FIERY DEATH, ETERNAL FRUIT Logs on the Hearth by Thomas Hardy Sometimes I feel the need to have a little background music as I write. I find that it helps put me in certain moods and thus it instigates certain thoughts or modes of thinking. I am listening to the sound track from the movie Garden State because it takes me to a good place of reflection. The song I Just Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Over You (by Colin Hay) is playing right now. Serendipitously? Hmmm. This music goes perfectly with Hardy’s poem Logs on the Hearth. This poem was written in memoriam of Hardy’s sister who “died in November 1915" (Page 2262). This poem seems so raw as it sings the sounds of a former time...a time of climbing and living and changing and loving. Hardy’s remembrance of things past is remarkable as he puts this childhood playmate on the fire and watches it slowly turn to ash (echoing the idea of his sister also turning to ash or dust). “The fire advances along the log/ Of the tree we felled/ Which boomed and bore striped apples by the peck/ Till its last hour of bearing knelled” (Line 1-4). Fire is analogous to death in this poem as it burns up the things of the past, the life that was in the past. Fire in Hardy’s poem is very similar to the West Wind in Shelly’s Ode to the West Wind. It is that necessary element that takes no longer animate objects and gives them life through the act of burning. The tree that Hardy and perhaps his sister cut down is no longer living but gives life through its ability to change in the presence of the flame. No doubt... the once fecund tree is comparable to the life of Hardy’s sister. The tree produced basketful after basketful of apples until “its last hour of bearing knelled” (Line 4). Hardy’s sister was alive and fecund as could be– until the moment she wasn’t! So the fire moves across the log giving heat, life, energy from its lifeless limbs. Death has performed this function on Hardy’s sister, taking from her lifeless state energy that the universe will use many times over. This is a thought that Lucretius speaks of often in his work De Rerum Natura. The life of one passing away releases atoms and essential elements that will be used by another as they enter this world of constant flux. The only constant is this constant flux of change.
Hardy reminisces about all the wonderful times they climbed this tree but realizes that time has passed! He writes of the tree...of his sister’s life “it lies now/ Sawn, sapless, darkening with soot” (Line 7-8). The word sawn brings to mind the idea of something being cut down and cut short. Sap is the very lifeblood of the tree and without it becomes susceptible to weather, to infection, to insects, and ultimately death. So life has been cut short as its precious sap has all been used up on the wounds of life. “Where the bark chars is where, one year/ It was pruned, and bled/ Then overgrew the wound. But now, at last/ Its growings all have stagnated,” Hardy writes (Line 9-12). As long as their was sap(lifeblood), there was life! There was growth, renewal, healing...but the sap has disappeared from the years of usage. The tree, his sister are no longer able to bear fruit, which is the point of life– to bring forth more life! “But...at last/ Its growings all have stagnated” (Line 11-12). Hardy’s final comparison is of his sister’s spirit rising just as the smoke from the burning embers rise in the hearth. He says of his sister “My fellow-climber rises dim/ From her chilly grave/ Just as she was, her foot near mine on the bending limb/ Laughing, her young brown hand awave” (Line 13-16). Death gives a new form of life to his sister just as the fire gives a new form of life to the tree. Hardy believes that death has not changed his sister in function. She still laughs and waves and possesses her characteristics as his sister. Her function has not changed, only her form. She is no longer confined to a body but “rises...Just as she was” (Line13, 15). She has moved from death to life and to a greater life. This new life of hers will never again need sap to cover, to heal the pruning that life consists of. Her life will be able to produce inextricable amounts of fruit because she is now eternal essence. There are not baskets enough to capture the fruit that her eternal life is producing! Hardy’s sister as well as the tree have both moved from a lower frequency of energy to an excited, ineffable garden of life. Colin Hay’s Lyrics: I drink good coffee every morning Comes from a place that's far away And when I'm done I feel like talking Without you here there is less to say I don't want you thinking I'm unhappy What is closer to the truth That if I lived till I was 102 I just don't think I'll ever get over you I'm no longer moved to drink strong whisky 'Cause I shook the hand of time and I knew That if I lived till I could no longer climb my stairs I just don't think I'll ever get over you Your face it dances and it haunts me Your laughter's still ringing in my ears I still find pieces of your presence here Even after all these years But I don't want you thinking I don't get asked to dinner 'Cause I'm here to say that I sometimes do Even though I may soon feel the touch of love I just don't think I'll ever get over you If I lived till I was 102 I just don't think I'll ever get over you
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AuthorKyle McNease - Academic and founder and CEO of Prognosis Hope. Archives
October 2021
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