Afterwards by Thomas Hardy

Afterwards Analysis

The poem Afterwards by Thomas Hardy consists of five stanzas, each one a quatrain. Hardy is anticipating his own death and questioning how he will be remembered. The use of nature, not in the abstract sense but in his own feelings towards it and the sensitivity of his observations of nature contrasts his mortality. He wants to be remembered as a man who “used to notice such things”
The “Present” tense is personified in the first stanza as it "latched it's postern". A postern is a back door and a private exit giving the first indication the poet fears his death will pass quietly and unnoticed. Use of alliteration ""may month" "glad green" and assonance "dewfall-hawk" emphasise the grandeur of seemingly ordinary things and events. A beautiful description of dusty leaves being coated with "new-spun silk" creates an almost fairy like image and once again stresses the frail enchantment of ordinary things in nature. In the final line of each stanza, Hardy puzz...