A Comparsion of At Castle Boterel By Thomas Hardy and Piano By D H Lawrence

The idea portrayed by ‘At Castle Boterel’ is very much to do with the speaker’s memory of a love he once shared with a girl, or possibly his wife. The scene of the poem is set very casually, using simple language. This language, however, has many ways in which it can be interpreted. The speaker has reached a ‘junction of lane and highway’, with a junction being a point of choice. The speaker may have to choice of which way to drive but also the choice of which direction to take in his life; he could return to the past or go to the future.

Hardy uses pathetic fallacy in order to convey different atmospheres. He uses ‘drizzle [that] bedrenches the waggonette’ to bring across the fact that the speaker is miserable and that the mood of the poem at this point is dismal. This atmosphere is used during the parts of the poem that are in the present tense and that involve the speaker in his present life. Later on in the poem, however, this poetic technique is once again used. Contrasting its previous use, Hardy creates a loving and warm atmosphere in ‘dry March weather’.

It becomes clear that the happy moments of the poem represent the speaker reminiscing of his love and what used to be. The first two stanzas involve the use of enjambment allow for the last sentence of the first stanza to continue into the first sentence of the second one. Not only does enjambment do this, but it also provides a connection between the speaker’s present and past lives; a sense of transition between the two. The speaker’s memories of his experience come across as vague due to Hardy’s continuous use of short sentences, which are vague and mundane.

This vagueness continues into the third paragraph when the speaker doesn’t inform the reader about what ‘matters not much’ or about ‘to what it led’. An impression is gained that the speaker is with holding something of importance that affected him and his love. Both the second and third stanzas end with alliteration, which perhaps suggests that both paragraphs are linked in some way. It is possible that they both include information about events and activities that the speaker and his love did together.

Hardy informs that reader that something ‘filled but a minute’, but it is left undecided as to what it was. This sentence is short, isolated and detached and maybe referring to their conversation or the time they spent together. Despite this uncertainty we understand that that minute was the best moment of the speaker’s life. This indicates that the speaker has crystallised this moment in his mind as ‘a time of [such] quality’. The mountain the speaker and his love climbed is ‘foot-swift [and] foot-sore’ and this compound epiphyte suggests that many couples have climbed the mountain before them. he ‘primaeval rocks [that] form the road’s steep border’, as well as the speaker are the only two who can remember this day.

The rocks are primaeval; that have been there since the beginning of time and will continue to be there for millions of years to come. They have witnessed this moment and preserved it along with many other moments, however they have not changed throughout time. People, on the other hand, especially the speaker do change. They experience new ages and lives and can only hold onto certain experiences as a memory. This is what the speaker is doing with her memory of his love.