[Ttha-potm] "Lying Awake" TTHA Poem of the Month for March 2009

[Betty Cortus]

                              Lying Awake

You, Morningtide Star, now are steady-eyed, over the east,
      I know it as if I saw you;
You, Beeches, engrave on the sky your thin twigs, even the least;
      Had I paper and pencil I'd draw you.

You, Meadow, are white with your counterpane cover of dew,
      I see it as if I were there;
You, Churchyard, are lightening faint from the shade of the yew,
      The names creeping out everywhere.

Sleeplessness can sometimes stimulate the imagination to envision the  
world quite differently from the way in which we observe it in our  
waking hours.  Here, for example, the speaker brings each inanimate  
object to eerie life, first by addressing it personally and  
capitalizing its name, and secondly by endowing it with some human  
characteristic.  The steady-eyed star apparently has the gift of  
sight, the beech trees are at work engraving their art on the sky,  
the meadow, unlike the wakeful speaker, slumbers under its own  
counterpane, and the churchyard is actively illuminating the names on  
the tombstones so that they come creeping out like living things.   
This kind of personification creates a weird, ghostly world where the  
distinction between things living and dead is blurred.  Most  
disturbing of all is the way in which the cold, lifeless carvings on  
the headstones assume a lifelike kinetic energy.  In a number of  
other poems, "During Wind and Rain" for example, chiseled names such  
as these are gradually being eroded away by time and weather,  
implying that their dead namesakes are being forgotten with the  
passing years.  Here, however, the dead continue to make their  
macabre presence felt.  Does this distorted vision of the outside  
world, belie the poet's claim that he sees all as clearly as if he  
were there, presumably in the daytime? Does the contrasting black and  
white imagery — the black tracery of the twigs silhouetted against  
the sky, and the white coverlet of dew — reinforce or undermine the  
other-worldly atmosphere of the poem?  And, finally, might the fact  
that the poem first appeared just a year before Hardy's death have an  
influence on its content?

I warmly invite you to share your own observations and comments on  
"Lying Awake", poem number 844, 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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