The Penguin Little Black Classics continue to surprise me. Now when I had begun to find my footing in poetry through Keats, the fourteenth volume introduced me to another poet I had never really expected to meet this way. Until now, I had only known Thomas Hardy as a novelist. I have heard of his famous works and intended to get around to them some day.

But this little volume is Hardy’s poetry. I told you, this Penguin collection will definitely make me appreciative of the form.

Woman Much Missed is a collection of poems that Hardy wrote after the death of Emma, his wife of almost four decades. There is melancholy throughout the book, but it arrives through ordinary moments. A familiar walk. A remembered voice. A circular in the post. Places once visited together.

There are quite a few poems collected in this slim volume. Some made me stay with them a little longer.

One poem that stayed with me is The Walk. It is about the poet’s usual walk to a hilltop tree. He begins by saying that lately he had made those walks alone because she had become weak and lame. He walked alone and didn’t mind, he didn’t think of her as being left behind.

But today it feels different. Nothing has changed, except the look of the room when he returns.

Emptiness hurts.

Another poem is The Voice. The title of this little volume takes its name from the opening of this poem: Woman much missed. Hardy speaks about the call he used to feel when nearing town, as though she were somewhere waiting for him. Now that she is gone, he still hears that voice. Or perhaps it is only the breeze, or the sound of leaves stirring.

A particularly short poem, The Circular, struck me with unexpected force.

Hardy receives a “missive” announcing new designs and new tints of clothing. He receives it as the “legal representative” of the woman for whom those designs were intended. The fashions are addressed to someone already costumed in a shroud.

Then there is Places. It is about Emma growing up. The birth of a little girl of grace, the bud of a flower. Hardy revisits those places, and in each of them he finds himself missing her again.

The poem that stayed with me the longest, however, was The Spell of the Rose.

This time the poem is written from Emma’s perspective. She remembers that Hardy once spoke of building a hall with two turrets. He would plant apple and pear trees, and roses on which love would feed. He builds the hall. And he plants the trees. But he never plants the roses.

Though he planted other flowers, he never planted the flower of love. And she feels that because of that, there is some discord between them.

So, one night, she plants the rose herself. But before the “queen of trees” could grow and blossom, she was called away from the earth. And now she thinks:

Perhaps now blooms that queen of trees
I set but saw not grow
And he, beside its glow –
Eyes couched of the mis-vision that blurred me –
Ay, there beside that queen of trees
He sees me as I was, though sees
Too late to tell me so!

The earlier poems are remembrance. This one is regret.

When I finished the book, we planted our own rose bush. It is blooming now.