Works of Thomas Hardy discussion

I

Lush summer lit the trees to green;
But in the ditch hard by
Lay dying boughs some hand unseen
Had lopped when first with festal mien
They matched their mates on high.
It seemed a melancholy fate
That leaves but brought to birth so late
Should rust there, red and numb,
In quickened fall, while all their race
Still joyed aloft in pride of place
With store of days to come.

II

At autumn-end I fared that way,
And traced those boughs fore-hewn
Whose leaves, awaiting their decay
In slowly browning shades, still lay
Where they had lain in June
And now, no less embrowned and curst
Than if they had fallen with the first,
Nor known a morning more,
Lay there alongside, dun and sere,
Those that at my last wandering here
Had length of days in store.

This poem comes from Hardy’s final collection of poetry: Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres.

The literary critic Harold Bloom considered this collection the greatest single volume of poems published in the 20th century. He wrote that there might have been collections equal to it, but very few.

It is a book published when Hardy was 88 years old and looking back and facing mortality simultaneously. This poem speaks to some of that.

Hardy seems to be personifying the leaves, writing about the leaves that died early in June and the joyful ones that lived many more days until autumn. However, he reminds us in the second stanza that eventual death cannot be avoided in both leaves and people.

I love when poets use nature as a reflection of life. Hardy is particularly good at that. The early bough that fell symbolizing loved ones already gone. Losing someone is heartbreaking. Losing someone young even more so. But the poem reminds us we all end up in the same place, and there is a kind of reunion that is hopeful in that.

I really enjoyed this poem which I had overlooked before. I know this is probably a stretcher, but when I read the phrase 'dun and sere' I couldn't not remember the lines from EA Poe in Ulalume:

The skies they were ashen and sober;
The leaves they were crispéd and sere—
The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
Of my most immemorial year;

I thought Poe had copyrighted the word - at least he is the first poet I think of when I see it written! Maybe Hardy had stashed this poem away subconsciously - certainly he must have been familiar with the poem.

It's absolutely beautiful, John. Thank you I will come back to this again, but am linking it now.

Bridget wrote: "I love when poets use nature as a reflection of life. Hardy is particularly good at that. The early bough that fell symbolizing loved ones already gone. Losing someone is heartbreaking. Losing some..."

I agree with you Bridget, it really feels like it is talking of more than leaves but all of nature where there there is a time and place for everything, including humans.

I've just read this one again too; I love it. Although Thomas Hardy is evidently talking about his own mortality as you say John, I like to read it just literally today. The weather is cold and drizzly, and although we have leaves still scattered around and some trees showing their Autumn hues through the mist, increasingly the branches are bare.

This poem makes me nostalgic, not for old times, but for the recent days of early Autumn.