idiosyncratic wording and dexterous rhyming keep it as
alive as any stubborn ghost, the clinching dimeter of each stanza paying off overwhelmingly in the last lineof all.
At Castle Boterel
As I drive to the junction of lane and highway,
And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette,
I look behind at the fading byway,
And see on its slope, now glistening wet,
Distinctly yet
Myself and a girlish form benighted
In dry March weather. We climb the road
Beside a chaise. We had just alighted
To ease the sturdy pony’s load
When he sighed and slowed.
What we did as we climbed, and what we talked of
Matters not much, nor to what it led, –
Something that life will not be balked of
Without rude reason till hope is dead,
And feeling fled.
It filled but a minute. But was there ever
A time of such quality, since or before,
In that hill’s story? To one mind never,
Though it has been climbed, foot-swift, foot-sore,
By thousands more.
Primaeval rocks form the road’s steep border,
And much have they faced there, first and last,
Of the transitoryin Earth’s long order;
But what they record in colour and cast
Is – that we two passed.
And to me, though Time’s unflinching rigour,
In mindless rote, has ruled from sight
The substance now, one phantom figure
Remains on the slope, as when that night
Saw us alight.
I lookand see it there, shrinking, shrinking,
I look back at it amid the rain
For the very last time; for my sand is sinking,
And I shall traverse old love’s domain
Never again.
(1912)
The novelist and poet Alan Hollinghurst (b. 1954) won the 2004 Man Booker Prize for his novel
The Line of Beauty
. His other works include
The Swimming Pool Library
(1988),
The Stranger’s Child
(2011) and translations of two plays by Racine.
The Voice
THOMAS HARDY (1840–1928)
SEAMUS HEANEY
I can’t honestly say that I break down when I read ‘The Voice’, but when I get to the last four lines the tear ducts do congest a bit. The poem is one of
several Thomas Hardy wrote immediately after the death of his first wife in late November 1912, hence the poignancy of his dating it ‘December 1912’.Hardy once described this group of
memorial poems as ‘an expiation’, acknowledging his grief and remorse at the way he had neglected and hurt the one ‘who was all to me . . . at first, when our day was fair’.
What renders the music of the poem so moving is the drag in the voice, as if there were sinkers on many of the lines. But in the final stanza, in that landscape of falling leaves, windand thorn,
and the woman calling, there is a banshee note that haunts ‘long after it is heard no more’.
The Voice
Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.
Can it be you that I hear? Letme view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!
Or is it only the breeze in its listlessness
Traveling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?
Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.
(1912)
With twelve volumes of original poems to his name, and several books of critical essays, translations and drama, Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize
for Literature.
Adlestrop
EDWARD THOMAS (1878–1917)
SIMON WINCHESTER
I suppose I should stop kidding myself and admit that I’ll probably never go back to live in England. I’m an American citizen now. When I reached that famous fork
in the woods, I took the road less travelled (Robert Frost and Edward Thomas were friends) and ended up on a weary farm in
alive as any stubborn ghost, the clinching dimeter of each stanza paying off overwhelmingly in the last lineof all.
At Castle Boterel
As I drive to the junction of lane and highway,
And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette,
I look behind at the fading byway,
And see on its slope, now glistening wet,
Distinctly yet
Myself and a girlish form benighted
In dry March weather. We climb the road
Beside a chaise. We had just alighted
To ease the sturdy pony’s load
When he sighed and slowed.
What we did as we climbed, and what we talked of
Matters not much, nor to what it led, –
Something that life will not be balked of
Without rude reason till hope is dead,
And feeling fled.
It filled but a minute. But was there ever
A time of such quality, since or before,
In that hill’s story? To one mind never,
Though it has been climbed, foot-swift, foot-sore,
By thousands more.
Primaeval rocks form the road’s steep border,
And much have they faced there, first and last,
Of the transitoryin Earth’s long order;
But what they record in colour and cast
Is – that we two passed.
And to me, though Time’s unflinching rigour,
In mindless rote, has ruled from sight
The substance now, one phantom figure
Remains on the slope, as when that night
Saw us alight.
I lookand see it there, shrinking, shrinking,
I look back at it amid the rain
For the very last time; for my sand is sinking,
And I shall traverse old love’s domain
Never again.
(1912)
The novelist and poet Alan Hollinghurst (b. 1954) won the 2004 Man Booker Prize for his novel
The Line of Beauty
. His other works include
The Swimming Pool Library
(1988),
The Stranger’s Child
(2011) and translations of two plays by Racine.
The Voice
THOMAS HARDY (1840–1928)
SEAMUS HEANEY
I can’t honestly say that I break down when I read ‘The Voice’, but when I get to the last four lines the tear ducts do congest a bit. The poem is one of
several Thomas Hardy wrote immediately after the death of his first wife in late November 1912, hence the poignancy of his dating it ‘December 1912’.Hardy once described this group of
memorial poems as ‘an expiation’, acknowledging his grief and remorse at the way he had neglected and hurt the one ‘who was all to me . . . at first, when our day was fair’.
What renders the music of the poem so moving is the drag in the voice, as if there were sinkers on many of the lines. But in the final stanza, in that landscape of falling leaves, windand thorn,
and the woman calling, there is a banshee note that haunts ‘long after it is heard no more’.
The Voice
Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.
Can it be you that I hear? Letme view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!
Or is it only the breeze in its listlessness
Traveling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?
Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.
(1912)
With twelve volumes of original poems to his name, and several books of critical essays, translations and drama, Seamus Heaney (1939–2013) was awarded the 1995 Nobel Prize
for Literature.
Adlestrop
EDWARD THOMAS (1878–1917)
SIMON WINCHESTER
I suppose I should stop kidding myself and admit that I’ll probably never go back to live in England. I’m an American citizen now. When I reached that famous fork
in the woods, I took the road less travelled (Robert Frost and Edward Thomas were friends) and ended up on a weary farm in
Similar Books
