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Genius Annotation

Thanks to ‘Sweetbird’ (Sajid) for this detailed and excellent analysis. Additional comments by this editor.

Thomas Hardy was married twice in his lifetime. Both marriages did involve elements of love, but both were undermined by complications; lack of children, incompatible natures, differing aspirations, differing ages. Hardy’s attitude to marriage was somewhat out of step with his time, in that he believed that the idea of marriage as an absolute, rigid, unchanging union of two people for life was unrealistic.

In “I said to Love” Hardy creates a paradox. He asserts that, without love, mankind ends: “Man’s race shall end” and “Mankind shall cease – so let it be”, but he also appears to rejoice in this since he simultaneously asserts that this is the birth of a new age ”The age to come”. This can be interpreted literally as the end of humanity since a part of our humanity must die if we choose not to love. Alternatively it is the beginning of an evolved (even higher) state of being, and “let it be” is a proclamation not a lament. In the new evolved state, we are not so subject to the vulnerabilities and tribulations of love: “We fear not SUCH a threat from thee”. The threat is there but diminished. However, this is the dawn of a new age of hope and even enlightenment: “the age to come” and the “man of now”. Hardy uses dramatic absolutes “Man’s race shall end”, “Mankind shall cease” but then defines them as relative realignments.

So humanity does not end because it is not “the end of love”, but a more passion controlled by the self, unlike the previous passion which controlled its subject. So the poem could be Hardy’s older self talking to his younger self in recognition of the changes within him. In fact Hardy is so confident in his new found strength that he even appears to throw down the gauntlet to Love by questioning “dost threaten thou?”. In challenging Love, he appears to make the claim that he would be unscathed by a new encounter: “We are too old in apathy”. Does he now seek love to prove this point or is this a mask and he still yearns for love as youthful passion? The poem is deliberately ambiguous and leaves the reader to find their own interpretation coloured by their own experiences.

The evolved state is possibly a reflection of an older “self” that has come of age, and is to a degree super-human in comparison to the passionate younger self. Mankind in its current form shall die, but is this to be lamented more than celebrating the dawning of the new age? Ultimately it is the death of youthful exuberance and the dawning of manhood. Lament and rejoice? OR Lament? OR Rejoice?. Here Hardy does it all and a little bitterly too. And that reflects the fact that in gaining experience, in becoming the “man of now” time was invested; time was lost, his youth was lost.

The poem can be read in many different ways. It can be a calm realisation or it can be a passionate discourse. Each verse is opened and closed by an address to love “I said to love” and “I said to him”, to begin a reflective discourse.

It is important to note that Hardy refers to Love in the masculine in the first verse and this is repeated in the second. Note that it describes a God, traditionally masculine, as putting “heaven beneath the sun”. In this verse he refers to Love as “the Boy”, possibly evoking images of purity and the baby Jesus: “The One”. The second verse describes how Hardy has come to understand this deity better through the passage of time “We know thee more now than then”, and explains that his treatment of Love as a God-head was misguided: “We were but weak in judgement when”. Love is now an anti-hero in Hardy’s depiction, the deity that directed his relationships. Hardy was the victim of the passions this god stirred and the promises he made, but now is able to dismiss as false: “Depart then Love!”. Hardy is now super-human: “the man of now”.

It should be noted that Hardy doesn’t direct his criticisms or sorrows at the women he has loved but at Love itself, the god he created. The women are blameless. Instead he blames his belief in his created deity, ultimately accepting responsibility for his own suffering. So, he is in a way a true romantic. However, this also — maybe chauvinistically — disempowers the women he loved.

He has conquered love and loves no more “too old in apathy”; he celebrates this despite knowing that in reaching this state he has had to kill his passions (and at least in part his own humanity), so he cannot feel what he once felt. He acknowledges this as a necessary loss.

Structure
The poem comprises four stanzas, three of seven lines each and one of eight lines. The extra line in the last stanza provides additional emphatic information to bring it to a resolution.

There is a complex rhyme scheme; the first three stanzas ABBACCA, and the last stanza is ABBACCCA. The repetition of ‘I said to Love’ at the beginning and end of the first three stanzas, and at the end of the last stanza, is a refrain and also, in terms of the repetitive pattern it sets up, is a device known as anaphora.

The line lengths vary, but form a repeated pattern in each stanza. The combined effect is deceptive; a seeming simple, gently rhythmic poem, which is in fact fiendishly complex.

Language and Imagery
The dominant feature is the allegorical figure of Love, as explained above. The poem is in the form of a dialogue in which we only hear the poet’s voice asking questions. Love’s response is left to our imaginations.

A rhythmic quality is achieved through repetition and carefully varied line-lengths. Hardy also uses the archaic ‘thee’, ‘thou’ and ‘thine’, which wasn’t used by educated people in the late Victorian era, but here gives a sense of timelessness. The questions raised by Hardy are age-old.

Q&A

Find answers to frequently asked questions about the song and explore its deeper meaning

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