Thomas Hardy

Time-out!! Can we just take a moment to realize that his heart was buried in his wife Emma’s grave? How sweet… in a weird and twisted way…

Anyways….

One of the poems that I enjoyed by Hardy was his Logs on the Hearth, A Memory of a Sister. The poem begins as “fire advances along the log.” (1078). It then goes on to explain how the tree that now burns is the same tree that Hardy and his sister Mary had climbed as they were younger. The thing I found interesting about this poem was that the first 3 lines of each stanza describe something that can be seen as peaceful and beautiful and then the last line uses dark and unhappy words. All except for the last stanza—the stanza about Mary. This stanza begins dark and unhappy as it explains “my fellow-climber rises dim from her chilly grave” but continues on to show her happy and lively again “just as she was, her foot near mine on the bending limb, laughing, her young brown hand awave.” (1079).

While this poem is depressing because Hardy is grieving over his sisters loss, it is also very touching because you can truly see how much Hardy cared for his sister. One thing that I wonder is was Mary a younger or older sibling. I understand that it would be difficult to lose a sibling no matter the age…but it was just a thought. Without knowledge of this, I assumed that Mary was younger because she would be Thomas’s little sister and this could be why he felt so upset because he had protected her while they were younger. I am probably just making this up but I got this because while climbing the tree Thomas was the first and Mary was second. I took this to be that Thomas wanted to make sure the tree was safe for Mary. Another thing that made me think that this may be the case is that as they were climbing the tree Mary’s “young hand was awave.” This to me shows that she was excited to be able to climb that tree with her brother.

I could be completely wrong about all of that but it was how I read it and I believe that I may have read it this way because I am the older sibling and know how my younger brother is. I have never really been close with my brother because we are 4 years apart. I can remember how my brother looked up to me and followed my friends and me around all day and it would drive me crazy. However, recently my brother underwent two brain surgeries in order to remove a tumor that was found and I feel that it has brought us closer. It is awful to think that something so terrible brought to my attention how much my younger brother means to me. I will never forget how I felt when I found out the news and if something were to happen to him I would be devastated. I believe that Thomas and Mary were very close and they were probably very good friends. I hope that my brother and I will be able to continue the friendship that we have just so recently started to form.


Sorry that I got off topic a little bit.