Victorian Verse - Buy the Book!

Dear students,

You loved it - I listened!   You can now buy a compilation of these blogs on Victorian Verse from Amazon, on Kindle or in paperback.   There is extra material in it as I have updated and expanded it.
Here is the link.

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The Victorian Way of Death

Death, and the fear of death, was an ever-present concern of Victorian writers.  Whilst quoting average life-expectancy figures needs to be treated with caution, (as it is skewed by high rates of infant mortality and the death of women in childbirth), the average life-expectancy of a baby born in a large town early in the century was around 35 years.  By the middle of the century, it had dropped to between 25 – 30 years.   One in five children born during the 1830s – 40s died before their 5^th birthday.  Particularly for the urban poor, poverty and malnutrition, coupled with diseases such as cholera and tuberculosis, in over-crowded, unsanitary conditions, and high levels of violent crime, meant that death was ever-present.  However, if you were lucky enough to survive beyond 40 years, then you might look to live almost as long as people today. 

Funerals were big business in mid-Victorian Britain.  In “Oliver Twist”, Dickens gives us a picture of the fetishising of death that grew up during the period. Oliver obtains a post as a “Mute” – a person who stands silently by the coffin and accompanies it to the churchyard.  He is a part of the elaborate funeral rites that even Victorians of modest means arranged, together with the black-plumed horses and glass coffins.  There was an industry, not just of funeral directors, but of the accompanying “accessories”: black mourning clothes; mourning jewellery, often made of jet from Whitby in Yorkshire; black-edged stationery; garlands and black ribbons for decorating houses and churches.  With the growth in population and move to cities, the old, local churchyards were soon over-flowing. To relieve the pressure for burial space in London, the Victorians opened a ring of cemeteries outside the city – Highgate, Kensal Green, Brompton, Abney Park, West Norwood, Nunhead and Tower Hamlets were all built between 1832 and 1841.  This was the era of the monumental mason – the men who carved the angels, urns, books and cherubs to stand at the head of gravestones, much of which reflected the architecture of the Gothic revival. 

No surprise, then, that Death and the trappings of death infuse the writings of novelists and poets of the period.  This preoccupation stems not just from a melancholy streak in the writers, but from their everyday experience.  Many were directly touched by the deaths of loved ones close to them.  Dickens had a sister who died aged five, his beloved sister-in-law died at the age of seventeen.  Many of Dickens’ characters die young – Little Nell in “The Old Curiosity Shop”, Smyke in “Nicholas Nickleby”, Joe in “Bleak House”.  The poets in the selection were similarly touched by death.  Tennyson’s friend Arthur Hallam died at the age of 22; the Brontes lost their mother and aunt when they were young and their brother in his 20s, they all died before the age of 40; two of EBB’s brothers died when she was in her twenties and she was in ill-health most of her life; Christina Rossetti also suffered an undiagnosed malady and lived in constant fear of early death, although she survived to 64. The Brontes’ novels are full of dying people: Jane Eyre is an orphan, her friend Helen Burns dies at Lowood House; Francis and Catherine Earnshaw die under the age of 20 as does Linton Heathcliff.  The poetry in the selection has Death as a recurring theme – “In Memoriam – AHH”, Maud’s brother is killed violently, “Died.. ” is about a death notice, “My Last Duchess” has a dead woman at its heart, “The Nurse” is visiting a dead or dying man, “Remember” is written from the point of view of a woman contemplating her own death, in “Echo”, there are images of death, “Drummer Hodge” and “A Wife in London” are about men killed in War.  

For the Victorians, the words of the Burial Service, "In the midst of life we are in death", were very real.

A Note on Themes - Liminal Spaces

The question in the A level examinations will be on a “theme” – a central concern or idea which may form the focus of the poem or be an integral part of its meaning.  You will be asked to explore the presentation of this “theme” in one named poem and one other poem of your choice. 

These “themes” could include, but not be limited to:  an emotion – such as love, loss, sorrow, joy; the evocation of “place”, as the subject of the poem or as the setting for the poem; the treatment of abstract concepts such as Time, or Death, or Religion; a “happening” such as War, Childhood, Marriage; the relationships between men and women.  The range is very broad.  Where a poem lends itself to suggesting a particular theme, this has been noted in the explication.  However, these suggestions are not exhaustive; one of the skills to be mastered is to know the texts well enough to be able to link them to themes which may not be immediately obvious. 

In addition to this, there is one “theme” which seems to run through most of the selection, so it has been explored and illustrated below. 

Liminal Spaces

Liminal means “threshold”, the part of a door that you step across to move from one space to another.  Liminality is the space between different states – between night and day (dawn), between day and night (twilight), between life and death, between out and in.

Most of the poems in the selection are similarly concerned with situations where the poet/persona, or the setting, or the subject matter, or more than one of these, are “in between” states or spaces.  

Tennyson

In “In Memoriam – VII”, Tennyson seems unable to move on from the living presence of Hallam on the street he revisits; “XCV” is set between night and day – a night when he seems to move from sorrow to reconciliation; the “Maud” poems are full of liminal images – “I.xi” is set between the “solid ground” and “sweet heavens”; “I.xviii” is set at the point where Maud is both “his” and “not his” – he is on the verge of a consummation of their love, but it is never realised;  Maud does not “Come into the Garden” – we leave the narrator still waiting; II.iv ”O that ‘twere possible” imagines Maud as a ghost, caught between life and death and the narrator as a confused “wasted frame”.

Emily & Charlotte Bronte – The Visionary

The setting is inside, but the focus is on the visitor coming through the winter weather to visit her.  She is in a “limbo”, where the Visionary is anticipated (as in “Come into the garden, Maud”) but not yet realised.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning

“Grief” explores the emotion of the title, with a central image of a statue, lifelike, but dead and unable to “move on”; The subject of “Died...” is both alive and dead at the same time; they are talking about him as if alive, even as his obituary notice travels to them from London.

Robert Browning

The Duke in “My Last Duchess” is, literally, “between” Duchesses; In “Home Thoughts…”, the poet is in Italy but casting his thoughts toward England, and is thus caught between the two; the focus of “Meeting at Night” is in the space between “not with the beloved” and “with the beloved”; In “Love in a Life” the focus is on the emptiness between the beloved being “not found” and “found” and remains unresolved.

Charlotte Bronte

All of the poems in the selection by Charlotte Bronte are set in liminal space.  “The Autumn day” is set at Twilight: “The house was still…” is also set at twilight, and the birds’ songs occupy the space between indoors (the canary) and outdoors (the free bird); “I now had only to retrace” recounts the point at which the poet turns back from her outward walk to head for home; “The Nurse believed…” has a question at its heart – is the man alive or dead?; ”Stanzas” opens with a statement that puts the poet in a space between the world of the imagination and the real world.

Christina Rossetti

“Remember” explores memory – the place where the dead still exist for the living; an “Echo” exists in the space between the first sound and the return (as in the songs between the birds in “The house was still”); “May” captures the very moment when she “passes” from a feeling of hope and joy to one of desolation, as Tennyson does in reverse in XCV; “Somewhere or other” by its title suggests that the poet is caught between anticipation and consummation with only a “hedge between”.

Thomas Hardy

In “At the Inn”, the poet describes the two “As we seemed we were not” – they existed both as lovers, to the innkeeper, but were not; lovers and yet not lovers (like the alive/dead man in “Died…” or in “The Nurse…”); In “I Look into My Glass”, a mirror is a space between the reality and the reflection in the mirror, where Hardy seems to exist as both young, on the inside, and old, on the outside; even “Drummer Hodge” seems to lie between England, where he was born, and Africa, where his body is, as if a bit of England has been transported out there; “A wife in London” captures the time between receiving notice of her husband’s death and a letter written in the dead man’s hand – again, there was a moment where he was both alive AND dead; “The Darkling Thrush” is set at the turn of the year and the turn of the century – New Year’s Eve, 1899.  A liminal space indeed.

Victorian Verse - The Darkling Thrush - Thomas Hardy

Browning's “first, fine, careless rapture" is heard agin here, but with a very different effect.  The title alone suggests a more sombre note – the thrush is “Darkling” as it is singing as it grows dark, the dark being a metaphor for the end of the year, the end of the century (it was written in 1900) and the end of the certainties of the Victorian era.  “Darkling” also is a word much used by poets – most notably Keats (in another poem written to a bird – “Ode to a Nightingale” -  in which he describes his mood as “Darkling”) and, closer to Hardy in time, Matthew Arnold.  In his famous poem, “On Dover Beach” (publ. 1867), which is also in the anthology, Arnold writes:

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

Arnold’s answer to this bleak vision of mankind is to be “true to one another”.

An atheist from an early age, Hardy was nevertheless spiritual in his search for meaning in life, his desire to understand the forces working for good and evil among mankind, and his belief in the power of redemption through love and fellow feeling.  “The Darkling Thrush” seems also to find Hardy at his lowest ebb, writing at the end of the 19^th century, whilst the Boer War dragged on, and contemplating a doubtful future.  Hardy had a deep, spiritual connection to the English landscape; in his novels, like “Return of the Native” or “Tess”, the Wessex countryside is as important as the characters.  For Hardy to personify the landscape as a dead corpse is testimony to the depth of Hardy’s despair.

The poem is in alternating iambic tetrameter and iambic trimetre lines, or ballad metre, with the expected regular ababcdcd rhyme scheme.   This may seem an odd choice for a poem which is non-narrative and lyrical.  However, it is the contrast between the potentially jaunty rhythm and rhyme and the darkness of the subject matter, as well as the manipulation of the syntax to emphasise particular words, that make the poem so effective.

I leant upon a coppice gate 

                When Frost was spectre-grey, 

And Winter's dregs made desolate 

                The weakening eye of day. 

The poet is out at twilight in winter and stops on his walk to rest, leaning on a gate which leads to a small wood (“coppice”).  The first stanza depicts the frozen, empty landscape which is quickly imbued with a feeling of dread.  The “Frost”, personified by the capitalisation to suggest its pervasive power, as is “Winter”, is like a ghost (“spectre-grey”); “dregs” means what is left over and has no goodness; the sun is pale and warmth less (“weakening eye”) and also “desolate”, like a blind sightless thing. 

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky 

                Like strings of broken lyres, 

And all mankind that haunted nigh 

                Had sought their household fires. 

Not only is this landscape cheerless, but the imagery in the next four lines suggests that the world itself is “out of tune”.  “tangled bine stems” are the curling tendrils of a plant – possibly woodbine or honeysuckle, a climbing plant which entangles itself in low bushes and trees – which can be seen against the leafless branches.  The lyre is a stringed instrument from classical Greece (from which the word “lyric” comes) which lifts this very English scene into the realm of the time less and universal.  The word “scored”, here meaning to make deep cuts, another bleak image, may also be a punning reference to music.  This universality is reinforced by the use of “mankind”, rather than “men”.  The use of “haunted” rather than “lived” again suggests that, as Hamlet says, “the time is out of joint”, at odds with itself.

The land's sharp features seemed to be 

                The Century's corpse outleant, 

His crypt the cloudy canopy, 

                The wind his death-lament. 

The ancient pulse of germ and birth 

                Was shrunken hard and dry, 

And every spirit upon earth 

                Seemed fervourless as I. 

The imagery of death and decay continues, transforming the English landscape into the stuff of nightmares.  He sees the land before him as the embodiment of the 19^th century, which has just “died”.  “Outleant” appears to be a neologism by Hardy, presumably meaning “lent out”, as if the dying century has inhabited the landscape and died there, its “features” thin and wasted to show the “sharp” bones beneath.  The tomb of the Century is the leaden grey, cloud-covered sky and the shrieking of the winter wind the wailing of mourners.  The alliterated “crypt/cloudy/canopy” suggests the hard edges of a stone tomb.  The life-force of the land - “germ” means “seed” – is shrivelled up.  Mankind wanders this barren landscape as a homeless spirit, aimless and energy-less – as Hardy does.  Overall, it is vision of decay and hopelessness, of which he is the epicentre.

At once a voice arose among 

                The bleak twigs overhead 

In a full-hearted evensong 

                Of joy illimited; 

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small, 

                In blast-beruffled plume, 

Had chosen thus to fling his soul 

                Upon the growing gloom. 

Suddenly, the silence is broken by a “voice”.  Whose is not yet known, as if Hardy is searching for the source in the “bleak twigs overhead”.  The “l” sound in “bleak” is the first in a series of alliterated “l” sounds that continue throughout the stanza. The transformation that this “voice” brings, however, is immediately apparent – it is “full-hearted”, in contrast to the lifeless corpses wandering around, and it sings an “evensong”, here meaning a “song sung in the evening”, but also the religious service held daily in church, suggestive of people coming together.  The trilling sound of “illimited”, another word coined by Hardy, suggests the bird’s song and the alliterated “l” continues over the next five lines – “illimited/frail/small/blast/beruffled/plume/fling/soul/gloom” in an outpouring of song.  The thrush is “aged” – like the century has aged - until it seems to be barely hanging on to life; it is being battered by the wind.  There is a poignant contrast between the force of the wind in “blast” and the softness and fragility of “beruffled plume”.  None of this, however, can stop him singing his heart out. 

So little cause for carolings 

                Of such ecstatic sound 

Was written on terrestrial things 

                Afar or nigh around, 

That I could think there trembled through 

                His happy good-night air 

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew 

                And I was unaware. 

Hardy reflects on why this bird should choose to sing (“carolings” again suggests harmony between people, as they come together to sing) with such joyous abandon in a landscape which gives no encouragement to it.  The song ”trembles”, a reference to the trilling sound, but also to the contrast between the inhospitability of the bird’s surroundings and the fragility of his singing, as if the “darkling” forces might prevail.  There is also something very simple, innocent and child-like about the phrase “happy good-night air” as well as another typical Hardy punning association – between “good-night” as in “farewell” and “good night” as in pleasant.  The only conclusion Hardy can come to is that the bird knows a reason for being joyous in the face of all this despair – a Hope for the future – which is hidden from Hardy. 

Whether this poem ends on a note of optimism or pessimism is moot.  Is the thrush a “wise thrush”, as in Browning’s poem, knowing better than us, being in tune with the world and his place in it, and hence, full of “rapture”?  Or is he merely a bird that knows nothing of the troubles that beset mankind and is merely a “waking dream” as Keats wonders about his Nightingale?  Does Hardy go away from the scene uplifted by the thrush’s song – or does he remain ignorant of the reason for it?  There may be a clue in the use of “communion” and “carolling” in the evocation of communal singing – perhaps Matthew Arnold’s answer, “be true to one another”, has resonance for Hardy as well. 

Victorian Verse - A Wife in London - Thomas Hardy

This is another poem about the Boer War. A wife receives two communications in quick succession.  In a version found on-line, the two parts have an additional title – “The Tragedy” and “The Irony”, which point up the message of the whole.

London is not a place usually associated with Hardy, who was born and spent much of his life in Dorset.  However, he trained as an architect in London in his twenties and visited frequently.  There is an account of the time he spent in London here.  The evocation of London in this poem is at least as notable as that of the Wife – if not more so. 

The poem has a variety of metric patterns, a mixture of three, four and two beat lines, but the pattern of each stanza is the same.  Whilst the apparent irregularity gives it an uneasy feeling, as it does not settle into a regular beat, the overall regularity of the structure suggests a kind of inevitability.

I--The Tragedy

She sits in the tawny vapour 
                That the City lanes have uprolled, 
                Behind whose webby fold on fold 
Like a waning taper 
                The street-lamp glimmers cold. 

The stanza heading prepares us for the emotional content of the verse, but the focus of this first stanza is very much on the Wife’s surroundings – a foggy evening in London.  This could also be seen as pathetic fallacy – the darkness and gloom mirroring the bad news that is about to be delivered.  However, London was often smothered in fog at this time, from coal-fired homes and factories.  The fog was a dirty yellow colour (“tawny”) as it contained particulates of soot, coal-dust and other pollutants.  It was known as a “pea-souper” for its thickness and colour.  The fog was so thick that it acted almost like a solid – a feature that other poets have exploited, as in TS Eliot’s “The Love-Song of J Alfred Prufrock” (1920) which contains the lines:

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, 

The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes, 

Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, 

Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, 

Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, 

Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, 

And seeing that it was a soft October night, 

Curled once about the house, and fell asleep. 

Fog like this persisted right through until the 1950s, when the first Clean Air Act was introduced, forbidding the burning of coal in homes. 

The fog has rolled up from the City (of London), probably up hill to the suburbs (the City is in the Thames river-valley, which would have added to the density of the fog).  It is described as “webby” suggesting it is clinging and sticky like a spiders’web.  The streetlamps, which would have been gaslights, are seen as dimly as if they were candles.  “Cold” adds to the dreariness of the evening, as the faint light brings no comfort.

A messenger's knock cracks smartly, 
                Flashed news is in her hand 
                Of meaning it dazes to understand 
Though shaped so shortly: 
                He--has fallen--in the far South Land . . . 

The Wife receives a telegram – a short message sent, most probably by 1899 in London, electronically.  The use of “flashed” harks back to an earlier time when messages were sent by means of Morse code and flashing lights – the pattern of “On” and “Off” spelling out letters.  Telegrams were received by a Telegraph Office and delivered by hand.  They came to be well-known as bearers of bad news, as their use suggested that the message was too urgent to be delivered by the normal postal system – which at this time, was significantly faster than modern day post.  There is some irony in the contrast between the efficiency (“cracks smartly”) and speed (“flashed”), with which the message is delivered, emphasised by the consonance (“knock/cracks”) and assonance (“cracks/flashed/hand”), and the suggestion that it simply appears in her hand, (“is in”) without intermediary, and the Wife’s dazed incomprehension of a message she would rather have not received at all, let alone with such haste. The abruptness of the message is conveyed in the alliterated and clipped "shaped so shortly"  whilst the hyphenation, in contrast, draws out the final line, reproducing her puzzlement as she tries to grasp the meaning of the text – her husband has died in the Boer War in Africa.

II--The Irony 

'Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker, 
                The postman nears and goes: 
                A letter is brought whose lines disclose 
By the firelight flicker 
                His hand, whom the worm now knows: 

The irony of the title is created by the different speeds of communication between the Telegram and the post.  The next day she receives a letter through the post from her husband, written and sent while he was still alive, but overtaken by the telegram announcing his death.  This time the news is delivered leisurely – the fog is thicker, slowing movement, the postman “nears and goes”, almost unremarked, the rhythm suggesting a leisurely “to-ing and fro-ing”.  The letter is brought to her by someone else, probably a maid (“is brought”) as she sits by the fireside.  She reads it by firelight, which is not strong and steady, but “flickering” suggesting the fragility of life.  Hardy’s use of metonomy – “His hand” – is creepy here.  “His Hand” means “his handwriting”, but as it is immediately followed by the idea of “worm(s)” knowing “his hand” as well as she does, the word “hand” becomes synonymous with his body, buried in the ground.  I wonder, also, if anyone else read “worm” as “warm”, following on the idea from the fire?  If so, it is probably a deliberate trick by Hardy. 

Fresh--firm--penned in highest feather - 
                Page-full of his hoped return, 
                And of home-planned jaunts by brake and burn 
In the summer weather, 
                And of new love that they would learn. 

The final stanza develops the idea of her reading his handwriting.  It is assured, written confidently (“highest feather”).  There is a ghost of a pun here – “penned” means “written in “ and pens were made from the quills, or feathers, of geese and swans until the mid-19^th century.  The letter has pages describing how he hopes for his return home and the trips he has planned for them into the countryside in the summer – “brake” means a clearing in a wood and “burn” is a small stream.  The last line is ambiguous and perhaps explains the naming of this as a “Tragedy”.  What is this “new love”?  Does it mean “renewed”, as in finding the love between them again, after absence, or does it suggest a “new love” for a baby, either already conceived, or, hopefully, to be so, which they will learn to love?  

Victorian Verse - Drummer Hodge - Thomas Hardy

The Battle of Isandlwana (1879) -Charles Fripp  1885

Photograph of Drummer Boy writing home - Boer War

English Drummer Boy - George W Joy (1892)

The poem is set at the time of the Second Boer War (1899- 1902), the culmination of a long-running conflict between Britain, supported by forces from its Empire, and the Boers – descendants of the original Dutch settlers of southern Africa.  British settlement had been advancing for some years into Boer controlled areas, primarily to develop, initially, diamond mining, and then gold.  The incoming settlers or uitlanders, who were by now in a majority, demanded voting rights and representation, threatening the supremacy of the original Boers.  A failure to negotiate led to the declaration of war in October, 1899.

 

The Boer War is notorious for introducing two, tactical policies to modern warfare: scorched earth, whereby farms and fields were burned to prevent local support for the Boers, and the rounding up and internment of civilians, both black and white, in concentration camps.  The latter caused thousands of deaths from starvation and disease.  The war was originally supported by the British public, but as it dragged on, there was criticism both popularly and in Parliament, of the tactics used by the Army, under Lord Kitchener, and the effect on the civilian population.  The outcome of the war was the annexation of the disputed territories into the United Republic of South Africa in 1910, under British rule.

Hardy wrote a number of poems about war, as well as a novel, “The Trumpet Major” which had as its background the threatened invasion of England by the French during the Napoleonic Wars, a war which Hardy returned to in his epic poem “The Dynasts”.  As a child, he was surrounded by people who could remember those wars, and he lived long enough to see the start of the Great War in 1914, a century later, prompting him to write: ‘the world, having like a spider climbed to a certain height, seems slipping back to what it was long ago’.  His attitude was of general dismay at the loss of life, the incompetence of the Generals and the general futility.  There is an excellent website which puts Hardy’s poetry in the context of the War here.  Hardy was much admired by the poets of the Great War, particularly Sassoon, who recognised that he shared similar attitudes to War as they did.  There is a clear reference to “Drummer Hodge”, although the perspective and sentiment is very different, in one of the most famous poems of the early stages of the Great War, Rupert Brooke’s sonnet “The Soldier”, which contains the lines:

If I should die, think only this of me:
That there's some corner of a foreign field

That is forever England.

A drummer boy was a (usually) non-combatant member of the regiment who played a drum as it advanced into battle, to help soldiers keep time marching and to signal manoeuvres.  He was not always a “boy” – i.e. younger than eighteen, when he could enlist as a soldier.  Some drummer boys were adults.  However, the practice of recruiting young boys into the army as drummers did not cease until after the Great War.  Drummer boys were popular subjects of Victorian paintings, which were often sentimental.  It is possible that in choosing the subject matter, Hardy was remembering an atrocity carried out during the Battle of Isandlwana during the Anglo-Zulu war of 1879 when the British attempted to colonise lands belonging to Zulu tribes in what is modern South Africa.  On returning to camp, part of the regiment discovered that it had been overrun by the Zulus in their absence and everyone killed.  The drummer boys were reportedly hung on hooks and disembowelled.  Research suggests that the youngest was 16.

The vast majority of soldiers killed in combat overseas were buried near to where they fell, and this continued until after the Great War and into the Second World War.  Due to sheer numbers and logistics, there was no way of transporting the bodies back home before they decomposed, particularly during a war.  The images of soldiers returning for burial in coffins draped in flags is a modern one, made possible numbers, changing patterns of warfare and air transport. 

The metre of the poem is regular alternating lines of iambic tetrametre and iambic trimetre, like a drumbeat, the insistent rhythm supported by the regular ababab rhyme scheme.  Thus the pathos of the subject matter is offset by this relentless structure, bringing a sense of irony and heightening the emotion. 

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined -- just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around:
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.

The poem opens in media res – an action has happened before the poem starts, but the focus is on the aftermath.  The callousness of the war in its denial of individual humanity and identity is initially conveyed by the opening “They”.  Who are “They?”  Presumably, those who were his comrades up until the moment of his death.  The casual verb “throw”, used to describe the action of putting the body in the ground, and the lack of specifics as to where they throw him “in” serve to emphasise that “Drummer Hodge” is but one of many.  Even the surname, “Hodge”, which has been interpreted as Hardy giving the dead man the dignity of an identity, was an English equivalent of “John Doe” – the name given in the US to unknown dead males. 

The positioning of the word “rest” at the end of the line suggests an ironic pun – “rest” in the sense of “taking a break” and “rest” as in being “laid to rest”.  The enjambment makes the meaning clear, with its emphasis on “Uncoffined”, an archaic usage, perhaps suggesting that this war is like those that have gone before in its wastage of young lives.  The hyphenated “_just as found;” adds to the sense that this death has gone all but unnoticed – he is “found” dead; his actual dying is unseen and he dies alone.  He is quickly buried without ceremony and they move on.

There is no memorial to him except that provided by the natural landscape, of which he is becoming a part.  The use of the Afrikaans words “kopje” (hill) and “veldt” (open plains) show that he is buried in unfamiliar ground, many miles from his home, whilst unfamiliar stars wheel (“west” means move to the west) around him. 

Young Hodge the drummer never knew --
Fresh from his Wessex home --
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.

The young village boy, who left his village in Dorset for the first, and last time, to join the army, knew nothing about the country in which he has come to rest.  The “Karoo” is a semi-desert region in South Africa; the “Bush” the name given by the British colonists to wild, un-farmed country overseas; “loam” means earth.  All these features are a contrast with the English countryside that Hardy knew and loved.  His “Wessex”, in which his novels are set and where he lived, is an area roughly equated to Dorset and parts of Hampshire and Devon.  It is a landscape of rolling hills, heath, farmland and woods, a stark contrast to the hot, open savannah of parts of South Africa.  Hodge, an uneducated village boy, did not know that in the southern hemisphere the constellations are different.  He would have seen that they were “strange”, but not understood why.  “Gloam”, referring to twilight, here seems to be used as synonymous with gloom, meaning dark.

Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge for ever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow to some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellations reign
His stars eternally.

In spite of the indifference of the stars and the landscape to the body lying beneath them, he is becoming one with them as part of the natural world.  His “Northern”, as in Northern hemisphere, body will provide the nutrients for a tree to grow.  Hardy juxtaposes earth and the heavens, with the boy providing his “breast and brain”, gifts from the earth, to the tree which grows upwards to the heavenly bodies that “reign” above him.  There is also an extraordinary switch in perspective in the last two lines.  Up until now, the perspective has been that of Hodge; he has been looking at the stars and wondering why they are “strange”, it is his body that gives life to the tree.  But the compound adjective “strange-eyed” is from the stars perspective – they are looking down on him as he gazes back at them.  This reciprocation unites the two, bringing a kind of reconciliation and peace to his final resting place. 

Victorian Verse - I Look Into My Glass - Thomas Hardy

This poem was probably written in 1897 and published in 1898 when Hardy was 57 years old.  He laments his physical deterioration as he ages.  He contrasts his aging, weak body with his still-youthful feelings, which remain powerful.  It is perhaps tempting to believe that this, too, is a poem about his feelings for Florence Henniker, some twenty years his junior.  It was another published in “Wessex Poems” in 1898 – five years after his meeting with her in Dublin.

The idea of youthful feelings being frustrated by being contained within an aging “frame” was explored by Tennyson in one of his most beautiful, and heart-breaking, poems, “Tithonus”(1859), which has its origins in classical mythology.  In the mythology, Eos, the goddess of dawn, steals Tithonus (and his brother, Ganymede) from Troy to be her consorts.  Ganymede is later stolen from her by Zeus, to be his cup-bearer, and as a consolation, Eos asks Zeus to make the beautiful Tithonus immortal.  Unfortunately, he gives him eternal life – but not eternal youth.  Tithonus wastes away, growing physically older and older, while watching Eos remain young and beautiful.  In the poem, Tennyson adds to the poignancy by making the “gift” come from Eos rather than Zeus. 

The poem is written in a regular metric pattern of four line stanzas, the first two and the last lines being in iambic trimetre and the third in iambic tetrametre.  The first two trimetres, with the short phrases, give it the tone, initially, of a casual observation, as if he is just thinking out loud as ideas occur to him; the third, longer line develops the idea with increased emotion; the fourth sums up the theme of the stanza.  Hardy uses the present tense, as if these thoughts have only occurred, or matter, to him now, which supports the idea that they have been prompted by a recent encounter with a younger woman. 

I look into my glass,
And view my wasting skin,
And say, "Would God it came to pass
My heart had shrunk as thin!"

The poet looks at his reflection in the mirror and laments what age has done to his skin – one can imagine he is looking at wrinkles, a sagging jaw-line and the loss of youthful tone.  He focuses on himself with the repeated “my”.  He wishes, in an outburst of emotion conveyed in the extended metric line, that his heart – his capacity to feel love – had similarly begun to waste away.  He gives the reason in the next stanza.

For then, I, undistrest
By hearts grown cold to me,
Could lonely wait my endless rest
With equanimity.

If his heart was unable to feel strongly any more, then he would not be bothered by people who no longer, or never did, love him (“grown cold”).  He could wait for death, lonely, but at least at peace (“with equanimity”).

But Time, to make me grieve,
Part steals, lets part abide;
And shakes this fragile frame at eve
With throbbings of noontide. 

Unfortunately, Time, (personified) chooses to make him miserable by removing only one half of the whole of him as he ages.  The two sides are shown in the antithesis of the second line (“part steals/part abide”).  Late in his life (“at eve”) his body is disturbed by the same kind of feelings (“throbbings”) he had as a young man in his prime (“noontide”).  Peace in old age is denied him.

The conundrum remains unresolved, as in "At the Inn" and others of Hardy's poems.  He shows an acute awareness of the human condition, but little sense that he (or we) have any answers.  His appeal to "God" is merely a turn of phrase - Hardy was not great believer in God's providence.

Victorian Verse - At an Inn - Thomas Hardy

It is a significant jump from Rossetti to Hardy, as the number of skipped pages in the anthology suggests.  On the way, the selection has missed significant poets such as Matthew Arnold and GM Hopkins, and does not look forward to the end of the century by covering early Yeats, Kipling or AE Housman.  One can only assume that the selection is based on the need to find links between the poets for the purpose of exam questions!   To give you a more comprehensive view of the complete sweep of the poetry of the Victorians, do read "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold, which contemplates a world without Faith, and "The Windhover" by Gerard Manley Hopkins, one of the greatest poems ever written.  Leaving GMH out of this selection is, frankly, unforgivable.  But he writes about Christ and God - and in this secular, yet multicultural, world perhaps they thought he was too scary to tackle!  He is also hard to compare with other poets, as he is simply unique. 

Hardy is probably better known for his novels than for his poetry. His novels - particularly "Tess of the D'Ubervilles" (1891) and "Jude the Obscure"(1895) - are acknowledged as some of the best novels of the era, challenging Victorian bourgeois values, exploring the plight of women, Victorian sexual hypocrisy, and the effects of the Industrial Revolution on the rural poor. However, they were considered shocking for their sensationalism - they feature rape, murder and suicide - and received much hostile criticism. In response, he returned to writing poetry.  I would describe his poetry as "highly variable".   There is a useful introduction to Hardy produced by AQA here.

It is strongly suggested that the poem "At an Inn" is based on the relationship between Florence Henniker and Hardy and a visit to the George Hotel in Winchester.  Hardy first met Florence in 1893, when his marriage was in trouble, and he appears to have fallen in love with her.  However, there is no suggestion that they had a sexual relationship; she was married to an army officer and rejected Hardy's advances.  They corresponded for 30 years, until her death in 1923, and even wrote a short story together. He described her in his letters as "One rare, fair woman". The visit that is the subject of the poem took place later in the year of their first meeting - 1893 - although it was not published until 1898 in an anthology called "Wessex Poems".  The date of writing is not known.

The poem tells of a misunderstanding, Hardy's thoughts of what might have been and, to him, lost opportunities. It is infused with regret.  It is written in regular, alternating iambic trimetre and iambic dimetre lines with a regular rhyming pattern of ababcdcd.  This gives it a conversational feel – as if he is recounting a story known to them both and that it is light-hearted and reminiscent.  However, the manipulation of the accented beats on particular words reveals the deep feelings running below the surface.

When we as strangers sought
Their catering care,
Veiled smiles bespoke their thought
Of what we were.
They warmed as they opined
Us more than friends--
That we had all resigned
For love's dear ends.

There is an ambiguity in the use of the word "strangers".  Are they "strangers" to the Inn - or to each other?  I incline to the former, as there is already an "us and them" juxtaposition in the lines which persists throughout the stanza - "we as strangers/Their catering care".  Also, if they were indeed strangers to each other - why does he care so much that there is no love between them?  Why should there be?  Autobiographically, also, it does not fit.  Hardy had become well acquainted with Florence Henniker in Dublin earlier in the year, when he had visited with his wife. The misunderstanding at the Inn is well-documented - they were even shown into the same bedroom.  It seems unlikely that owners or servants of an Inn would make such a mistake if the two had appeared to be "strangers" rather than "friends".

There is something rather unfortunate about the phrase “catering care”.  Is it ironic?  The use of the alliteration for such a mundane phrase suggests it might be – contrasting the knowing smiles and looks of the servants with the emotional intensity he is feeling.  It could, of course, just be bad.  However, the contrast between the two “strangers” and idle gossipers is present in the way the focus of the stanza switches between the two groups: “we as strangers/Their…care”; “Veiled smiles/what we were”; “they opined/Us more than friends”.  What the servants are thinking is made explicit in the last two lines – they think that the two are lovers, not married to one another, who have come to the hotel for an assignation, throwing caution to the winds ("all resigned").  This would have been quite scandalous even in late Victorian England. 

And that swift sympathy
With living love
Which quicks the world--maybe
The spheres above,
Made them our ministers,
Moved them to say,
"Ah, God, that bliss like theirs
Would flush our day!"

If there is an initial resentment or annoyance at the prurience of the servants, then Hardy becomes more charitable towards them in the next stanza.  He recognises in them a response (“swift sympathy”) to the possibility that the two visitors are lovers and transforms them into guardian angels (“ministers”) who bless their supposed love and hope for similar fortune.  “Ministers” is also a pun – servants “(ad)minister” to their guests.  So maybe his approach is wryly humorous or sarcastic?

And we were left alone
As Love's own pair;
Yet never the love-light shone
Between us there!
But that which chilled the breath
Of afternoon,
And palsied unto death
The pane-fly's tune.

In the third stanza, the true relationship between the two is revealed.  They’ve been left alone by the servants, to give the “Lovers” some privacy, but Hardy tells us quite forcibly, with the use of the exclamation mark, that they were not Lovers – far from it.  There is a coldness between them that affects the very air they breathe, even killing a poor fly buzzing at the window.  Frosty indeed.  “love-light”, meaning the light of love in someone’s eyes, was a relatively new word at this time – the first recorded use of it is in 1823. 

The kiss their zeal foretold,
And now deemed come,
Came not: within his hold
Love lingered numb.
Why cast he on our port
A bloom not ours?
Why shaped us for his sport
In after-hours?

The servants have been mistaken about the relationship between the two – there is no kissing.  “Love”, now personified, fails to deliver on the promise – he is “numb”, staying at home.  The rhetorical questions from Hardy show his frustration – they have opportunity, but the feeling is missing.  Love has made them look the part, but as if toying with them (“sport”); he does not deliver.  “Port” here means the place where they are staying – another odd word to sustain the rhyme – as is “after hours”, perhaps.

As we seemed we were not
That day afar,
And now we seem not what
We aching are.
O severing sea and land,
O laws of men,
Ere death, once let us stand
As we stood then! 

The final stanza shifts our perspective away from the apparent present or recent past, of the visit to the Inn, as we learn that he is looking back on an incident that happened some years before – “that day afar”.  Love has played a cruel trick on them.  When they were together at the Inn, they were not what they seemed – now, they appear not to be in love, but in fact, are.  But they are separated by distance and by “laws of men” – a reference to them both being married.  Hardy’s final plea is that, before they die, they stand together once more, as they did at the Inn, but this time in Love in both appearance and reality.

Victorian Verse - Somewhere or Other - Christina Rossetti

This poem is once again full of yearning for a soul mate.  In spite of disappointment, the poet continues to hope that “somewhere” out there is someone, or something, that she can join with and find her love reciprocated.  Whether this is a secular or spiritual joining is again left ambiguous, but the imagery is of this world and rooted in familiar sights and sounds.

Although there is an underlying iambic tetrametre rhythm, most clearly in the second line of each stanza, there is considerable variation to allow for a free expressions of her emotions.  The rhyme scheme is regular – ababcdcdefef – which suggest a Shakespearean sonnet.  However, there is no finishing couplet, and no volta.  Instead, the repeated opening of the second and third quatrains shows little development in the argument through the poem – which is indeed a theme, as the poet has so far searched in vain and is close to despair. 

Somewhere or other there must surely be

The face not seen, the voice not heard,

The heart that not yet—never yet—ah me!

Made answer to my word. 

The poet begins in disbelief; surely there is someone, or something, out there to be found and which will respond to her need for a soul mate?  The extent of her longing is clearly expressed in the third line, where her longing breaks through, the rhythm becomes uneven and the line lengthens.  The images of the hidden face, the silent voice and hearts beating together is familiar from “Remember Me” or “Echo”.

Somewhere or other, may be near or far;

Past land and sea, clean out of sight;

Beyond the wandering moon, beyond the star

That tracks her night by night.

Her continuing search is conveyed through the repetition.  In this stanza she searches “far”; however far away it might be, the looked for one is out there.  She identifies herself with the “star” that follows the moon, but never catches it.  This is the planet Venus, named after the goddess of love, which often appears in close proximity to the moon. The moon "wanders" because it travels around the earth.

Somewhere or other, may be far or near;

With just a wall, a hedge, between;

With just the last leaves of the dying year

Fallen on a turf grown green.

The first line of the second quatrain is repeated, but with a change of word order, as the search now comes “near”; maybe the one looked for is close at hand, separated from the seeker by only a garden hedge or wall, or even by as little as a flurry of leaves falling from the trees in late autumn.  The final image seems to be one of the endless cycle of the seasons, as autumn gives way to winter and then to spring, in much the same way as her search goes on for ever, the looked-for companion being both tantalisingly close and yet so far.  

Victorian Verse - A Birthday - Christina Rossetti

Another famous poem by Rossetti, often anthologised, particularly in children’s collections of poetry on account of its song-like repetition and rhythm and its vivid imagery.  This poem sustains its buoyant, joyous tone throughout and seems a world away from the poetry of loss and longing that characterises the others in the selection.  This seems to be the poetry of fulfilled and reciprocated love.  The title is, to an extent, a misleading pun.  The poem is not about “A Birthday”, but about a “Birth Day” – the day on which the poet is “born” into an enhanced reality because her lover comes to her.  

The poem is deceptively simple.  In fact, the imagery is rich and layered, with multiple references.  The imagery in the first stanza is drawn from nature; in the second, the imagery reflects royal pageantry and harks back to the Medievalism which was a feature of the Pre-Raphaelite painters, of whom Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Christina’s brother, was a member.  The imagery is also reminiscent of the Song of Solomon, a poem found in the Hebrew bible and the Old Testament, as is the use of repetition.  The Song is, primarily, an erotic love song between two lovers using imagery drawn from the landscape of, notably, Lebanon, as well as the contents of royal palaces.  However, it is interpreted by Hebrew scholars as a metaphor for the love of God for Israel and by Christians as Christ’s (the Bridegroom’s) love for the Christian church (the Bride).  This fusion of the sacred and the profane (secular) is a feature of much of Rossetti’s poetry.  She was brought up as a Catholic by her Italian parents and much of her poetry is overtly religious in theme.  An article on her religious poetry, which comments on “A Birthday”, can be found here.  Rossetti’s poem also contains classical illusions.

The poem is made up of two octets in regular iambic tetrameter, which give it a lilting, lyrical quality, reflective of her feeling of ecstasy.  The rhyme scheme is also regular – abcb dcec – which gives it a tight, controlled construction, evocative of the feeling of assurance and confidence contained in the final lines of each stanza. The layout is deliberate.  In stanza one,  "My heart" is made to stand out as the focus of the stanza and is then qualified each time by by the following line, which further describes the status of her "heart" and adds to the repetition, as if this is a prayer or incantation. In stanza two, her commands to her devotees front the line, with each succeeding line again building the image.

My heart is like a singing bird 

                Whose nest is in a water'd shoot; 

My heart is like an apple-tree 

                Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit; 

My heart is like a rainbow shell 

                That paddles in a halcyon sea; 

My heart is gladder than all these 

                Because my love is come to me. 

The poet chooses three images from nature to explore her feelings of love, whether love for another or for Christ.  “Water” is an image of life; the bird sings because it is bringing forth new life from its nest, which in turn is given life by the water.  This idea of new growth gives way to the idea of fulfilment in the apples of autumn, so plentiful that they weigh down the boughs of the apple trees.  The final image is of peace, as she compares her feelings to the rainbow-hued shell of a creature that lives in the sea – possibly an abalone shell, which is multi-coloured.  The word “paddles” is childlike and innocent, as if the creature is safe and secure as it moves around its watery habitat.  Rainbows are a symbol of peace – God’s promise after the Flood that he would never punish Man again in such a way – and “halcyon” is the Classical name for the Kingfisher, a bright blue and orange river bird.  The Greeks believed the kingfisher created a floating nest on the sea in which to lay its eggs.  This signalled calm weather – as in “halcyon days” for a period of calm.

The poet’s heart is “gladder” than any of these contented images, however, because of the arrival of her beloved.

Raise me a dais of silk and down; 

                Hang it with vair and purple dyes; 

Carve it in doves and pomegranates, 

                And peacocks with a hundred eyes; 

Work it in gold and silver grapes, 

                In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;

Because the birthday of my life

                Is come, my love is come to me.

On the arrival of the beloved, the imagery becomes rich and opulent, suggesting excess.  The simple repetition of “My heart” gives way to imperatives – “Raise”, “Carve”, “Work” – as she demands that people celebrate and bear tribute to the two of them, as if to royalty, in surroundings befitting this momentous occasion – the start of her real life.  The idea of this new life being also a marriage is contained in the word “dais” on which she wishes to be raised.  It was the custom to place the bride and groom on a raised platform in front of their guests, a custom which remains today when the bridal party sits at the “top table”. 

The “dais” is to be covered with the most expensive fabrics; purple was a colour reserved for royalty and “vair” was a fur cloak made up of the skins of, probably, squirrels, sewn together to show an alternating pattern of the front and back of the animal, so as to give a variegated pattern.  It is a word from Heraldry, again suggesting the medieval.  This “dais” is made of wood and she demands that it be decorated with designs of “doves” – symbols of peace, as this was the bird that brought back the olive branch to Noah after the Flood – and “pomegranates” – symbols of fertility, as it contains hundreds of seeds.  Both are mentioned repeatedly to describe the lovers in the Song of Solomon, as in “thou has dove’s eyes” and “thy temples (forehead) are like pomegranates”.  “Peacocks” are traditionally royal birds; they are associated with the Queen of the Gods, Hera, and were served to royalty during the medieval period at banquets.  They have also been adopted by Christian iconography as symbols of everlasting life.  In her newly exulted state, the poet wants real grapes and their vines to be replaced with decorations in gold and silver.  The “fleur-de-lys” is a heraldic symbol of royalty, in both Italy and France, and is common in medieval tapestry and manuscripts.  It is often (I believe mistakenly) translated as a “flower of the lily” and the etymology is still disputed.

The opulence of the imagery suggests that she is being born anew, out of an ordinary life into one where the natural world pours its bounty upon her.  She wants this altered state to be recognised with all the pomp and trappings usually associated with a royal marriages.