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.

Story

The poem is about Thomas Hardy addressing his dead wife. Hardy thinks that he can hear the voice of his wife. However, it is the voice of his wife when they first met, not during their relationship, as there is a sense that something changed during the course of their relationship; for the worse. Having thought about it, he thinks he is just hearing the wind, but he is just left behind feeling more depressed and grieving than ever.

Tone
The poem beings with a weary and slow start, as the poet looks back with longing into his past. However, as he moves on into the second stanza, he thinks that he can hear his wife, so he gets more excited and passionate. Yet, as he starts to think it is the wind, in the third stanza, the tone then becomes more tentative and doubtful. Yet, by the time the poem is finished, it ends on an even bleaker note than it started on.

Deeper Meaning
This poem talks about the nature of love, and the loss of it. The grief that people feel. Do we idealise people more once they are gone? Despite the fact that Hardy and his wife hardly had a perfect relationship, he remembers it as a perfect one. By allowing himself to think this, he is just left feeling a much more painful grief. The main point here is that love will leave you feeling crippled.

Structure & Form
The first three stanzas follow a very similar pattern, with the same number of syllables. However, the last stanza breaks this pattern, and mimics the speaker's broken emotions. Furthermore, it gives the lsat stanza a tumbling tone, which is emphasized by "faltering forward,".
Some parts of the regular meter, mirror the regular sound of the wind. The repetition of "call" and the end of the poem, creates the feeling of a cycle and it mimics what Hardy says at the start, "call to me". Which creates the effect that he is stuck with this mood and cannot move on.