The Full Text of “Where the Picnic Was”
1Where we made the fire
2In the summer time
3Of branch and briar
4On the hill to the sea,
5I slowly climb
6Through winter mire,
7And scan and trace
8The forsaken place
9Quite readily.
10Now a cold wind blows,
11And the grass is gray,
12But the spot still shows
13As a burnt circle—aye,
14And stick-ends, charred,
15Still strew the sward
16Whereon I stand,
17Last relic of the band
18Who came that day!
19Yes, I am here
20Just as last year,
21And the sea breathes brine
22From its strange straight line
23Up hither, the same
24As when we four came.
25—But two have wandered far
26From this grassy rise
27Into urban roar
28Where no picnics are,
29And one—has shut her eyes
30For evermore.
The Full Text of “Where the Picnic Was”
1Where we made the fire
2In the summer time
3Of branch and briar
4On the hill to the sea,
5I slowly climb
6Through winter mire,
7And scan and trace
8The forsaken place
9Quite readily.
10Now a cold wind blows,
11And the grass is gray,
12But the spot still shows
13As a burnt circle—aye,
14And stick-ends, charred,
15Still strew the sward
16Whereon I stand,
17Last relic of the band
18Who came that day!
19Yes, I am here
20Just as last year,
21And the sea breathes brine
22From its strange straight line
23Up hither, the same
24As when we four came.
25—But two have wandered far
26From this grassy rise
27Into urban roar
28Where no picnics are,
29And one—has shut her eyes
30For evermore.
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“Where the Picnic Was” Introduction
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"Where the Picnic Was" (1913) is one of a number of elegies Thomas Hardy wrote for his wife, Emma Gifford, after her death in 1912. It does not mention her by name, however, and it gestures toward her death only at the end. The poem's speaker revisits a seaside spot where he, a woman, and two other friends had a picnic the previous summer. Looking around in winter, he notes all that has changed in the meantime—the woman has died and the two friends moved to the city—as well as what has remained "the same" (particularly the sea). With bleak nostalgia, the poem contrasts the transience of human life and love with the permanence of nature and death.
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“Where the Picnic Was” Summary
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In the place where we built a summertime fire out of boughs and brush, on the hill facing the ocean, I now trudge up slowly through winter mud, look around, and find the abandoned spot very easily.
Now there's a wintry wind blowing, and the ground is a dull color, but our picnic spot is still visible as a circle of burnt grass. Yes, and burnt twigs still litter the turf I'm standing on, as the last, lingering member of the group who came here that day.
Yes, I'm here just as I was last summer, and the ocean sends up a salty breeze from its odd, straight shoreline, just as when the four of us picnicked here. But two of us have moved far away from this grassy hill, into the noise of a city where no one has picnics. And one of us has gone to her eternal rest (died).
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“Where the Picnic Was” Themes
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Grief, Nostalgia, and the Brevity of Life
One of Thomas Hardy's many elegies for his wife, Emma, "Where the Picnic Was" is a poem haunted by loss and mourning. The speaker (a version of the poet) returns to a seaside hill where, just "last year," he picnicked with an unnamed "her" and two other friends. The beloved “her” has since died, however, and the two friends have moved to a city "Where no picnics are." Though the speaker has no trouble finding the old picnic site again, it now seems ghostly and abandoned. The physical transformation of the landscape reflects the speaker’s loneliness and grief, and the poem can be read as a meditation on the jarring brevity of friendship, love, and life itself.
When the grieving speaker returns to the picnic site, the summer landscape has turned to “winter mire” and the warm weather has turned into a “cold wind.” The only remnants of the picnic itself are "charred" twigs and a "burnt circle" on the grass, where the group apparently built a fire. Symbolically, these details reflect the speaker's loss of joy and human warmth. All in all, the site looks "forsaken": a clue that the speaker feels forsaken (after the departure of his friends and the loss of his beloved). He feels like a burnt-out remnant himself: the "Last relic of the band" of picnicking friends.
For the speaker, the picnic site is not only a reminder of his loved ones' vanishing; it's also a preview of his own. He marvels that, while he's "here / Just as last year," and the sea looks and smells the same, everything else is different. The other three picnickers are nowhere to be seen and won't be coming back. Two "have wandered far" into the "urban roar" of the city, and one—seemingly a woman he loves—has died ("shut her eyes / For evermore"). The speaker also laments that his friends have moved to the city, "Where no picnics are." This hyperbolic claim makes sense as a kind of eulogy for a simpler or happier time in the speaker's life. For these friends, and for the speaker, picnics are over—or at least, they'll never have the same kind of innocent charm. And, someday, the speaker (who already feels like a "relic") won't be returning here, either.
Though the poem mourns Hardy's wife, with whom he shared a complicated 38-year marriage, the speaker mentions none of this background. All he can say, finally, is that a woman who meant something to him is now dead. But as the speaker's closing revelation, this is clearly the motivating incident behind the poem. The "Picnic" seems to become a metaphor for their best years together; now that time is a "Was," not an "is." In general, for human beings, life and joy are tragically brief: only death is "For evermore."
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Humanity and Nature
In the final stanza of "Where the Picnic Was," the speaker contrasts the remnants of the picnic—and of his lost love and friendship—with the constancy of the sea. Through this image, the poem contrasts the impermanence of human life and happiness with the permanence of nature.
The speaker returns to the picnic site in winter and finds that it’s still there. It looks different because the seasons have changed, but it still exists. And while the cold weather seems to reflect the speaker’s private pain, it also reflects the relentless, unfeeling march of time. Even when summer returns, the people the speaker has lost will not. Meanwhile, the sea looks “the same”: it hasn’t changed to acknowledge his personal loss and sorrow.
The speaker does note that the sea looks "strange." Perhaps the world in general looks strange in the wake of tragedy, or perhaps the permanence of nature (the sea is forever "the same") feels inherently strange to humans, whose lives are governed by loss and change. In any case, the sea still "breathes," unlike the woman the speaker has lost, and it's grand and eternal, unlike puny, fleeting human lives. The sea's unyielding "straight line"—and, by extension, nature's permanence—offers a kind of yardstick by which to measure the turbulent changes of individual experience.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Where the Picnic Was”
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Lines 1-5
Where we made the fire
In the summer time
Of branch and briar
On the hill to the sea,
I slowly climb"Where the Picnic Was" opens with several lines of scene-setting and reminiscence. The speaker is "slowly climb[ing]" a "hill to the sea"—that is, a seaside hill or dune. But the reader doesn't learn this fact until line 5. For the first four lines, the speaker narrates in past tense, recalling an unspecified "we" who "made [a] fire" on this same hill "In the summer time." The group built the fire out of some "branch and briar" (boughs and brambles) in the area. As the poem's title suggests, this cozy seaside fire was part of a "Picnic" the speaker once enjoyed with some companions.
Right away, then, the poem sets up a juxtaposition between past and present, with the past apparently foremost in the speaker's mind. Similarly, the word "Was" in the title hints at a nostalgic mood. The tangled syntax in these opening lines ("Where we made the fire / In the summer time / Of branch and briar," as opposed to the more natural Where we made the fire of branch and briar in the summer time) makes the sentence tricky going for the reader. Combined with the postponement of the main verb, this effect helps convey the difficulty of the speaker's slow "climb." So do the short, heavily enjambed lines, which make the speaker sound a little short-winded.
All in all, it's a bit of an uphill climb just to reach the point of this first sentence. And the sentence isn't even over yet!
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Lines 6-9
Through winter mire,
And scan and trace
The forsaken place
Quite readily. -
Lines 10-13
Now a cold wind blows,
And the grass is gray,
But the spot still shows
As a burnt circle—aye, -
Lines 14-18
And stick-ends, charred,
Still strew the sward
Whereon I stand,
Last relic of the band
Who came that day! -
Lines 19-24
Yes, I am here
Just as last year,
And the sea breathes brine
From its strange straight line
Up hither, the same
As when we four came. -
Lines 25-30
—But two have wandered far
From this grassy rise
Into urban roar
Where no picnics are,
And one—has shut her eyes
For evermore.
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“Where the Picnic Was” Symbols
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The Extinguished Fire
In the first stanza, the poem's speaker describes the "fire" the picnickers made the previous summer. In the second stanza, the speaker finds the place where this fire once blazed—only now it's just a "burnt circle" of grass littered with "charred," broken "stick-ends." Since the poem is an elegy (for Thomas Hardy's wife, Emma), this extinguished fire seems to symbolize human life itself. Life's flame dies all too quickly, leaving only memories scattered like debris.
The dead fire also symbolizes the lost warmth of love and friendship. Not only is the speaker's beloved gone, the friends they picnicked with have moved away—off to the "roar" of the big city. (Notice how this giant "urban roar" subtly invokes, and contrasts with, the intimacy of a roaring fire.) The speaker's personal life is now as cold and broken as these "stick-ends" on the winter hillside.
Notice, too, that the vanished fire leaves a burnt circle. This shape, too, holds symbolic meaning: it might stand in for the life cycle (the circle of life) or for human intimacy itself (as in the idiom "circle of friends" or "family circle"). Life and love/friendship burn out quickly, this ghostly image seems to suggest. They do leave some mark on the world—but even that is not permanent (new grass will grow eventually; the world will move on).
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Picnics
Over the course of "Where the Picnic Was," picnics themselves take on symbolic meaning. They come to represent intimate human gatherings in general, as well as small-town intimacy and intimacy with nature.
This becomes especially clear in lines 27-28, as the speaker laments that two of his former picnic companions have disappeared "Into urban roar / Where no picnics are." This can't literally be true (city dwellers have picnics in parks!), but symbolically, it suggests that city dwellers aren't as closely tied to nature as country dwellers. It also implies that human relationships in the big city are colder and more impersonal. People there congregate in droves rather than in small "band[s]" (see line 17). To the speaker, then, the picnic stands in for country life, rural authenticity, and the strength of small-town bonds.
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“Where the Picnic Was” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
"Where the Picnic Was" contains frequent alliteration. Besides adding emphasis to particular lines, this device makes the poem as a whole more musical.
In the first stanza, the alliteration is pretty light: there's just "branch and briar" in line 3 and "sea" and "slowly" in lines 4-5. But things get much denser in the second stanza. After the /gr/ sounds in "the grass is gray" (line 11), there's a cascade of sibilant /s/ and /st/ words:
But the spot still shows
As a burnt circle—aye,
And stick-ends, charred,
Still strew the sward
Whereon I stand,Try reading this passage aloud: all the /st/ words, in particular, make it sticky and tough to say. That difficulty seems to mirror the emotional strain of the passage, as the speaker confronts the "charred" remnants not only of a summer picnic but of his former, happier life. The harsh, hissing, unpleasant sounds also fit the ugliness of the imagery: the "burnt" grass, "strew[n]" debris, etc.
In the final stanza, /br/ and /st/ alliteration helps draw attention to one of the poem's key images:
And the sea breathes brine
From its strange straight lineThese strong, repeating consonants evoke the consistency and durability of "the sea," which keeps "breath[ing]" no matter what—even as puny human lives come and go.
Finally, the shared /r/ sounds in "grassy rise" and "urban roar" (lines 26-27) help the poet underline a contrast: between the speaker's natural, rural landscape and the unnatural "roar" of city streets.
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Enjambment
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Caesura
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Imagery
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Juxtaposition
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"Where the Picnic Was" 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.
- Briar
- Mire
- Scan and trace
- Aye
- Strew
- Sward
- Whereon
- Band
- Hither
- For evermore
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Brambles; prickly wild bushes (here used as kindling).
- See where this vocabulary word appears in the poem.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Where the Picnic Was”
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Form
"Where the Picnic Was" consists of two nine-line stanzas and a twelve-line stanza, all of which rhyme according to slightly different patterns. (In other words, the poem has no single, consistent rhyme scheme.) The poem follows an accentual meter: even as its lines range from four to six syllables each, there are generally two stressed syllables per line. However, this meter starts to vary a bit more in the second half of the poem.
In the opening stanza, the speaker "slowly climb[s]" a hill, and the poem's fairly short, heavily enjambed lines help capture this image of slow, effortful climbing. It's also notable that, in terms of stanza length (and, to some degree, meter), the poet establishes a pattern and then breaks from it in the final stanza. The first two stanzas are shorter and rhythmically tighter, while the third gets a bit longer and messier, as the speaker reveals what the poem is really about. (He's not just recalling a picnic; he's grieving!) In this way, the form reflects the speaker's emotional containment and (slight) emotional release.
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Meter
"Where the Picnic Was" uses accentual meter. The length of its lines varies, but each line contains two stressed syllables (with a few exceptions toward the end). Listen to how this pattern sounds in the opening lines, for example:
Where we made the fire
In the summer time
Of branch and briar
On the hill to the sea,
I slowly climb [...]The line length ranges from four to six syllables, and the stresses land in different places, but there are typically two stressed syllables per line. These steady, heavy beats—combined with the poem's short-winded lines—help evoke the speaker's "slow[]" trudge up the seaside "hill."
Again, the main variations in this pattern come toward the end, in lines like "But two have wandered far" and "And one—has shut her eyes" (lines 25 and 29). Both are easiest to read with three strong stresses rather than two. These variations suggest an emotional shift as the speaker opens up about his loss. This shift or faltering gets reflected in the awkward halting of the rhythm.
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Rhyme Scheme
"Where the Picnic Was" rhymes but does not follow a consistent rhyme scheme. The first stanza rhymes ABACBADDC, for example, while the second stanza has a different structure: EFEFGGHHF. The third stanza is longer and follows yet another pattern (e.g., it starts with three rhymed couplets).
While the order of rhymes fluctuates, rhyme is very prominent in the poem. Overall, these effects shape the poem into a kind of rough or broken song. The shifting rhyme pattern might reflect the slight emotional disarray of the speaker, who seems to be trying to make sense of his life after a tragic loss.
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“Where the Picnic Was” Speaker
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The speaker is more or less a stand-in for the poet, Thomas Hardy. The poem doesn't reveal much about the speaker (name, gender, etc.), but Hardy himself grouped "Where the Picnic Was" among his "Poems of 1912-13," a series of elegies for his first wife, Emma Gifford. Because the poem has strong autobiographical roots, this guide refers to the speaker as "him" and assumes that the "her" in line 29 is Emma.
The speaker's mood is mournful and nostalgic. He's revisiting the site of a seaside picnic he shared with three other people: a woman he cared about (i.e., Emma) and two unidentified friends or companions. The woman is now dead (has gone to sleep "For evermore"), and the friends have moved off to the big city (joined the "urban roar"). However, the speaker doesn't reveal any of this context until the last six lines of the poem (starting in line 25). He still seems to be processing the loss, and the suddenness of the loss. Thus, he spends most of the poem remarking in a general way about how much has changed since the "summer" of the picnic—even as some things, such as the sea, remain eerily "the same."
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“Where the Picnic Was” Setting
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The setting here is a seaside hill, or "hill to the sea," where the speaker and three companions had a picnic the previous "summer." The season is now "winter," and the hill is covered in "gray" grass and "mire" (muddy or swampy ground). There's "a cold wind blow[ing]," too. In this "forsaken place," the speaker finds the last remnants of the old picnic: "a burnt circle" where the group built a fire, and "stick-ends, charred," littering the "sward" or turf. Meanwhile, "the sea breathes" its "brin[y]" air up the hillside.
All of these details emphasize the loneliness, coldness, and brokenness of the setting—which, in turn, seems to reflect the loneliness, numbness, and brokenness of the grieving speaker. He feels "forsaken" himself after the death and departure of loved ones. By juxtaposing the happy memory of the summer picnic with this scene of winter bleakness, the poem creates a powerful emotional contrast.
In lines 25-28, the poem also contrasts the rural isolation of this "grassy rise" with the "urban roar" of the big city (likely London, since virtually all of Hardy's work is set in England). Here by the sea, cheerful picnics are at least possible, but in the city where the speaker's friends have gone, there are "no picnics." (Or so the speaker imagines.) As a result, he feels nostalgic for what this setting once meant to him and crushed at the absence of the people who made it meaningful.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Where the Picnic Was”
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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.
"Where the Picnic Was" is the last in 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," "The Going," 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."
Though the poem and the wider sequence were written after the death of Queen Victoria, Hardy's work is often considered part of a general trend of Victorian realism or pessimism. Writers in this mode challenged a variety of religious and social assumptions that scientific advances (e.g., Darwin's theory of evolution) had cast in doubt. For example, "Where the Picnic Was," like "The Voice" and other elegies from the same sequence, offers no redeeming uplift—only philosophical uncertainty or bleakness. Death is "For evermore" (there's no hint of an afterlife), and the speaker feels as "forsaken" as the landscape.
Historical Context
The picnic in the poem seems to have been based on a real-life event: a June 1, 1912 gathering to celebrate Hardy's receiving a gold medal from the Royal Society of Literature. Besides Hardy and Gifford, the two picnickers on this occasion were the poet Henry Newbolt and W. B. Yeats, the greatest Irish poet and playwright of his era. Jahan Ramazani suggests that the passing reference to these "two" friends, as well as to the celebration, ends the poem "in a comforting allusion to Hardy's poetic powers."
Hardy and Gifford had met way back in 1870: Hardy had been commissioned to write a report on the condition of a church in the southwest of England near where Gifford was living at the time. They married four years later, though their relationship already had its problems by this point. Gifford felt resentful that she was marrying someone technically of a lower class; Hardy felt drawn to other women, including Florence Dugdale, whom he married two years after Gifford's death.
By all accounts, the pair grew resentful and Gifford spent most of her time cloistered away in an attic room. She wrote a set of diaries about Hardy entitled "What I Think of My Husband," which he famously burned after her death. Of Hardy, she once claimed, "He understands only the women he invents—the others not at all."
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More “Where the Picnic Was” Resources
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External Resources
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The Poet's Life and Work — A short biography of Hardy at the Poetry Foundation.
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Thomas, Emma, and the Elegies — Some background on the Thomas Hardy-Emma Gifford marriage and the poet's 1912-1913 elegies for his wife.
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The Poem Aloud — Listen to a reading of "Where the Picnic Was."
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Hardy and the Victorian Era — Hardy lived into the age of modernism, but he was a product of Victorian England. Learn more about the era with which he's closely associated.
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The Heart of Hardy — A BBC One documentary about Hardy's celebrated life and career.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Thomas Hardy
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