Thomas Hardy's Afterwards

Afterwards

When the present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,

  And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,

Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,

  "He was a man who used to notice such things."?

If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid's soundless blink,

  The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight

Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,

  "To him this must have been a familiar sight."

If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,

  When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,

One may say, "He strove that such innocent creatures would come to no harm,

  But he could do little for them, and now he is gone."

If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door,

  Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees,

Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,

  "He was one who had an eye for such mysteries."?

And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom,

  And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,

Till they rise again, as they were a new bell's boom,

  "He hears it not now, but used to notice such things."?

-Thomas Hardy

'Afterwards' comes from Thomas Hardy's volume of poetry Moments of Vision of 1917, when he was 77. The poem was later read at a memorial service after his death ten years later.

It's possible I've read it before, but I don't really remember. It shows up here now because I recently finished Nicholas Jenkins' biography of W. H. Auden's early years in England, The Island. 'Afterwards' was a favorite poem of the teen-aged Auden; he apparently liked it because it emphasized observation of the natural world, hedgehogs travelling furtively over the lawn, dew-fall hawks landing on wind-warped thorns. Though I suspect the general melancholy of the poem appealed to Auden, teenage boy poet, just as much.

(In fact, according to Jenkins, Auden was also reading Thomas Hardy's The Dynasts at the time, Hardy's unperformably long verse drama about the Napoleonic wars. Soldiers and mopery. Maybe Auden was a perfectly normal teenage boy after all?)

Jenkins' book came out in 2024 and definitely got some buzz, (Edward Mendelson: "a Copernican revolution in Auden studies.") I thought it was good, but not necessarily as amazing as that. His father was as important in Auden's life as his mother; given the usual clichés about gay men, this may be a necessary corrective, but since I wasn't all that up on Auden studies anyway... Still if you're interested in Auden, you might very well like it. I learned things.

Hardy's poem is my current memorization project, and, as I'm finding it difficult, I was hoping that typing it in would help. It hasn't seemed to yet. It's got rhyme, it's got meter--those usually help in memorizing. And it's clever about seasons and times of day--that feels like it should help, too. Why is it so difficult? Is it the recondite vocabulary? 'Dewfall', 'outrollings'? Or is it too much holiday season distraction?