hello and welcome to Miss Hannah Love's grammar in this video we'll be concentrating on the major ideas and themes as conveyed through the language and structure of Thomas Hardy's poem at an in for more interesting ideas about Hardy The Man click on my video the ruin made where I've outlined a few key ideas I'm going to go through this poem stanza by stanza but I think the immediate thing you get from the title is it sets the action of the poem in a pub and it senters on the location as a very important part of the story it tells so here goes when we as strangers sought their catering care B Smiles bespoke their thoughts of what we were they warmed us as they ained us more than friends that we had all resigned for Love's dear ends immediately we struck that these two walk into a pub and the alliteration of stranger s and Catering care it's the comfort of this location the people people in this Pub do not know who they are but they're interested in what they could be throughout this stanza are layers of euphemism there are veiled Smiles it suggest there's something hidden beneath the smiles and it's as if people have judged that these two are a couple so our speaker feels that others in this Pub have assumed they are together he's with a woman I would assume and he's presuming that the others around them think they are a couple now the verbs ained and then later what rhymes with it resigned in the stanza suggests there's a speculation regarding these two as married I think the the word warmed as well they warmed as they app us more than friends the fact our speaker chooses to concentrate and fixate on the fact that others are judging them as a couple perhaps suggests it his own preoccupation with what they could be rather than what they are so it's clearly you know he hopes they are something otherwise he probably wouldn't comment on it or fixate on it and that's Swift sympathy with living love which Quicks the world maybe the Spheres above made them our ministers moved them to say ah God God that Bliss like theirs would flush our day once more in the second stanza we meet a lot of alliteration with swift sympathy and living love and it emphasizes what love looks like to the others in the in they look like they're a young Love's dream I like the third line of the second stanza on line 11 which says which Quicks the world maybe you know the idea that love makes your world run faster it's just such an exciting time when you're in love this is all as if hearing the views of others in this Pub but the pub dwellers aren't questioning in the way the speaker is as we move into maybe the Spheres above made them are ministers this is the speaker thinking our Supernatural forces longing for us to be together now Hardy was not a religious man in fact he was famously agnostic so perhaps here he's trying to work out how have they been brought together or at least his speaker is the fact that the speaker quotes the people in the pub in the last two lines of this stanza is pretty ironic so the pub dwellers are thinking oh I wish we could be as happy as they look oh God that Bliss like theirs would flush our day so they seek what our speaker and His companion seem to have but it's once more dramatic irony because they are not together so we seem to go round in a loop once more we're going back to the start they look like they're together but they're not they are together but they're not I just want to remind that in Victorian society it would have been seen as inappropriate for a man to go for a drink with a woman if he wasn't married to her so we do dig deeper as to well how are they together if they're not together stanza 3 does reveal for us what's going on and we were left alone as Love's own pair yet never The Love Light Shone between us there but that which chilled the breath of afternoon and puls Eed unto death the pan flies tune this is the grand reveal it stands as one and two with a trailer unfortunately this is a tragic stanza there's no alliteration for a start which is a shift from earlier stanzas it's painful and it's chilling they were left alone the capitalization of Love there in the second line of the third stanza ignites the fact that they looked like they were Love's pair and here they were together alone yet never the love like Shawn the reality of their love is revealed to us there was no chemistry between them and it's quite dramatic I think the the irony of that reveal at this point in the poem has really built them up as something more because other people presumed so if anything there's some pretty chilling facts that come to the four as well not only did no love light shine but also but that which chilled the breath of afternoon it's almost as if they are cold in their actual intentions to each other when they're together the word Paul suggests that this has paralyzed their relationship and as the afternoon on wines it's like they get closer to the death of their relationship and it's quite depressing it's almost as if it's as futile their relationship the plan flies tune it's the the pain flies tune it should say pain and pain it sounds it's a homophone it sounds like pain that you'd feel but actually it's talking about a fly it's as futile as a fly ey flying into the window pane this relationship seemed to have such promise for us as the reader yet as we dig deeper there's no hope the kiss there Zeal foretold and now deemed come came not within his hold love lingered numb why cast he on our ports a blue not ours why shaped us for his sport in after hours so this is getting to the end of the night now and the pub dwellers are looking at this couple and they're thinking oh are they going to kiss that be cute um the people at the in are expecting them to do that and it's this whole business of their Zeal foretold they being the pub dwellers I also presume the speaker had hoped that at some point so as the speaker and His companion had had to leave they do not kiss each other and note at this point in our stanza it shifts there's a change to the third person narrative feels more powerful almost as if our speaker is questioning God a God he maybe doesn't believe in why cast he on our ports a bloom not hours why shaped us for his Sports in after hours as if that weren't enough the futility of Hope for this love is just cast down a little bit further by the literation of love good numb and to end your alliteration with a word like numb it silences any idea of hope I think there's quite a judgmental angry speaker in this stanza why cast he on our ports a bloom not ours judging a God that seems brutal but our speaker seems really frustrated why would others or God suggest that our love could work if it can't why is this the case I love the Learned reference King Le here actually uh in King Le he he divides his kingdom and he's he makes a mistake of judgment and it and he says as flies want and boys we are to the gods they kill us for their sport here it is why shaped us for his sport in after hours so there is you know we're just we're just a play thing for God but once more love in this time was shaped by society's convention so is there something deeper that stops them and hinders them becomes our question as readers but also in after hours it implies there's something illicit here maybe they shouldn't actually be together for other grounds that we are not aware of as readers as we seemed we were not that day AAR and now we see not what we aching are oh severing SE and land oh Lords of man air death once let us stand as we stood then so in that final stanza time has intensified and more than anything it's that day again he's revisiting that day it's as if in this stanza it feels quite complicated but now they are not together perhaps they wish to have been together they look back on that moment as a turning point the alliteration of aching r severing c it accentuates the divisions between these two there's a geographical severing between the Sea and the land and also just the judgments of others the laws of men suggests what their chances are of being together it also suggests once more the importance of time the importance of distance between then and now and where that leaves them I also just think by the sentiment at the last line air death once let us stand as we once stood then is a sentiment shared by Tennison a great writer who says best to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all there's a sort of disappointment I think tinged with sadness for us but they are not together there doesn't seem so much hope and joy there's a frustration that they never were perhaps Hardy uses this poem to ignite questions about the way Victorian society critiques it critiques people without knowing them it makes superficial judgments yet our speaker seems angry and bitter and full of resentment about what could have been maybe they are someone who's caught in a loop of their own paranoia or is it something more harrowing than that still the question is left unanswered and I think we feel quite unresolved by the end of this poem the use of exclamation marks throughout this poem and even a speech mark in the second stanza ignites for us this compelling emotive streak emotive yet resigned to its fate uh with a society that has its set rules and regulations perhaps this is a poem of love that could have been but was not allowed to flourish a Gloom not ours after all Hardy once more strikes a cord with us his gloomy style and his brutalist approach to hitting the nerve is shown through a speaker that's frustrated and resents what it is rather than what it could have been