After the publication of his final novel, “Jude the Obscure,” in 1895, Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) devoted himself to poetry. His “Wessex Poems,” appearing in 1898, drew on the same Dorset landscape that formed the backdrop for his novels. Over the next three decades he would produce seven more collections of poetry. Over his lifetime, he published roughly a thousand poems, including some of the great poems of World War I, as well as today’s selection, “The Rejected Member’s Wife.” In this poem, which appeared in the Spectator in 1906, three trimeter octets in abab lines elegize the wife of a defeated Member of Parliament. As she fades, Cheshire-Cat-like, from public life, waving “her little hand” in its white glove, she begins to appear as human woman, visible, with “that chestnut hair.”  

The Rejected Member’s Wife 
by Thomas Hardy 

We shall see her no more 
     On the balcony, 
Smiling, while hurt, at the roar 
     As of surging sea 
From the stormy sturdy band 
     Who have doomed her lord’s cause, 
Though she waves her little hand 
     As it were applause. 
 
Here will be candidates yet, 
     And candidates’ wives, 
Fervid with zeal to set 
     Their ideals on our lives: 
Here will come market-men 
     On the market-days, 
Here will clash now and then 
     More such party assays. 
 
And the balcony will fill 
     When such times are renewed, 
And the throng in the street will thrill 
     With to-day’s mettled mood; 
But she will no more stand 
     In the sunshine there, 
With that wave of her white-gloved hand, 
     And that chestnut hair. 

___________________________________________ 

With “Poem of the Day,” The New York Sun offers a daily portion of verse selected by Joseph Bottum with the help of the North Carolina poet Sally Thomas, the Sun’s associate poetry editor. Tied to the day, or the season, or just individual taste, the poems will be typically drawn from the lesser-known portion of the history of English verse. In the coming months we will be reaching out to contemporary poets for examples of current, primarily formalist work, to show that poetry can still serve as a delight to the ear, an instruction to the mind, and a tonic for the soul.