Language and style

There are several issues connected to the language and style of the poem “After a Journey” by Thomas Hardy that we must address in order to better understand it. Here are the main points we will focus on.

Playing with language

The poem “After a Journey” is worth analysing in terms of wordplay. The poem strikes as unusual, as the poet addresses a ghost, namely the ghost of his wife, Emma. It is, thus, clear from the very beginning that the poem may not be very straightforward and that Hardy might have chosen to play with language.

Indeed, the poem opens with Hardy’s intention of following a ghost:

“Hereto I come to view a voiceless ghost;,
Whither, O whither will its whim now draw me?” (ll. 1-2)

The beginning also makes the reader think of an unreliable narrator. Although it is known that Hardy and his wife had some rough times  during their marriage, it is still strange that he decided to address her ghost in a poem.

Then, there are several metaphors which add to the ambiguity of the poem. In the first stanza, for example, the “unseen waters” (l. 4) may represent the author’s feelings of sadness and despair, and not only the waters under the cliff.

The second stanza presents the expression “dead scenes” (l. 10). On the one hand, the expre...