The Voice - Thomas Hardy
A Haunting Echo of Lost Love and Yearning
The Voice
by Thomas Hardy
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.
Thomas Hardy’s poem “The Voice” captures the speaker’s acute sense of loss and longing for a loved one—commonly understood to be Hardy’s late wife, Emma. The poem opens with a direct address to the woman, whose call seems to echo through the speaker’s memory. He envisions her as she was in earlier, happier times—when “our day was fair.”
The central question threads through the stanzas: is the speaker truly hearing her voice, or is it merely the breeze moving across a damp meadow? Hardy underscores the tension between hoped-for reality and the probable illusion. The speaker’s desire to see her once more is set against nature’s indifference: the wind that blows, the leaves that fall, and the sense of loneliness in a landscape that provides no definitive answer.
Formally, Hardy uses simple diction and rhythmic quatrains to heighten the emotional impact. Each stanza amplifies the speaker’s yearning, culminating in the final lines where he persists in moving forward—“faltering” through a world that seems permeated by her absence. The repeated imagery of wind and falling leaves conveys transience and hints that the beloved’s presence remains elusive.
Ultimately, “The Voice” evokes a balance of hope and despair: the speaker aches for the lost presence, even as he suspects he is chasing a memory. Hardy’s restrained yet intense language pulls the reader into the speaker’s psychological landscape, where every breeze seems haunted by the possibility of a voice that once belonged to a cherished figure—and now exists only as a spectral echo.
Key points
• The poem dramatizes the tension between a longing for a departed loved one and the indifference of nature.
• Hardy’s simple form and direct address intensify the emotional resonance of the speaker’s memories.
• The question “Is it you?” underscores the speaker’s conflict between hope and reason.
• “The Voice” explores the lasting emotional pull of grief, suggesting that love can persist as a haunting presence long after death.
