The Full Text of “At Castle Boterel”
1As I drive to the junction of lane and highway,
2And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette,
3I look behind at the fading byway,
4And see on its slope, now glistening wet,
5Distinctly yet
6Myself and a girlish form benighted
7In dry March weather. We climb the road
8Beside a chaise. We had just alighted
9To ease the sturdy pony's load
10When he sighed and slowed.
11What we did as we climbed, and what we talked of
12Matters not much, nor to what it led,—
13Something that life will not be balked of
14Without rude reason till hope is dead,
15And feeling fled.
16It filled but a minute. But was there ever
17A time of such quality, since or before,
18In that hill's story? To one mind never,
19Though it has been climbed, foot-swift, foot-sore,
20By thousands more.
21Primaeval rocks form the road's steep border,
22And much have they faced there, first and last,
23Of the transitory in Earth's long order;
24But what they record in colour and cast
25Is—that we two passed.
26And to me, though Time's unflinching rigour,
27In mindless rote, has ruled from sight
28The substance now, one phantom figure
29Remains on the slope, as when that night
30Saw us alight.
31I look and see it there, shrinking, shrinking,
32I look back at it amid the rain
33For the very last time; for my sand is sinking,
34And I shall traverse old love's domain
35Never again.
The Full Text of “At Castle Boterel”
1As I drive to the junction of lane and highway,
2And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette,
3I look behind at the fading byway,
4And see on its slope, now glistening wet,
5Distinctly yet
6Myself and a girlish form benighted
7In dry March weather. We climb the road
8Beside a chaise. We had just alighted
9To ease the sturdy pony's load
10When he sighed and slowed.
11What we did as we climbed, and what we talked of
12Matters not much, nor to what it led,—
13Something that life will not be balked of
14Without rude reason till hope is dead,
15And feeling fled.
16It filled but a minute. But was there ever
17A time of such quality, since or before,
18In that hill's story? To one mind never,
19Though it has been climbed, foot-swift, foot-sore,
20By thousands more.
21Primaeval rocks form the road's steep border,
22And much have they faced there, first and last,
23Of the transitory in Earth's long order;
24But what they record in colour and cast
25Is—that we two passed.
26And to me, though Time's unflinching rigour,
27In mindless rote, has ruled from sight
28The substance now, one phantom figure
29Remains on the slope, as when that night
30Saw us alight.
31I look and see it there, shrinking, shrinking,
32I look back at it amid the rain
33For the very last time; for my sand is sinking,
34And I shall traverse old love's domain
35Never again.
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“At Castle Boterel” Introduction
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"At Castle Boterel" is an elegy from "Poems 1912-13," a sequence in which Thomas Hardy reflects on his years with his late wife Emma Gifford. In this poem, Hardy revisits a road they walked together early in their courtship, reminiscing on the beauty of the moment they shared and reckoning with the loss of the "girlish form" he loved. The poem suggests that love imprints certain moments in the memory, but that even the sweetest memories can't last forever. Because life is fleeting, moreover, it's important to confront the past in order to make the most of the future. Along with the rest of the "Poems 1912-13" sequence, "At Castle Boterel" appears in the collection Satires of Circumstance (1914).
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“At Castle Boterel” Summary
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Driving to the meeting-point of road and highway as the rain soaks my horse-drawn carriage, I glance behind me at the receding path and glimpse, on its rain-drenched slope, a still-clear image of the past:
I see myself and a girlish figure on a dry night in March. We're walking up the path beside a horse-drawn carriage, from which we'd dismounted to lessen the strong pony's burden when he groaned and slowed down.
What we did or talked about on the way up that hill doesn't really matter. Nor does it matter what came after—something that life will never be deprived of until harsh logic intervenes, and hope dies, and all emotion disappears.
Our walk hardly took a minute. But has there ever been a more beautiful moment, before or after, in the history of that hill? In my mind, there certainly never has been, though countless others have climbed the hill quickly and painfully.
Ancient rocks make up the abrupt edge of the road, and they've seen a lot, these stones, from the beginning to the end of Earth's long trajectory. But what they preserve, in color and shape, is the memory of our passing.
And I feel that even though Time's mindless, relentless march has barred the flesh-and-blood person from my sight, her ghostly form lingers on that hill, right where we were the night we dismounted the carriage.
I see her ghost there, growing ever smaller. I stare at it in the rain for the last time—because my life is ending, and I'll never travel through the realm of lost love again.
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“At Castle Boterel” Themes
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Love, Memory, and Time
“At Castle Boterel" recalls a moment Thomas Hardy shared with an “old love[]”: his first wife Emma Gifford, who died in 1912, after they had become estranged. Hardy recalls a steep, rocky, ancient "hill" the two of them climbed early in their courtship. Though their climb was a brief instant against the backdrop of that prehistoric landscape, Hardy suggests that their love permanently altered the scene, as if changing the “colour and cast” of the rocks. Indeed, in his "mind," the "Primaeval" hill has witnessed no more significant moment than the one they shared there. Yet even as “the phantom figure” of his wife seems to linger in this setting, her memory “shrink[s]” out of reach, as he ages and nears his own death. The poem thus captures the way our minds vividly preserve certain moments—yet acknowledges, too, that even the most persistent memories fade in the end.
Hardy suggests that the sheer "quality" of the moment he shared with Emma elevates and enshrines it. In other words, he believes that love imbues memories with a special staying power. Although their "time" on the hill was “but a minute,” he imagines that it stands out amid all the other moments in “that hill’s story.” Though “thousands more” have walked that same path, Hardy implies that the only truly significant event in the landscape's history was his “pass[ing]” with Emma. Their love looms so large in his mind that he feels it forever impacted the world itself.
Indeed, it’s hard for him to imagine this memory ever fading; he feels that Emma's “phantom figure” will keep haunting him until the end of time. He downplays the specifics of what they did and said on the hill, but claims that they experienced “Something that life will not be balked of” (deprived of) until all "hope is dead" and all “feeling [has] fled” the world. Basically, they experienced a great passion—and he would have to be drained of all emotion and sensation for the memory to lose its power.
More realistically, however, he understands that time will reduce both him and his memory to nothing. Time, the poem suggests, is more powerful than anything else, even love. Much as he may treasure his memory of his “minute” with Emma (both the literal minute they shared on the slope and the metaphorical minute of their brief journey on earth), no memory can outlast time itself. Even in the heat of reminiscence, he acknowledges that Emma is already dwindling into the past. Memory seems changeless, but it stands no chance against the scouring tides of time.
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Looking Back and Letting Go
“At Castle Boterel” hints that, in order to let the past go, people first need to confront it and process it fully. Disturbed by the death of his estranged wife, Emma Gifford, Hardy returned to Cornwall (the English county that contains "Castle Boterel") to revisit those places where they had fallen in love. The poem depicts him driving alone up a path they'd once traveled as a couple—and realizing he was seeing it “For the very last time.” In other words, he's taking one last, hard look at the past (including the whole "domain" of his lost love) so that he may leave it behind him. Broadly, then, the poem illustrates how facing loss and sorrow head-on can help the mind and heart make room for the future.
For Hardy, immersing himself in the past—revisiting a road he'd once climbed with his wife—actually helps him let go of the past. As he drives, he “look[s] behind” him “at the fading byway,” where he can still “Distinctly [see]” himself and Emma on that long-ago night. That the road "fad[es]" behind him suggests, in a paradoxical and symbolic way, that reconnecting with these events helps him achieve some distance from them. Indeed, he plans never to travel this way again: he's reliving these lost, beautiful times in order to say goodbye to them. To envision a future without Emma, he must first acknowledge how much their life together meant to him. Looking back with intention, the poem suggests, helps him to work through his feelings of guilt and sorrow.
Hence, he seems to see the ghost of his wife “shrinking” even as he “look[s] back" at it. Again, the act of confronting the past helps detach him from the past. Meanwhile, his “sand is sinking” in a metaphorical sense: his time on earth is running out, like sand grains in an hourglass. He intends to “traverse old love’s domain” this one “last time”—painful as it may be—so that he can live what life he has left without the past weighing on him.
Overall, then, the poem illustrates the value of looking back before moving on in life. It might also imply that reckoning with loss is the work of poetry in particular. In fact, all of "Poems 1912-1913" (the longer sequence of elegies that includes “At Castle Boterel”) reflects on Hardy’s time with Gifford. Their marriage was strained and unreconciled at the end, but clearly, for Hardy, poetry was a way of reconciling with the past.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “At Castle Boterel”
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Lines 1-5
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"At Castle Boterel" is one of many elegies Thomas Hardy wrote after the death of his first wife, Emma Gifford. After a long, mostly unhappy marriage, Gifford took ill and died suddenly, leaving Hardy to wrestle with his grief and guilt over how he had treated her. This poem reflects on the couple's tender courtship, which was so unlike the difficult years that followed.
"Castle Boterel" is another name for Boscastle, the English fishing village where Hardy and Gifford met and fell in love. The title thus alludes to their courtship. Yet the poem begins in the present, with Hardy revisiting the place many years later. (In real life, he did, in fact, return to Cornwall after her death to reflect on their relationship.)
The speaker—Hardy himself—is "driv[ing] to the junction of lane and highway." In other words, he's turning onto the highway from a smaller road. A persistent rain soaks his horse-drawn carriage. The image of a gray, "bedrench[ing] drizzle" creates a somber atmosphere, appropriate to a poem of mourning. The harsh, drumming /dr/ consonance in these lines ("drive," "drizzle," "bedrenches") has a similar effect.
As he drives, Hardy "look[s] behind" him "at the fading byway": the little lane disappearing from view. Peering over his shoulder, he can clearly "see" something on the hill's "slope" despite the "glistening" rain. After four end-stopped lines, sudden enjambment propels the reader across the stanza break:
And see on its slope, now glistening wet,
Distinctly yetMyself [...]
The pause creates a moment of suspense, leaving the reader to wonder, briefly, what the speaker is seeing.
By the end of this first stanza, Hardy has also established the poem's form. "At Castle Boterel" is written in accentual meter (meaning its lines contain a set number of stressed syllables, but those stresses don't follow a consistent pattern). Accentual meter is relatively flexible and tends to create a loose, lilting rhythm. At the same time, it's more orderly than free verse, and this poem's steady ABABB rhyme scheme lends additional structure. These formal features carry across seven tidy quintains (five-line stanzas), so the poem feels very controlled overall.
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Lines 6-10
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. -
Lines 11-15
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. -
Lines 16-20
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. -
Lines 21-25
Primaeval rocks form the road's steep border,
And much have they faced there, first and last,
Of the transitory in Earth's long order;
But what they record in colour and cast
Is—that we two passed. -
Lines 26-30
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. -
Lines 31-35
I look and 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.
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“At Castle Boterel” Symbols
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The Road
The "road" in the poem is a literal one: a road that Hardy and Gifford "climb[ed]" together when they were first falling in love, and that Hardy revisited when Gifford died. But it's also an apt symbol for the journey they took together as husband and wife—a journey that, as Hardy looks back on it, is already "fading."
In the memory Hardy describes, he and Gifford are young people "climb[ing]" the sloping road. Symbolically, this implies they've only just started their journey together. The peak of their love (and the midpoint of their lives) is still ahead of them.
Hardy claims that it doesn't matter where this road—and what they said and did on it—ultimately "led." He's hinting, here, at the reality that their marriage was deeply troubled. But in this remembered scene, he felt happy and optimistic about the future. So the memory is a sweet one, even if the years that followed were hard.
Hardy would also like to believe that, of all the people who have climbed this real/symbolic road, the "rocks" along the border remember him and Gifford best. The moment they shared here meant so much to him, in other words, that he can't help believing it stands out among countless others of the same kind. Lots of people have fallen in and out of love, he implies, but surely the memory of his romance will stand the test of time. (Of course, the poem goes on to suggest it won't, as even the sweetest memories "shrink[]" in the face of "Time's unflinching rigour.")
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“At Castle Boterel” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
Alliteration enhances the poem's rhythm and accentuates or intensifies several key passages.
In lines 1-3, for instance, /dr/ and /b/ alliteration creates cacophony, underscoring the discomfort of the speaker's "drive":
As I drive to the junction of lane and highway,
And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette,
I look behind at the fading byway,These sounds also appear as consonance: the /dr/ sound in "bedrenches" and the /d/ sounds in "behind" and "fading" add to the harshness of the passage. That harshness, in turn, helps evoke the speaker's grief upon revisiting this place.
By contrast, the gentle /s/ alliteration of lines 9-10 seems to mirror the relief the lines describe:
To ease the sturdy pony's load
When he sighed and slowed.Later, in lines 14-15, Hardy uses /r/ and /f/ alliteration back to back:
Without rude reason till hope is dead,
And feeling fled.Here, the harsh /r/ and fricative /f/ sounds seem to fit the lines' content, which involves the "dea[th]" of "hope" and the loss of all "feeling." These emphatic sounds add a little extra force to Hardy's passionate pronouncements. Similarly, in line 24, /c/ alliteration ("colour and cast") intensifies his claim that his passion for Emma Gifford somehow imprinted the landscape itself.
The sixth stanza contains various alliterative sounds, which together highlight Hardy's supernatural vision of his late wife. Harsh /r/ sounds ("rigour," "rote," and "ruled") help convey how cruel and relentless time is. Fricative /f/ sounds ("phantom figure") help impress the haunting memory of Gifford on readers' imaginations. Smooth /s/ alliteration ("sight," "substance," "slope," "Saw") adds to the hushed intensity of the scene.
Finally, the /s/ alliteration in line 33 ("sand is sinking") underlines Hardy's metaphor about his waning time on earth. In a subtle, muted way, it evokes the slippery swiftness of time's passage.
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Repetition
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Metaphor
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Enjambment
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Caesura
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"At Castle Boterel" 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.
- Castle Boterel
- Junction
- Bedrenches
- Waggonette
- Byway
- Benighted
- Chaise
- Alighted
- Be balked of
- Rude reason
- Foot-swift, foot-sore
- Primaeval
- First and last
- Transitory
- Colour and cast
- Time's unflinching rigour
- In mindless rote
- Ruled from sight
- Traverse
- Domain
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Also known as Boscastle, this is a village and fishing port in Cornwall, England. (Cornwall was where Hardy courted Emma Gifford, the "girlish form" he's recalling in this poem.)
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “At Castle Boterel”
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Form
"At Castle Boterel" is written in accentual verse (meaning its lines contain a set number of stressed syllables, but those stresses don't occur in any particular order). Its 35 lines are arranged into seven quintains (five-line stanzas). The first four lines of each stanza are longer, generally containing four stressed beats, while the last line of each stanza is shorter, containing only two stressed beats. As a result, the end of each stanza feels rather abrupt, echoing the way the speaker's own life feels truncated by his enormous loss. (In line 33, he notes that the "sand" in his metaphorical hourglass "is sinking.")
Overall, the poem moves in an orderly but not overly rigid fashion. Its lilting accentual meter and steady ABABB rhyme scheme contribute rhythm and musicality. Its balance between structure and flexibility makes it feel, on the one hand, controlled and thoughtful, and on the other hand, intimate and alive with real emotion.
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Meter
The poem uses a loose accentual meter. This means that although its lines contain a set number of stressed syllables, those stresses can occur in any order (and the total syllable count varies). The first four lines of each stanza generally contain four stressed syllables, while the last line of each stanza contains only two. Here's how this looks in the first stanza:
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 yetAccentual meter provides some rhythm and structure while keeping things fresh and flexible. Some elements stay the same while others vary—and that type of meter feels appropriate to this poem. After all, though the speaker is revisiting a road he once walked with his beloved, she's no longer with him, and he knows he'll never pass this way again.
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Rhyme Scheme
The poem follows a steady ABABB rhyme scheme. The poem's rhymes are generally full rhymes: "highway" rhymes exactly with "byway," "waggonette" rhymes exactly with "wet" and "yet," and so on. (Note that "rigour"/"figure" and "domain"/"again" will sound slant to speakers of American English, but as Hardy was British, these would have been exact or near-exact rhymes for him). All these strong rhyme sounds enhance the poem's musicality and accentuate the speaker's emotions.
The last two rhymes of each stanza stand out in particular, as they occur very close together. In fact, since the last line of each stanza is shorter than the lines before, these rhymes fall only a few syllables apart. Look at the closing lines of the poem, for example:
And I shall traverse old love's domain
Never again.This strong, clinching rhyme makes the speaker's vow—his decision never to revisit the places where he and his wife fell in love—sound all the more final.
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“At Castle Boterel” Speaker
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The speaker of "At Castle Boterel" is Thomas Hardy himself, who wrote the poem after the sudden death of his estranged wife, Emma Gifford. He had courted Gifford in the county of Cornwall (where Castle Boterel, also known as Boscastle, is located), and after she died, he went back there to meditate on their time together. He wrote an entire sequence of elegies reflecting on their marriage ("Poems of 1912-1913"). As part of that sequence, this poem recalls a happy moment when the couple were just getting to know each other.
It's clear that the speaker is no longer the same person as he was when he first came to Castle Boterel. Indeed, decades have passed since he and his "girlish" love climbed the road he's now traveling on his own. Yet as he looks back both literally and figuratively, his memory of her seems to collapse time. However briefly, he feels as if he's with her again, sharing a moment of such "quality" that it seems indestructible. At the same time, he's aware that his life is drawing to a close, like "sand [...] sinking" in an hourglass.
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“At Castle Boterel” Setting
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The poem's setting is "Castle Boterel," better known as Boscastle: the fishing village in Cornwall, England where Thomas Hardy and Emma Gifford first met. The opening stanza takes place in the poem's present, after Gifford's death. Hardy describes himself "driv[ing]" in the rain, "look[ing] behind" him at a sloping "road" he and his "girlish" love once "climb[ed]" together, on a "dry March" night nearly forty years earlier.
The second through sixth stanzas describe the moments they shared together on the hill, walking beside a horse-drawn carriage to give the tired little "pony[]" a rest. Hardy doesn't recall the specifics of what they "did" and "talked of"—or else he withholds these specifics from the reader, claiming they hardly "matter[]." But the "quality" of the experience persists through the years, lingering in his "mind" and supposedly even imprinting the "rocks" themselves (or so he hyperbolically suggests).
The final stanza returns to the present. As Hardy drives away from Castle Boterel, he "look[s] back amid the rain" at the "shrinking [phantom]" of his wife's memory, knowing he will "Never again" come back this way.
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Literary and Historical Context of “At Castle Boterel”
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Literary Context
Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was one of the most successful novelists of the Victorian era, as well as one of the major poets of the early 20th century. His later novels—morally complex, pessimistic works like Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895)—challenged Victorian sensibilities, and the often angry reaction to their publication caused him to focus on poetry in his later years.
"At Castle Boterel" is one of a sequence of elegies Hardy wrote after the death of his first wife, Emma Gifford, in 1912. (Other notable poems from this group include "The Voice," "Where the Picnic Was," and "Beeny Cliff.") Hardy and Gifford were not a happy couple by the time she died; in fact, they were barely a couple at all. Gifford spent much of her later years in the attic of their home, referring to the space as "my sweet refuge and solace." Her death forced Hardy to confront not just her passing, but the entire arc of their relationship and his treatment of her.
The sequence of elegies for Emma, called simply "Poems of 1912-13," appears in Hardy's 1914 collection Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries (sometimes shortened to Satires of Circumstance). In addition to these poems of mourning, the volume contains several other famous Hardy poems, including "Channel Firing" and "The Convergence of the Twain."
Historical Context
Hardy grew up in 1840s and 1850s England, making him a man of the Victorian era (which lasted from 1837 to 1901). He wrote this poem in his later years, however, after the 1912 death of his first wife, Emma Gifford. The poem recalls a moment from their courtship in the county of Cornwall, England—the former "domain" of their love, which Hardy revisited in the wake of Gifford's passing.
The pair had met way back in 1870, when Hardy was commissioned to write a report on the condition of a church in the southwest of England (near where Gifford lived at the time). He courted Gifford and married her four years later, though by this point, their relationship already had its problems. Gifford resented the fact that she was marrying someone technically of a lower class. Meanwhile, Hardy felt drawn to other women, including Florence Dugdale, whom he married two years after Gifford's death.
By all accounts, the marriage grew acrimonious, and Gifford spent most of her time cloistered in an attic room. She wrote a set of diaries about Hardy, titled "What I Think of My Husband," which he famously burned after her death. Of Hardy, she once claimed that "he understands only the women he invents—the others not at all."
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More “At Castle Boterel” Resources
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External Resources
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A Biography of Thomas Hardy — Read more about the poet's life and career in this Poetry Foundation article.
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The Thomas Hardy Society — Browse the website of the Thomas Hardy Society, a resource for understanding and appreciating one of England's most renowned writers.
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Hardy on the BBC — Watch the documentary "Thomas Hardy: Fate, Exclusion and Tragedy."
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An Introduction to the Victorian Era — Learn about the historical period in which Hardy wrote.
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A "Diary" on Hardy and Gifford — An essay outlining Thomas Hardy and Emma Gifford's complicated marriage and the poems it inspired.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Thomas Hardy
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