THOMAS HARDY 1840-1928

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WHERE THE PICNIC WAS

Where we made the fire,

In the summer time,

Of branch and briar

On the hill to the sea

I slowly climb

Through winter mire,

And scan and trace

The forsaken place

Quite readily.

Now a cold wind blows,

And the grass is grey,

But the spot still shows

As a burnt circle - aye,

And stick-ends, charred,

Still strew the sward

Whereon I stand,

Last relic of the band

Who came that day!

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.

- But two have wandered far

From this grassy rise

Into urban roar

Where no picnics are,

And one - has shut her eyes

For evermore.

 Thomas Hardy's lyric poetry is his best known and most widely read. Poets such as Robert Frost, W.H. Auden and Philip Larkin were greatly influenced by his poems. Claire Tomalin the biographer said that the poems illuminate “the contradictions always present in Hardy, between the vulnerable, doomstruck man and the serene inhabitant of the natural world.”

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