The Full Text of “A Broken Appointment”
1You did not come,
2And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb,—
3Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
4Than that I thus found lacking in your make
5That high compassion which can overbear
6Reluctance for pure lovingkindness’ sake
7Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
8You did not come.
9You love not me,
10And love alone can lend you loyalty;
11—I know and knew it. But, unto the store
12Of human deeds divine in all but name,
13Was it not worth a little hour or more
14To add yet this: Once you, a woman, came
15To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be
16You love not me?
The Full Text of “A Broken Appointment”
1You did not come,
2And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb,—
3Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
4Than that I thus found lacking in your make
5That high compassion which can overbear
6Reluctance for pure lovingkindness’ sake
7Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
8You did not come.
9You love not me,
10And love alone can lend you loyalty;
11—I know and knew it. But, unto the store
12Of human deeds divine in all but name,
13Was it not worth a little hour or more
14To add yet this: Once you, a woman, came
15To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be
16You love not me?
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“A Broken Appointment” Introduction
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Thomas Hardy's "A Broken Appointment" is a melancholy poem in which the speaker gets stood up by the woman that he loves. The speaker complains that the woman's non-arrival breaks a kind of ethical code and that human beings (like her) ought to treat others (like him) with "lovingkindness." If she'd only spent a "little hour" with him despite not loving him back, the speaker argues, it would have added to the overall "store" of goodness in the world. Of course, the reader can decide for themselves whether the speaker has a point—or if this is just a case of sour grapes. The poem was published in Hardy's second collection, Poems of the Past and the Present (1901).
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“A Broken Appointment” Summary
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You stood me up, and time kept marching on while I waited for you, wearing me down. But it wasn't the fact that I didn't get the pleasure of your company that upset me. It was more that I realized your character lacked the kind of deep empathy that would have outweighed your hesitation to see me and pushed you to come simply because it was the kind and compassionate thing to do. That's why I was so upset when the hopeful hour of our meeting came and went and you didn't show.
You're not in love with me, and only love can grant the kind of faithful compassion I'm talking about. I know that now and I knew it at the time. But, to the pile of human kindness, wouldn't it have been worth giving up just an hour of your time to contribute this good deed: one occasion on which you, a woman, came to comfort a man made weary by time—even if you don't love me?
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“A Broken Appointment” Themes
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Love, Compassion, and Disappointment
"A Broken Appointment" describes a meeting that never took place: the poem's speaker was supposed to see the woman he loved, but she stood him up. The speaker feels let down not just because his love is apparently unrequited, but because his beloved failed to display what the speaker considers common courtesy. The speaker implies that human beings have a moral duty to treat each other kindly and lovingly (with what the poem calls "lovingkindness"), and he's thus bitterly disappointed that this woman refused to take the time to "soothe" his heartache.
Though clearly experiencing a classic case of unrequited love, the speaker insists that it's not the woman's rejection that's upset him so much. Instead, it's the brutal fact that she didn't bother to come to their "appointment," or meet up—something the speaker basically sees as a moral failure on this woman's part.
The speaker complains that the woman lacked the "high compassion" (that is, strong sense of empathy) to get over her "reluctance" to meet him. The kind and loving thing to do, he argues, would have been to spend "a little hour" with him regardless of the fact that she didn't really want to. This would have "soothe[d] a time-worn,” or weary older, “man." The speaker insists that meeting him despite not loving him would have added to the total sum of human kindness. It would have made the world a better, even holier, place.
Yet the speaker acknowledges that his position is a little contradictory. By his own admission, people reserve this "high compassion" only for those they love most—and, for this particular woman, he's not one of those people. "Love alone," says the speaker, inspires the kind of "loyalty" he implicitly demands. In a way, then, the speaker understands why the woman didn't come. He just wishes he lived in a world where people turn up when they say they will.
It's ultimately up to the reader to decide if they agree with the speaker or not. Perhaps he's got a point: people could be that little bit kinder and more compassionate in general and make more of an effort to "soothe" others' pain. Of course, readers might disagree that this woman had a moral obligation to make the speaker feel better. The speaker's anger over her supposedly poor character might really just be his own wounded pride talking.
- See where this theme is active in the poem.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “A Broken Appointment”
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Lines 1-2
You did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb,—"A Broken Appointment" begins with its speaker clearly feeling let down. He had an "appointment"—that is, a meeting/date—with a woman, but she stood him up: "You did not come," the speaker says bluntly, addressing the woman directly. Given that the woman isn't around to respond, this is an example of apostrophe. The brevity of this opening line captures the speaker's shock and hurt at the woman's decision not to come.
The speaker clearly has strong feelings for this woman, and, in line 2, he describes coming to the crushing realization that she wasn't ever going to show. "Time" cruelly marched on; the hour of their "appointment came and went, and the clock kept ticking, indifferent to the speaker's emotions. The speaker grew "numb" with waiting, his emotions worn thin.
While the opening line contained just four blunt syllables, the second line falls into iambic pentameter: a meter in which each line contains five iambs, poetic feet with an unstressed-stressed syllable pattern (i.e., da-DUM).
And march- | ing Time | drew on, | and wore | me numb,—
The longer length of this line helps to convey the speaker's discomfort. The line stretches on, capturing how time seemed to "draw on" while the speaker waited. The regular iambs also seem to "march" like time: left, right, left, right; da-DUM, da-DUM, da-DUM.
Finally, these opening lines form a rhyming couplet: "come"/"numb." This perfect rhyme lends the opening a sense of firmness and finality. The woman didn't show, and there's nothing the speaker can do about it.
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Lines 3-8
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure lovingkindness’ sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
You did not come. -
Lines 9-11
You love not me,
And love alone can lend you loyalty;
—I know and knew it. -
Lines 11-14
But, unto the store
Of human deeds divine in all but name,
Was it not worth a little hour or more
To add yet this: -
Lines 14-16
Once you, a woman, came
To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be
You love not me?
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“A Broken Appointment” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Apostrophe
"A Broken Appointment" uses apostrophe from start to finish, as the speaker directly addresses the woman who failed to show up to their planned "appointment." The woman, of course, isn't around to reply.
Somewhat paradoxically, this apostrophe makes the woman's absence all the more unavoidable (or present). She's very noticeably not there. Repeatedly calling out to her makes the speaker come across as all the more lonely and dejected. Her absence rings out in every line.
The speaker's words resound in a kind of echo chamber. These are his thoughts, and his thoughts alone (and they keep circling back to the plain facts: "You did not come," "You love not me"). For all the speaker's passionate reasoning, his words don't find their intended target; the woman's not around to hear his pleas, which makes them more poignant (or, perhaps, pathetic). In fact, all these "you"s start to sound a little obsessive, even accusatory, as the poem goes on. The speaker remains intensely fixated on this woman, even though she clearly doesn't return his affections.
By the poem's end, readers might be considering whether the speaker's criticism is really fair. There are two sides to every romance story—and this poem can only present one.
- See where this poetic device appears in the poem.
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Consonance
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Enjambment
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Repetition
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"A Broken Appointment" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Make
- High compassion
- Overbear
- Lovingkindness
- Hope-hour
- Stroked its sum
- Lend you loyalty
- Unto
- Store
- Human deeds
- Time-torn
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Character, innate personality.
- See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “A Broken Appointment”
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Form
"A Broken Appointment" consists of two eight-line stanzas (a.k.a. octets). The shape of the poem on the page subtly mirrors the situation it describes: there are two stanzas, just like there are two people involved in this story.
Both stanzas also begin and end with the same lines. Each of these lines contains four monosyllabic words that provide a brutal statement of the facts: "You did not come" and "You love not me." Through these repetitive lines, the poem circles back on itself, evoking the speaker's persistent frustration and despair. It's as if the poem can't make any forward progress—it's stuck, just like the speaker himself.
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Meter
"A Broken Appointment" mostly uses iambic pentameter: a meter in which each line contains five poetic feet called iambs, which follow an unstressed-stressed beat pattern (da-DUM).
Here's line 2 as an example. Notice how the steady march of those iambic feet conjures the sense of time marching relentlessly forward:
And march-| ing Time | drew on, | and wore | me numb,—
These iambs make it easy to picture the speaker waiting, constantly checking the time and feeling the pain of each passing second.
The meter isn't particularly strict, however. There are plenty of variations throughout the poem, which help to convey the sense of a speaker at the mercy of his emotions. That is, the steady iambic march suggests that the speaker is keeping a tight lid on his feelings and simply making a rational argument, while the moments when the meter breaks hint at the frustration and despair bubbling beneath the poem's surface.
Take line 7, which opens with a spondee (two stressed beats in a row): "Grieved I." This forceful foot conveys the intensity of the speaker's grief.
And, of course, the first and final lines of both stanzas are much shorter than the rest. Lines 1, 8, 9, and 16 all contain just four syllables. As a result, these lines feel particularly blunt and to the point.
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Rhyme Scheme
Both stanzas follow the same regular rhyme scheme: AABCBCAA.
Each stanza thus begins and ends with a rhyming couplet. The final lines of each stanza also repeat the stanzas' first lines exactly. Here are the opening lines as an example:
You did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb,—
[...]Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
You did not come.The poem thus opens and closes with paired rhymes, perhaps reflecting the speaker's own desire to be part of a couple. The intervening sections use an alternating rhyme pattern, and as a result, the rhyme sounds in lines 3-6 and lines 11-14 are more distanced from each other. This break with the couplet pattern might reflect the speaker's heartbreak and separation from the woman he loves.
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“A Broken Appointment” Speaker
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The speaker of "A Broken Appointment" is a man who has been stood up by the woman he loves. He talks directly to this woman throughout the poem, and this insistent apostrophe both emphasizes the woman's absence (she's not there to reply) and makes the speaker sound more accusatory and frustrated.
Though clearly heartbroken, the speaker insists that it's not the heartbreak itself that's made him so upset. It's more the fact that this woman didn't turn out to be who the speaker thought she was. He thought she was the kind of person who would visit the speaker despite not loving him back—that she'd overcome her "reluctance" to see him for the simple sake of being loving and kind.
The speaker is deeply disappointed to realize that the woman isn't as empathetic and selfless as he'd hoped, however, and he calls out this supposed flaw in her moral character. At the same time, the speaker admits that this kind of "loyalty" only really comes from being in love. Given that he knows quite well that the woman doesn't reciprocate his feelings, he should, in theory, never have expected her to turn up in the first place.
The speaker also comes across as self pitying. He sees himself as "a time-torn man," someone worn down by the years and in need of some tenderness. Yet while he constructs a compelling argument about the importance of compassion, readers might suspect that he also just feels intensely bitter about the fact she never showed. The reader can decide whether he really does believe that the woman should have added to the "store" of good deeds by coming to see him, or if he's just trying to "soothe" his own bruised ego.
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“A Broken Appointment” Setting
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The poem takes place shortly after the "broken appointment" of the title. The speaker had been waiting around for his beloved to show up to their arranged meeting, but she stood him up. Now, the "hope-hour" over, the speaker bitterly reflects on what this woman's failure to arrive says about her character.
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Literary and Historical Context of “A Broken Appointment”
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Literary Context
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was an English poet and a novelist known for his passionate opposition to the cruelty and hypocrisy of the buttoned-up Victorian world he was born into. Though Hardy is most famous now for novels like Jude the Obscure and Tess of the d'Urbervilles, those books weren't especially well-received during his lifetime: frank and shocking, they were just too much for many Victorians. Instead, Hardy made his reputation as a poet.
"A Broken Appointment" was published in Hardy's second poetry collection, Poems of the Past and the Present (1901). The book was successful, largely because of the war poems included in the first section; the British public admired its treatment of the Second Boer War (a conflict that Britain was fighting in South Africa at the time). "A Broken Appointment" appears later in the collection, taking its place among poems like "The Inconsistent," and "Between Us Now," which focus on lost romantic opportunities and what might have been.
"A Broken Appointment," like the rest of Hardy's poetry, features conventional meter and rhyme, the tools that dominated pre-20th-century verse. The poem also conveys much the same philosophical pessimism that marks Hardy's writing more broadly. His skeptical outlook influenced a number of 20th-century poets, including Robert Frost and Philip Larkin.
Historical Context
Hardy grew up in 1840s and 1850s England, making him a man of the Victorian era (which lasted from 1837 to 1901). This period can be simultaneously described as a time of great advancement and great loss. England was at the height of its power and prosperity, but also split by deep divisions between the rich and the poor, the upper classes and the lower classes, and men and women.
In "A Broken Appointment," the speaker's complaints to the woman who stood him up are framed, consciously or not, by their respective genders ("you, a woman," didn't "soothe" me, a "man"). This reflects the patriarchal power structures of Victorian society. While readers never hear from the woman in this poem, the rigid social mores of Victorian England make it pretty understandable why she wouldn't want to meet up with a man she had no romantic interest in.
The Victorian era was a difficult time to be a woman. Sexuality was off-limits outside the confines of marriage—but only for women; men could essentially do what they liked and get away with it. This double standard left a lot of women in desperate circumstances. If a woman was known to have had sex outside wedlock (or to have had a child), she was likely to be cast out of respectable society altogether, and perhaps forced into prostitution.
Some critics believe that Hardy wrote this poem about Florence Henniker, a poet and novelist with aristocratic lineage. As the story goes, Hardy made sexual advances on Henniker and was swiftly rejected, not least because both were married at the time. They did, however, strike up a friendship, and wrote letters to each other for many years. On one particular occasion, they met at an inn in Winchester—and, as in the poem called "At an Inn," were mistaken for man and wife. This poem similarly laments a kind of missed romantic opportunity
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More “A Broken Appointment” Resources
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External Resources
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Poems of the Past and Present — Read the full collection in which "A Broken Appointment" appeared.
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Hardy and Henniker — Read letters between the poet and Florence Henniker, the woman who might have inspired "A Broken Appointment."
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The Hardy Society — Explore a treasure trove of resources about the poet provided by the Hardy Society.
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The Poem Out Loud — Listen to "A Broken Appointment" read aloud by the famed Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.
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The Heart of Thomas Hardy — Watch a BBC documentary about Hardy's life and work.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Thomas Hardy
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