The Voice

"Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me, saying that now you are not as you were." -S1
1. "Woman much missed" - harsh and dismissive.
2. Repetition shows the action is continuous and important to Hardy.
"When you had changed from the one who was all to me." -S1
1. The ending seems to blame Emma for changing (possibly for becoming ill).
"Can it be you I hear? Let me view you, then." -S2
1. Hardy is questioning whether it is possible for Emma to be communicating with him and wishes for proof.
"Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then, even to the original air-blue gown!" -S2
1. The colour sounds other-worldly.
"Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness, travelling across the wet mead to me here, you being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness, heard no more again far or near?" -S3
1. 'Wistlessness' - neologism.
2. 'Listlessness' and 'Wistlessness' - sibilance makes the poem sound ghostly (indicating the haunting of Emma's memories) but also like the wind.
3. Hardy is questioning whether nature is fooling him.
"Thus I; faltering forward, leaves around me falling, wind oozing thin through the thorn from noward, and the woman calling." -S4
1. Break-down in rhythm shows how Hardy's world is falling apart.
2. Emma's voice will always haunt Hardy - there is no escape from it.
3. Alliteration emphasises Hardy's struggle.
The Voice: A form of communication with Emma after her passing.
Anapaestic metre - 2 unstressed syllables, 1 unstressed.
This poem seems to show Hardy at his lowest point in his berevement and sadness.
December 1912 - a month after Emma's death.

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	Created by Ebie Edwards Cole almost 9 years ago

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