Poetry, Year 11: Sonnet 29, Neutral Tones and The Farmer's Bride (Love and Relationships option)

Her thoughts are wild vines, and he is a tree

提示A climbing plant and the thing it climbs.

为什么She writes “my thoughts do twine and bud / About thee, as wild vines, about a tree”. The vines grow so thick that the tree cannot be seen. The image sets up her complaint: thoughts of him are hiding the real man.

The man himself, present in person, and not just thoughts of him

提示A real presence is better than a memory.

为什么She would rather have him in front of her than have the green cover of her own thoughts. The poem is about the gap between imagining love and having it.

Fall away, so that the man himself stands bare and clear

提示She wants the covering stripped off.

为什么The lines picture her thoughts bursting and dropping heavily down, leaving the tree standing open to the air. It is a joyful demand, not a fearful one.

She has stopped thinking of him because he is now so close that she has no need to

提示The poem began with thoughts; it ends without them.

为什么The ending completes the argument: thoughts are for when he is far away. A strong sense of joy is hidden in the plain statement.

14

提示The same number as in every sonnet.

为什么The first eight lines set out the image and make the demand that he appear in person; the last six lines celebrate the joy of being near him, ending on the paradox of the final line. Sonnet 29 is one of the Sonnets from the Portuguese.

4

提示Each is a block of four lines.

为什么Hardy wrote it in 1867 and published it in Wessex Poems in 1898. The tidy shape contrasts with the broken love it describes.

White, as though it had been told off by God: pale and without warmth

提示It gives no light that is any use.

为什么Hardy writes “the sun was white, as though chidden of God”. The sun, which should bring warmth, is shown as punished and drained. The dead scene tells the reader the love has already gone cold.

The love is as good as dead: even her smile is barely alive

提示The face that should show warmth shows none.

为什么The line is a paradox: something so dead that it hardly had the strength to die. The smile gives no comfort, and the grin that follows is bitter.

That love deceives and brings pain, and that this scene has stayed with him

提示He has not recovered; he carries the lesson.

为什么The final lines return to the pond, the sun and the leaves of the opening, so the poem ends where it began. The memory has shaped the way he sees every later love.

It returns to the pond edged with leaves, so the poem ends where it began

提示The scene of the opening comes back in the last line.

为什么The final line is “And a pond edged with grayish leaves”. The circular shape suggests that he cannot move on: the same scene still fills his mind years later.

The farmer; his country dialect gives him a rural, plain-speaking voice

提示The grammar is not standard English.

为什么Mew writes his words as he would say them, with phrases such as “When us was wed”. The dialect makes him believable and makes his clumsiness more touching.

A young hare

提示Swift and timid, in the same family as the rabbit.

为什么The wild animal comparisons continue throughout the poem: she is like a mouse, a fay and a hare. They show how the farmer sees her, as a frightened creature to be coaxed or caught.

She runs away; they chase and catch her, bring her home and lock her in

提示A hunt, with lanterns, across the fields.

为什么The chase is described like a hunt for an animal, and they “turned the key upon her, fast”. Locking her in shows both his control and her fear.

A very short physical distance that is a wide emotional gap

提示Close in space, but a long way apart in feeling.

为什么She sleeps alone, so the marriage has never really begun. The tiny distance makes the longing and frustration sharper.

His growing desire and frustration, which he cannot control

提示The poem ends in an outburst rather than a conclusion.

为什么The repetition breaks the calm of the earlier lines and ends in a cry. There is no resolution: the poem stops while his longing is unanswered.