IGCSE English Literature

Paper 1 Section B
The Study of Poetry:
Thomas Hardy
You will sit this exam in May in the same exam as
prose. The exam is one hour 30 minutes, so you
should spend 45 minutes on poetry.
Assessment:
AO1 Content
AO2 Meanings and Context
AO3 Writers Methods
AO4 Communication
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Contents
Specification
Glossary
Thomas Hardy Biography
Poems
Neutral Tones
I Look into My Glass
On the Departure Platform
The Darkling Thrush
Drummer Hodge
The Pine Planters
The Going
The Voice
The Convergence of the Twain
In Time of the Breaking Nations
At the Word Farewell
During Wind and Rain
Nobody Comes
No Buyers: A Street Scene
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Specification
Breakdown of the time for Paper One:
Section A
Section B

Prose
Poetry

Spend 45 mins on this section.

Spend 45 mins on this section.

Section B: Poetry
Section B is worth 25% of your IGCSE, and it allows you to demonstrate your ability
to respond critically and imaginatively to a poetry anthology. You must answer one of
two questions about Thomas Hardy.

Both poems will be printed in the exam.

Below are rough (estimate) grade boundaries for this unit:

Grade
A*
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
U

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/25
16
14
12
10
8
6
4
2
0

Glossary of useful poetic terms

Technique
Alliteration
Anthropomorphism

Definition/Example
Reputational consonant sounds
usually at the beginning of words.
Attributing human motivation,
characteristics and behaviour to
animals.

Antithesis

A comparison.

Assonance

The repetition or a pattern of the

same vowel sounds
A pause or breathing space in the
middle of a line of a poem.

Caesura

Connotation

An idea or feeling which a word

invokes for a person in addition to
its literal meaning.

Enjambement

A continuing line which has no

commas or full stops. Often flows
into next line or stanza.

Hyperbole

Extreme exaggeration for effect.

Imagery

The use of pictures, figures of

speech.
A technique that places two
unassociated things beside each
other.
A figure of speech in which two
things are compared, usually by

Juxtaposition

Metaphor

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Effect
To provide emphasis.
Creates a more
imaginative and
philosophical (logical)
tone. Also, more
relatable to the reader.
Pieces together
complete opposites to
create a dramatic
effect makes the
original subject seem
more important.
Provides emphasis.
To give the poem a
natural break, to
introduce an idea or to
emphasise a change in
tone. Usually signalled
by a colon or semicolon.
To offer up various
understandings of the
poem in relation to how
you perceive a line or
word.
Keeps the poem
moving forward and
often helps soften the
poems rhyme scheme.
To emphasise a
particular point.
Evokes ideas, feelings
and objects.
Creates an effect of
surprise.
Create mental imagery.

Onomatopoeia
Paradox
Parenthesis

Pathetic Fallacy
Personification

Rhyming Couplet

Sibilance
Simile

Synaesthesia

saying one thing is another

A figure of speech in which words
are used to imitate sounds.
A contradiction.
A word or phrase inserted in
brackets into a text as an
explanation or afterthought.
When nature is used to represent
human emotion
A figure of speech in which nonhuman things are given human
attributes

A pair of lines that are the same

length and rhyme to form a
complete thought.
Repetition of S sounds.
A figure of speech in which two
things are compared using the
word like or as
The fusing together of two senses.

Creates a sense of
emotion.
Used to make the
reader think.
To explain a thought or
further it slightly.
To reflect mood.
Creates a more
imaginative and
philosophical (logical)
tone. Also, more
relatable to the reader.
Add a sense of
repetition to reinforce a
specific idea.
Creates emphasis.
Creates mental
imagery for the reader.
Often creates a
crescendo (increased
intensity).

When describing the poets use of the senses use the following terms:

Visual imagery sense of sight

Olfactory imagery sense of smell
Tactile imagery sense of touch
Auditory imagery sense of hearing
Gustatory imagery sense of taste

Stanza: two or more lines of poetry that together form one of the divisions of a poem
(like a paragraph):

Tercet three lined stanza

Quatrain four lined stanza
Sestet six lined stanza
Septet seven lined stanza
Octave eight lined stanza
Sonnet fourteen lined stanza / poem

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Thomas Hardy Biography

Thomas Hardy was born June 2, 1840, in the village of Upper

Bockhampton, located in Southwestern England. His father was a
stone mason and a violinist. His mother enjoyed reading and relating
all the folk songs and legends of the region. Between his parents,
Hardy gained all the interests that would appear in his novels and his
own life: his love for architecture and music, his interest in the
lifestyles of the country folk, and his passion for all sorts of literature.
At the age of eight, Hardy began to attend Julia Martin's school in Bockhampton. However,
most of his education came from the books he found in Dorchester, the nearby town. He
learned French, German, and Latin by teaching himself through these books. At sixteen,
Hardy's father apprenticed his son to a local architect, John Hicks. Under Hicks' tutelage,
Hardy learned much about architectural drawing and restoring old houses and churches.
Hardy loved the apprenticeship because it allowed him to learn the histories of the houses
and the families that lived there. Despite his work, Hardy did not forget his academics: in the
evenings, Hardy would study with the Greek scholar Horace Moule.
In 1862, Hardy was sent to London to work with the architect Arthur Blomfield. During his five
years in London, Hardy immersed himself in the cultural scene by visiting the museums and
theaters and studying classic literature. He even began to write his own poetry. Although he
did not stay in London, choosing to return to Dorchester as a church restorer, he took his
newfound talent for writing to Dorchester as well.
From 1867, Hardy wrote poetry and novels, though the first part of his career was devoted to
the novel. At first he published anonymously, but when people became interested in his
works, he began to use his own name. Like Dickens, Hardy's novels were published in serial
forms in magazines that were popular in both England and America. His first popular novel
was Under the Greenwood Tree, published in 1872. The next great novel, Far from the
Madding Crowd (1874) was so popular that with the profits, Hardy was able to give up
architecture and marry Emma Gifford. Other popular novels followed in quick succession:
The Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), The Woodlanders
(1887), Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895). In addition to these
larger works, Hardy published three collections of short stories and five smaller novels, all
moderately successful. However, despite the praise Hardy's fiction received, many critics
also found his works to be too shocking, especially Tess of the D'Urbervilles and Jude the
Obscure. The outcry against Jude was so great that Hardy decided to stop writing novels
and return to his first great love, poetry.
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Over the years, Hardy divided his time between his home, Max Gate, in Dorchester and his
lodgings in London. In his later years, he remained in Dorchester to focus completely on his
poetry. In 1898, he saw his dream of becoming a poet realized with the publication of
Wessex Poems. He then turned his attentions to an epic drama in verse, The Dynasts; it
was finally completed in 1908. Before his death, he had written over 800 poems, many of
them published while he was in his eighties.
By the last two decades of Hardy's life, he had achieved fame as great as Dickens's fame. In
1910, he was awarded the Order of Merit. New readers had also discovered his novels by
the publication of the Wessex Editions, the definitive versions of all Hardy's early works. As a
result, Max Gate became a literary shrine.
Hardy also found happiness in his personal life. His first wife, Emma, died in 1912. Although
their marriage had not been happy, Hardy grieved at her sudden death. In 1914, he married
Florence Dugale, and she was extremely devoted to him. After his death, Florence published
Hardy's autobiography in two parts under her own name.
After a long and highly successful life, Thomas Hardy died on January 11, 1928, at the age
of 87. His ashes were buried in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey.

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Thomas Hardy Neutral Tones

1867

We stood by a pond that winter day,

And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod;
They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.
Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles of years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro
On which lost the more by our love.
The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a-wing.
Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.

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Context:

Based on the narrators picture of a relationship ending

Colour
2 characters
Neutral = pale and grey; unbiased
Tone = colour; sound

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Thomas Hardy I Look into My Glass

Circa 1897

I look into my glass,

And view my wasting skin,
And say, "Would God it came to pass
My heart had shrunk as thin!"
For then, I, undistrest
By hearts grown cold to me,
Could lonely wait my endless rest
With equanimity.
But Time, to make me grieve,
Part steals, lets part abide;
And shakes this fragile frame at eve
With throbbings of noontide.

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Context:

Hardy is both looking in the mirror and painting in words an emotional selfportrait
Age dominates in this poem
Wasting shrivelled, withered
Would God it came to pass I wish it would happen
Wait my endless rest wait for my death
Equanimity composure, serenity
Frame body
Eve the evening of life, old age

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Thomas Hardy On the Departure Platform

We kissed at the barrier; and passing through

She left me, and moment by moment got
Smaller and smaller, until my view
She was but a spot;

A wee white spot of muslin fluff

That down the diminishing platform bore
Through hustling crowds of gentle and rough
To the carriage door.

Under the lamplights fitful glowers,

Behind dark groups from far and near,
Whose interests were apart from ours,
She would disappear,

Then show again, till I ceased to see

That flexible form, that nebulous white;
And she who was more than my life to me
Had vanished quite.

We have penned new plans since that fair fond day,

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And in season she will appear again

Perhaps in the same soft white array
But never as then!

-And why, young man, must eternally fly

A joy youll repeat, if you love her well?
-O friend, nought happens twice thus; why,
I cannot tell!

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Context:

This poem tells the story of a romantic partner whom he leaves at a train
station, probably never to see again.
It is a poem about love
3 characters
Wee small
Muslin fluff a beautiful gown (dress)
Nebulous connotation of clouds

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Thomas Hardy The Darkling Thrush

1900

I leant upon a coppice gate

When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winters dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The lands sharp features seemed to be

The Centurys corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon the earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among

The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
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Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings

Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

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Context:

Written on New Years Eve

The speaker is reminded that everything around him is quickly leading to
death and decay.
Depressing tone, until the bird sings!
Darkling an old word for a creature of darkness
Thrush a bird
Coppice an area of woodland
Bine a long climbing plant
Lyre a stringed instrument
Illimited unlimited
Beruffled disordered, scruffy

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Thomas Hardy Drummer Hodge

1902

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest

Uncoffined-just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around;
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.

Young Hodge the drummer never knewFresh from his Wessex homeThe meaning of the broad Karoo,
The bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.

Yet portion of that unknown plain

Will Hodge forever be;
His homely northern breast and brain
Grow to some foreign tree,
And strange-eyed constellations reign
His stars eternally.
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Context:

Drummer boys were used to carry messages and ammunition to the front line
in war and were very vulnerable.
This was written in 1899, a few weeks after the start of the Second Boer War.
This poem tells the story of a British soldier during the Boer War in South
Africa who is buried without ceremony and in a very foreign environment,
especially considering that he came from a village in Dorset.
Kopje-crest a small hill
Veldt open grassland in South Africa
Karoo a semi-desert region in South Africa

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Thomas Hardy The Pine Planters

1909

(Marty Souths Reverie)

I
We work here together
In blast and breeze;
He fills the earth in,
I hold the trees.

He does not notice

That what I do
Keeps me from moving
And chills me through.

He has seen one fairer

I feel by his eye,
Which skims me as though
I were not by.

And since she passed here

He scarce has known
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But that the woodland

Holds him alone.

I have worked here with him

Since morning shine,
He busy with his thoughts
And I with mine.

I have helped him so many,

So many days,
But never win any
Small word of praise!

Shall I not sigh to him

That I work on
Glad to be nigh to him
Though hope is gone?

Nay, though he never

Knew love like mine,

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I'll bear it ever

And make no sign!

II
From the bundle at hand here
I take each tree,
And set it to stand, here
Always to be;
When, in a second,
As if from fear
Of Life unreckoned
Beginning here,
It starts a sighing
Through day and night,
Though while there lying
'Twas voiceless quite.

It will sigh in the morning,

Will sigh at noon,
At the winter's warning,
In wafts of June;
Grieving that never
Kind Fate decreed
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It should for ever

Remain a seed,
And shun the welter
Of things without,
Unneeding shelter
From storm and drought.

Thus, all unknowing

For whom or what
We set it growing
In this bleak spot,
It still will grieve here
Throughout its time,
Unable to leave here,
Or change its clime;
Or tell the story
Of us to-day
When, halt and hoary,
We pass away.

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Context:

Part of Marty Souths reverie written in 1909.

Marty South inspires the character in this poem.
Marty South is secretly working in place of her father, who is ill in bed.
Hoary greyish white; overused and unoriginal

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Thomas Hardy The Going

1912

Why did you give no hint that night

That quickly after the morrow's dawn,
And calmly, as if indifferent quite,
You would close your term here, up and be gone
Where I could not follow
With wing of swallow
To gain one glimpse of you ever anon!

Never to bid good-bye,

Or lip me the softest call,
Or utter a wish for a word, while I
Saw morning harden upon the wall,
Unmoved, unknowing
That your great going
Had place that moment, and altered all.
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Why do you make me leave the house

And think for a breath it is you I see
At the end of the alley of bending boughs
Where so often at dusk you used to be;
Till in darkening dankness
The yawning blankness
Of the perspective sickens me!

You were she who abode

By those red-veined rocks far West,
You were the swan-necked one who rode
Along the beetling Beeny Crest,
And, reining nigh me,
Would muse and eye me,
While Life unrolled us its very best.

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Why, then, latterly did we not speak,

Did we not think of those days long dead,
And ere your vanishing strive to seek
That time's renewal? We might have said,
"In this bright spring weather
We'll visit together
Those places that once we visited."

Well, well! All's past amend,

Unchangeable. It must go.
I seem but a dead man held on end
To sink down soon. . . . O you could not know
That such swift fleeing
No soul foreseeing
Not even Iwould undo me so!

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Context

A woman (his wife) left suddenly through death.

The speaker laments not only her loss, but the loss of the moment when he
might have known she was leaving.
Anon soon, shortly
Bough a main branch of a tree
Abode live
Beetling - overhanging
Beeny Crest a cliff in Cornwall that overlooks the sea

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Thomas Hardy The Voice

1913

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,

Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,

Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness

Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?

Thus I; faltering forward,

Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.

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Context

A poem about loving someone and kind of hating them too.

Everyone changes, and eventually were just somebody that someone else
used to know
What do we do when that somebody that we used to know dies?
How do we mourn somebody who we no longer love?
Mead a meadow, field
Wan pale
Wistlessness a word Hardy made up, perhaps thinking of the opposite of
wistful (to long for) = conveys the sound of the breeze with their onomatopoeic
sibilance
Norward - northward

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Thomas Hardy The Convergence of the Twain

1915

I
In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

II
Steel chambers, late the pyres
Of her salamandrine fires,
Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

III
Over the mirrors meant
To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

IV
Jewels in joy designed
To ravish the sensuous mind
Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

V
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Dim moon-eyed fishes near

Gaze at the gilded gear
And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?...

VI
Well: while was fashioning
This creature of cleaving wing,
The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

VII
Prepared a sinister mate
For her so gaily great
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.

VIII
And as the smart ship grew
In stature, grace, and hue,
In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

IX
Alien they seemed to be;
No mortal eye could see
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The intimate welding of their later history,

X
Or sign that they were bent
By paths coincident
On being anon twin halves of one august event,

XI
Till the Spinner of the Years
Said "Now!" And each one hears,
And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

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Context

A poem about the Titanic, which sank in 1914.

Telling the story of the Titanics construction
Pyre a heap of material that burns, especially to burn bodies on
Salamandrine epic fires
Thrid an old-fashioned word for passing through something
Lyre stringed instrument common in Greek myths
Vaingloriousness vanity
Immanent something that is inside of us and all parts of the universe kind
of like a divine force of some sort that moves all things, whether we are aware
of it or not
The Shape of Ice the iceberg
August respected and impressive
Anon soon, shortly
The Spinner of the Years a kind of divine providence that unifies all things
and therefore spins the years as we go?

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Thomas Hardy In Time of the Breaking Nations

1915

I
Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.
II
Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
Though Dynasties pass.
III
Yonder a maid and her wight
Come whispering by:
Wars annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die.

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Context

A farmer leads his horse as he farms his fields

A young man and his romantic partner walk by as he does so
Hardy was asked for a heartening poem at a time when public opinion was
turning against the First World War
Harrow to drag a harrow over land (after ploughing)
Clod lumps of earth
Wight old-fashioned word for person
Annal a record of events year by year

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Thomas Hardy At the Word Farewell

1917

She looked like a bird from a cloud

On the clammy lawn,

Moving alone, bare-browed
In the dim of dawn.
The candles alight in the room
For my parting meal
Made all things without doors loom
Strange, ghostly, unreal.

The hour itself was a ghost,

And it seemed to me then
As of chances the chance furthermost
I should see her again.
I beheld not where all was so fleet
That a Plan of the past
Which had ruled us from birthtime to meet
Was in working at last:
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No prelude did I there perceive

To a drama at all,
Of foreshadow what fortune might weave
From beginnings so small;
But I rose as if quicked by a spur
I was bound to obey,
And stepped through the casement to her
Still alone in the gray.

I am leaving youFarewell! I said,

As I followed her on
By an alley bare boughs overspread;
I soon must be gone!
Even then the scale might have been turned
Against love by a feather,
-But crimson one cheek of hers burned
When we came in together.

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Context

Published about five years after the death of Emma

This poem is based on the first meeting of the couple
Hardy writes it in such a way that it could almost be a eulogy for Emma
The poem is about the almost ethereal presence of Emma and how they fell in
love
Bough large branch of a tree
Crimson - red

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Thomas Hardy During Wind and Rain

1917

They sing their dearest songs

He, she, all of themyea,
Treble and tenor and bass,
And one to play;
With the candles mooning each face ...
Ah, no; the years O!
How the sick leaves reel down in throngs!
They clear the creeping moss
Elders and juniorsaye,
Making the pathways neat
And the garden gay;
And they build a shady seat
Ah, no; the years, the years;
See the white storm-birds wing across!
They are blithely breakfasting all
Men and maidensyea,
Under the summer tree,
With a glimpse of the bay,
While pet fowl come to the knee
Ah, no; the years O!
And the rotten rose is ript from the wall.
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They change to a high new house,

He, she, all of themaye,
Clocks and carpets and chairs
On the lawn all day,
And brightest things that are theirs
Ah, no; the years, the years;
Down their carved names the rain-drop ploughs.

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Context

Published about five years after the death of Emma

Reminisces about Emmas life
Hardy focuses on her family and the inevitability of death
Gay happy, carefree
Ript - ripped

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Thomas Hardy Nobody Comes

1924

Tree-leaves labour up and down,

And through them the fainting light
Succumbs to the crawl of night.
Outside in the road the telegraph wire
To the town from the darkening land
Intones to travelers like a spectral lyre
Swept by a spectral hand.

A car comes up, with lamps full-glare,

That flash upon a tree:
It has nothing to do with me,
And whangs along in a world of its own,
Leaving a blacker air;
And mute by the gate I stand again alone,
And nobody pulls up there.

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Context

The poem reminds us of how old Hardy is and what he has lived through
About loneliness and being pessimistic
Juxtaposition between nature and modern technology
Florence was very ill when he was writing this poem
Spectral like a ghost
Whang to produce a loud noise

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Thomas Hardy No Buyers: A Street Scene

1925

A load of brushes and baskets and cradles and chairs

Labours along the street in the rain:
With it a man, a woman, a pony with whiteybrown hairs.
The man foots in front of the horse with a shambling sway
At a slower tread than a funeral train,
While to a dirge-like tune he chants his wares,
Swinging a Turks-head brush (in a drum-majors way
When the bandsmen march and play).

A yard from the back of the man is the whiteybrown ponys nose:
He mirrors his master in every item of pace and pose:
He stops when the man stops, without being told,
And seems to be eased by a pause; too plainly hes old,
Indeed, not strength enough shows
To steer the disjointed waggon straight,
Which wriggles left and right in a rambling line,
Deflected thus by its own warp and weight,
And pushing the pony with it in each incline.
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The woman walks on the pavement verge,

Parallel to the man:
She wears an apron white and wide in span,
And carries a like Turks-head, but more in nursing-wise:
Now and then she joins in his dirge,
But as if her thoughts were on distant things,
The rain clams her apron till it clings.
So, step by step, they move with their merchandize,
And nobody buys.

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Context

Written when Hardy was old, which seems surprising that he should be
publishing such a depressing poem!
A small scene of daily life of a man and his wife who walk aimlessly through
dull and uninterested streets, trying to sell their merchandise.
Dirge a mournful song, a song for the dead

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