[Ttha-potm] "The Minute before Meeting" TTHA Poem of the Month for September 2008

[Betty Cortus]

       The Minute before Meeting

The grey gaunt days dividing us in twain
Seemed hopeless hills my strength must faint to climb,
But they are gone; and now I would detain
The few clock-beats that part us; rein back Time,

And live in close expectance never closed
In change for far expectance closed at last,
So harshly has expectance been imposed
On my long need while these slow blank months passed.

And knowing that what is now about to be
Will all have been in O, so short a space!
I read beyond it my despondency
When more dividing months shall take its place,
Thereby denying to this hour of grace
A full-up measure of felicity.
     1871

The old saying that the expectation of a happy event often exceeds  
its realization is a pervasive theme here.  The speaker yearns to  
prolong the last few exquisite moments of suspense preceding a  
fleeting romantic tryst in order to postpone the the inevitable  
anticlimactic let-down that will follow it.

Although the 1871 date of the poem's composition would suggest an  
obvious link to the events surrounding Hardy's return visit to St.  
Juliot in that year, an even more compelling subtext discloses the  
poet's lifelong preoccupation with the phenomenon of  "Time" itself.   
The word is almost invariably capitalized in Hardy's poetry.  Note  
how the words  "clock-beats",  "minute", "days", and "months"  
scattered throughout the poem work to stretch time out or compress  
it.  Time is relative in emotional terms;  long months of waiting for  
reunion with one's lover drag interminably, while the time together  
elapses so swiftly that it will fill  "O, so short a space."  Quality  
of time varies as well.  The period of past "long expectance" is  
likened to a series of "hopeless hills" to be tediously surmounted,  
whereas the final minute of "close expectance" is one of such intense  
passion, that the speaker, although well aware of its  ephemerality,  
wishes it would never end.  In what ways is time being manipulated in  
these lines?

On another level this poem harks back, at least in an oblique way, to  
the early  "courtly love" sonnets in which the frustration of sexual  
longing was a key element.  Do the formal strictures of the sonnet  
limit in any way the poet's full expression of a more modern  
sensibility?

Lastly, F. B. Pinion believes that the adjectival  "full-up" in the  
final line weakens the poem.*  Do you agree?  Would anyone care to  
suggest an alternative?

I warmly invite you to share your own observations and comments on  
"The Minute before Meeting", poem number 191, transcribed from James  
Gibson's Variorum Edition of Thomas Hardy: The Complete Poems.   
(London: Macmillan, 1978).

When using the reply function to respond to the poem please delete  
this message and all earlier posts.

With Good Wishes,
Betty Cortus, POTM Director
bcortus at hardy-l.com

* A Commentary on the Poems of Thomas Hardy,  (Macmillan, 1976)  74, 5.








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