The Voice Thomas Hardy Summary

The tone of this poem is a mixture of emotions. She seems to enjoy being in his company, although the stories he shares break her heart. She expresses her conflicting feeling when she states the following:

The poem then transitions to the post-marriage life of the couple in stanza two. In lines eight through ten, the speaker states that she is too shy around her husband. Not only does she not smile, but also she does not answer her husband when he calls her. This shows that the speaker's life took a great emotional transition, as she is overly shy and feels uncomfortable around him. However, around the middle of the second stanza, the speaker transitions into another stage of

When a reader grasps a theme throughout any piece of literature, he or she never clearly understands the intent without knowing where the theme came from. The theme that is portrayed in the poem is, often times reconnecting with a loved one cannot only bring happiness, but it can also bring sorrow. This theme was emphasized throughout the poem and without knowing the historical context of the poem, one could not necessarily understand where it came from. In the text it

The third stanza goes on to define the pain, only now in more emotional terms, such as "It hurts to thwart the reflexes / of grab, of clutch" (14-15), as well as the pain of continuously having to say good bye, each perhaps as if for the last time: "to love and let / go again and again" (15-16). These lines reinforce the impression that the first stanza's definition of "to love differently" is in fact an anti-freedom or state of emotional anarchy, now using words like "pester" to describe any separation; the poet is compelled "to remember / the lover who is not in the bed" (16), hinting at obsessive tendencies as being possible components of the relationship. We also learn that she believes love requires work, which she cannot do without her partner's assistance, and that this lack of cooperation frustrates her. She believes this neglected effort is the other party's fault by his failure to do his fair share, thereby leaving her own efforts ineffective, the whole of it characterized as an effort "that gutters like a candle in a cave / without air" (19-20). Her demands of this work are quite broad, encompassing being "conscious, conscientious and concrete" in her efforts and optimistically calling this work "constructive" (20-21) before ending the stanza.

The couplet of this sonnet renews the speaker's wish for their love, urging her to "love well" which he must soon leave. But after the third quatrain, the speaker applauds his lover for having courage and adoration to remain faithful to him. The rhyme couplet suggests the unconditional love between the speaker and his

The use of connotative words in this piece is the foundation of this poem and it provides an idea of what this poem is going to be about. In the first stanza he describes the woman as “lovely in her bones,” showing that her beauty is more than skin deep comparing her virtues to a goddess of “only gods should speak.” In the second stanza, the reader can see and feel the love between the two people. The woman taught him how to "Turn, and Counter-turn, and Stand," showing that she was the teacher in the relationship and taught him things he thought he never needed to know. The speaker shows how when they are together, she was “the sickle” and he was “the rake” showing that this woman taught him what love is.

The speaker uses words such as “louring” (line 2), “deep deceit” (line 8), “grievous” (line 11) and “bale” (line 140. All of these words have sorrowful and despairing meanings to them which gives the whole poem an unhappy tone. The third and fourth lines discus that the speaker cannot even look at the beautiful face, which appears to grow more attractive daily, of the woman he loves. Moreover, the couplet tells the readers that the sorrow in the speaker’s eyes is there because of the pain he has felt due to his faulty relationship. The mouse that “lies aloof for fear of more mishap” (line 7) shows the misery felt by the speaker by using the words “aloof” and “mishap”. “Aloof” means to be stand-offish or reserved, which the speaker is because if he gets too close, he will be hurt again. “Mishap” means disaster or unfortune which altogether sounds miserable. Had the speaker used diction that was lighter or less depressed, the reader truly would not understand the misery the speaker has went through. The miserable diction depicts the deep wounds the speaker received from his love, shedding light to how much he really loved her and how bad she really hurt

The poem’s structure as a sonnet allows the speaker’s feelings of distrust and heartache to gradually manifest themselves as the poem’s plot progresses. Each quatrain develops and intensifies the speaker’s misery, giving the reader a deeper insight into his convoluted emotions. In the first quatrain, the speaker advises his former partner to not be surprised when she “see[s] him holding [his] louring head so low” (2). His refusal to look at her not only highlights his unhappiness but also establishes the gloomy tone of the poem. The speaker then uses the second and third quatrains to justify his remoteness; he explains how he feels betrayed by her and reveals how his distrust has led him

Throughout the poem, the speaker used the man’s loneliness to describe the feeling of loss. The title of the poem, “Where is She?”, clearly shows the man’s need for this woman to come back into his life so he can move on with her. The man does not want to have to think about what it would be like if she is still in his life, he would rather have her with him in that moment of loneliness instead of experiencing it alone and be able to live their lives together, not separately. “It got to the point where my imaginings no longer included her.” (Line 6-7) Once the woman disappears this causes the man to come to a conclusion that she may be gone forever, and makes him overthink the question of her return and eventually exclude her from his future through his strong imagination. As the

Roethke's message in the poem "She", is to prove that even though someone you love is gone, they are not really gone; because they stay with you. Roethke explains how "she" is still doing the same things she did as if she was alive. Though, she is dead now, she will live in the garden and the

The theme” grief “is supported by the construction of the stanza, there is no rhyme scheme or meter, and the speaker seems to be careless about her work. She is too distressed and not even tries to arrange a rhythm to her words.

This is the message in this poem because in the beginning of this poem they start to talk about how her husband made her go exile. In the article The Wife’s Lament Robert argues, “I suggest that the story told in The Wife's Lament may be derived from a myth about an abandoned fertility goddess or Terra Mater who weeps (like Freyja) for a departed husband or lover, wanders in search of him, and is finally condemned by his withdrawal (like Gerdr) to a lonely, sterile, death-like existence in a primitive, elemental world.” (Luyster) She had to go exile to some where in the middle of nowhere, and she would sit under a tree all day. While she was under the tree she experienced sadness because she wants her husband to come back. As well as the wife wanting her husband coming back she also wanted him to become exiled as well because of what he had done to her. In the poem they state, “may that young man be sad minded always hard his heart’s thought while he must wear a blithe bearing with care in the breast a crowd of sorrows.” (lines 42-45) The author states this in her poem because she wants her husband to feel the sadness that she has been going through for so long. This is a big message in the poem because of the way she just wanted her husband to go away because of what he did to her. Clearly, the message in this poem is that she had to suffer through sadness since her husband left

In the next four lines of the poem, the speaker talks about how he feels as he imagines his childhood. Even though he is in front of this woman who is singing and playing music, “in spite of” himself, his present state, this “insidious mastery of song betrays” the speaker back “till” he “weeps” to go back to his childhood. The guileful dominance of the song the woman is singing beguiles him to think about his past experience. His heart “weeps to belong to the old Sunday evenings at home.” He really misses the time when he was little, and he used to hear his mother playing piano every Sunday evening. He wants to go back to his childhood and belong to that time again.

     Thomas Hardy often alludes to his heroine as the "soft and silent Tess."  "Soft" certainly insinuates her beauty, which Harrtainly insinuates her beauty, which Hardy stresses as her downfall.  However, it seems that Tess's silence is the all-pervading reason for her tragedies.  "The two men she encounters in her life steal her voice: one with violence, the other with his own language"(Jacobus 47).  Tess struggles with the damage that these men cause until redeeming herself through innocence.

This piece has several “mini” themes given to almost each stanza, emphasizing reminiscing, grief, and isolation. Appearing to be from the point of view of a man (apparently the writer himself) profoundly grieving the departure of a lover who has passed on. He starts by calling for quiet from the ordinary objects of life; the phones, the clocks, the pianos, drums, and creatures close-by. He doesn't simply need calm, but be that as it may; he needs his misfortune well known and projected. Its tone is significantly more dismal than earlier versions, and the themes more all inclusive, despite the fact that it talks about a person. There is almost an entire stanza demonstrating a  bunch of analogies that express what the speaker intended to his lover. The style in the piece readers typically perceive it as a dirge, or a mourning for the dead. It has four stanzas of four lines each with lines in