[Ttha-potm] "Friends Beyond" TTHA Poem of the Month for January 2009

[Betty Cortus]

                                Friends Beyond

William Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,
        Robert's kin, and John's and Ned's,
And the Squire, and Lady Susan, lie in Mellstock churchyard now!

'Gone' I call them, gone for good, that group of local hearts and heads;
        Yet at mothy curfew-tide,
And at midnight when the noon-heat breathes it back from walls and  
leads;

They've a way of whispering to me – fellow-wight who yet abide –
        In the muted, measured note
Of a ripple under archways, or a lone cave's stillicide:

'We have triumphed: this achievement turns the bane to antidote,
        Unsuccesses to success,
Many thought-worn eves and morrows to a morrow free of thought.

'No more need we corn and clothing, feel of old terrestrial stress;
        Chill detraction stirs no sigh;
Fear of death has even bygone us: death gave all that we possess.'

W.D. – 'Ye mid burn the old bass-viol that I set such value by.'
Squire – 'You may hold the manse in fee,
        You may wed my spouse, may let my children's memory of me die.'

Lady S. – 'You may have my rich brocades, my laces; take each  
household key;
        Ransack coffer, desk, bureau;
Quiz the few poor treasures hid there, con the letters kept by me.'

Far. – 'Ye mid zell my favourite heifer, ye mid let the charlock grow,
        Foul the grinterns, give up thrift.'
Far. Wife. – 'If ye break my best blue china, children, I shan't care  
or ho,'

All. – 'We've no wish to hear the tidings, how the people's fortune's  
shift;
        What your daily doings are;
     Who are wedded, born, divided; if your lives beat slow or swift.

'Curious not the least are we if our intents you make or mar,
        If you quire to our old tune,
If the City stage still passes, if the weirs still roar afar.'

– Thus, with very gods' composure, freed those crosses late and soon
        Which, in life, the Trine allow
(Why, none witteth), and ignoring all that haps beneath the moon,

William Dewey, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,
        Robert's kin, and John's, and Ned's,
And the Squire, and Lady Susan, murmur mildly to me now.


Wishing You All a Prosperous and Happy New Year!

In the first four lines of  "Friends Beyond" the ghostly characters,  
many of whom we have encountered elsewhere in Hardy's novels and  
poems, are undeniably dead and gone, but then the "Yet"  of line five  
signals a turn, after which the prosaic tone softens, and the  
language becomes lyrical.  The voices of the dead become audible in  
the speaker's imagination, heard in the liquid rhythm of water  
rippling under archways, and in the "stillicide" of a cave,  
presumably an aural perception breaking its silence.

The vanished friends, who occupied very different levels of the  
social hierarchy during their lifetimes are now all equals in the  
graveyard, and are further united in their conviction that death is  
nothing to be feared, but instead, a triumphal achievement, releasing  
them from all the cares and concerns that occupied their days whilst  
living.  Note how the interweaving of the terza rima and the lilting  
rhythm of the long lines tend to add both complexity and lightness of  
mood to the poem.  Is this then a straightforward encomium to Death,  
portraying it as a state of being far superior to that of being  
alive?  Or do you detect a satiric undercurrent in the poem?

Moreover, do you find an inconsistency in the fact that although the  
dead are said to be resting in a state of oblivion —  "a morrow free  
of thought" — they are still conscious enough to recall their past  
lives, and articulate their pleasure at being freed from them?

And finally,  in the penultimate tercet, the  "gods"  (presumably  
pagan) are seen as  anything but a malign influence, bestowing as  
they do their very "composure"  on the insouciant  dead.  The holy  
"Trine" or Godhead of Christian theology, in contrast, shows its  
indifference to humankind by passively refraining from mitigating the  
pains or crosses the living must bear.  Is the poet deliberately  
slipping in a hint of heterodoxy in this passage?

F.B. Pinion in A Thomas Hardy Dictionary (NYU P, 1989), defines some  
of the more unusual or dialect words as follows.

9.   stillicide, dripping of water
23. grintern, a compartment in a granary
24. ho, long, pine for, care, grieve
32.  the Trine, the Trinity: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost  
of Christian theology.

I warmly invite you to share your own observations and comments on  
"Friends Beyond", poem number 36, 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 all Good Wishes,

Betty Cortus, POTM Director
bcortus at HARDY-L.COM





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