An essay I wrote on Thomas' Hardy's poem Afterwards, during the first year of my degree. Not perfect, but a sample nonetheless.

SAMPLE ESSAY ON A LYRIC POEM

Critics have for a long time seen the lyric form of poetry as being concerned with the poet’s direct responses, thoughts, feelings, or an attempt to come to terms with a complex experience of life. Being so, a lyric can be a lament (elegy) or an impression and different poets from different periods have expressed these impressions diverse ways.

For Thomas Hardy the lyric became a medium through which he could, not only show his ‘unfailing control over the resources of language in verse" but record his own "impressions" about life". These impressions are clearly shown in Afterwards, " a poem, which he wrote when, assuming his own death was close at hand". He has structured his poem to build around the mysterious aspects of life – nature, man’s plight, and Divine Providence, - which he conveys through his manipulation of versification.

Hardy’s handling of versification plays a major role in the function of his lyric, especially as it concerns the versatility of his meter and his sentence length. As is known, the relations between lines of similar and differing lengths always make a point. In Afterwards the metrical ‘disparity’ of such lines produces the elegiac feeling of Hardy’s lyric as he alternates between hexameter and pentameter lines, forming a lament, which continues throughout the poem, forming a direct rapport with the reader. This structure reflects and comments on each theme in Afterwards.

Hardy uses nature not just as a decoration but as a function. He is keenly aware of the passage of time and how it acts to neutralize beauty. The first three stanzas all contain images of nature, but as each stanza develops, all life, color and beauty are extinguished. From the alliteration of ‘glad green leaves like wings’ that the ‘month of May" flaps, the image of youth and vivacity that ‘green’ signifies vanishes. * (The fact that Hardy has chosen May as the last month in spring predetermines the progressive decay of beauty). What replaces it is the ‘dewfall hawk…upon the wind-warped upland thorn", a solitary thorn. This alliteration contrasts greatly from the one in the first stanza, since it is depicting ‘isolation’ which in turn is strengthened by the ‘vowel progression’ which ascends until the word ‘thorn’*

Though as in the first stanza, the natural image is brought to life through use of enjambement (which increases the pace and energy of the image being painted) winter has set in (as signified by the ‘hawk that descends with the dew").

Alone, all this appears not to have much significance. Yet Hardy has employed what could be called ‘structural irony’ in verse to enhance his ‘impression’. As mentioned before, there is a continual lament sustained in the metrical pattern of the poem. This acts as a continual reminder for Hardy that all the beauty, the vivacity, the movement: all of it does not live up to the reality. In effect this contradiction brings out the ‘feeling’ persona, which Hardy has adopted and this reflects his mourning – mourning for the immortality of nature. He wishes desperately to be made like the nature, by always being remembered as noticing the ‘glad green leaves’, the ‘nocturnal blackness" which is ‘warm’ and the dew hawk’s ‘soundless flight’, despite the winter. WE know that all this is immortal because Hardy has chosen to write in present tense. Yet the tragedy, which Hardy acknowledges and laments, is that death is also a fact of life that will always exist, parallel to nature. Death is predicted from the beginning * with the Present ‘latching’ its back gate forever.

But Hardy is not afraid of death* as shown by his seeming indifference to his own death which has released him from his ‘obligation to live’. This is a very important part of the poem’s entire meaning since it is showing Hardy’s true desperation to understand life. He questions the so-called ‘injustice’ of Divine Providence. This is strengthened by the two polysyllabic words * which are not only very arresting due to the sharp contrast they pose to the metre, but show also, through their illogical placement in the rhyme scheme, the illogical nature of life, according to Hardy.

" If when hearing that I have been stilled at last…..heavens that winter sees, will this thought rise on those….for such mysteries?

Clearly, the ‘full-starred heavens’ are mysterious to Hardy. Just as he would that the others remember him as ‘noticing his nature’ (and thus continuing to be a part of it) he would wish that they keep trying to answer that question for him, a feasible analysis considering that the poem ends with a question.

Hardy’s confusion is further highlighted in the final stanza.

" And will…my bell of quittance…heard in the gloom,

And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrolling"

Here, another polysyllabic word is added, further arresting our attention, and in the following sentence, is accompanied by another alliteration, "bells boom" which signifies his death. Not even the breeze has prevented his death. He has died and will never understand why.

Hence we have seen to what extent Afterwards can be considered a lyric. Hardy has developed his most inner thoughts and feelings and in the first person directly communicated them to the reader. In his attempt to come to terms with life and death, he cannot come up with any convictions. His is a desperate plea to find an answer and appropriately used the ‘elegy’ form of lyric to bring out the personal authentic feeling that allows the reader to participate.