At Castle Boterel - Thomas Hardy

Question 1

Themes? (3)

Answer 1

sombre, nostalgic, reflective

Question 2

Tones? (3)

Answer 2

love, memory, time

Question 3

Context? (2)

Answer 3

• Written in 1913 after the death of his wife, Emma.
• Castle Boterel is in Cornwall- a place
  visited with his wife, Emma.

Question 4

Meaning and purpose? (2)

Answer 4

• Thomas Hardy reflects on his years with his late wife Emma Gifford. In this poem, Hardy revisits a road
  they walked together early in their courtship, reminiscing on the beauty of the moment they shared
  and reckoning with the loss of the “girlish form” he loved.
• The poem suggests that love imprints certain moments in the memory, but that even the sweetest
  memories can’t last forever.

Question 5

Language? (12)

Answer 5

• “I” is alone. The drizzle and wet enhance a sad and
  lonely tone. This is intensified by the alliteration of ‘d’.
• The junction is a crossroads – literally and metaphorically (discuss the real world and the private
  world we see in his work)
• Pathetic fallacy- from ‘drizzle’ in stanza one to ‘dry March weather’ The shift from present to past tense
  suggests that his life is now dreary and miserable in comparison
• Repeated ‘dr’ alliteration effectively ‘bedrenches’ everything with ‘drizzle’ ‘The sound of the drizzle is
  conveyed through the lightly hissing s’s in ‘drizzle’, ‘see’, ‘slope’
• Shift in personal pronoun ‘I’ in Stanza 1 to plural pronoun ‘we’ in stanza 2 which could suggest a sense of loss.
• Consonance and monosyllabic language ‘what we did as we climbed, and what we talked of/ matters
  not much, not to what it led” suggests a sense of resolution
• Time was brief, evidenced terse opening of stanza four. Rhetorical question, ‘that hill’s story?’ shows
  nature is a backdrop to their bond.
• The pain of climbing could be a metaphor for how painful love can be on the journey to find it.
• Symbolism, the primaeval rocks to symbolize feelings – as they too go up and down over time.
• Personification of Time: Time is rigorous and powerful. Time is presented as rigorous).
• the phantom figure being a metaphor for the power of memories to live on. Metaphor of sand being like time passing.

Question 6

Form? (5)

Answer 6

• Can be read as an elegiac poem, as it grieves for a loved one. Its words
  recalls the memories shared with
  them in ‘old love’s domain’
• Declarative “what we did … and what we talked of… matters not much” – suggests a sense of certainty in that it is the feeligns that are created that are important not the actions.
• Caesura ‘it filled but a minute”
  suggests a sense of finality and that
  the moment did not last long. To
  illustrate its brevity, this sentence
  takes only half a line.
• Repetition in stanza 7 (and
  anaphora) emphasizes his memories
  are leaving him, as he will not come
  back to Cornwall again.
• Never again’, end the poem sadly
  and emphatically, with the stresses on the first and last syllables underlining the finality of the statement: ‘never again.’

Question 7

Structure? (3)

Answer 7

• 7 equally sized stanzas
• Regular rhyme-scheme. With
  couplets at the end of each stanza to
  demonstrate the lasting nature of
  their relationship.
• Cyclical structure- slope in stanza 1
  and 6 and rain. The ongoing nature
  of memories and love.