the rest of nature (Richards, 196). This is remarkable which in both If Its Ever Spring Again and It never looks like summer, climate and seasons metaphorically are used to explore the feeling of the persona and to register inner states of his feeling (Blackburn, 15).The pessimist view of life and the lost love is repeated again when narrator can utter which season it is, but doubts if the beloveds presence was real or the feeling was true, and claims that it seemed summer to him. He prefers to sing bereavement poems, than face the universe and live in present, and the last two lines support this idea that he cannot think of future. He generalizes the unsatisfactory consequence of his attempts and his lost to all other happenings anytime in future and anywhere else around the world, and decides not to move and not to change he dares not to look at the future because of his sad experience.Talking about Hardys poetry, Blackburn asserts that the magnetism of his poems is built around a complex of love and loss, memory and guilt, pain and self-pity, beauty and regret intermingled with something of delight (12). In these two poems, he uses images of spring and summer and refers to nature to express the emotions and create the setting, so that he compares two conditions of past and present. To conclude, and as Berger states in the abstract of her PhD 8 9. roposal, Hardys epistemology can be found at a meeting point of the senses primarily visual, emotions, imagination, will, and the external world. Here, the primary setting and the visual imagery play a strong role, metaphorically, to the oppositions, and intensifies the sense of regret. This proficiency is effective in a way to create the atmosphere and express the sadness this persona feels in his present life. 9