Thomas Hardy's "The Last Chrysanthemum"

[ZTay]

Boy do I love this poem. Playful, profound, penetrating, perfect. I don't know much about poetry or Hardy; and I wonder if it is a highly-regarded poem? Is it one of Hardy's most recognized works? I know public opinion is vanity but I can't help but to have a statistician's interest in tabulating the public regard for this poem I love so much. Even beyond these questions general discussion is invited!

Why should this flower delay so long
To show its tremulous plumes?
Now is the time of plaintive robin-song,
When flowers are in their tombs.

Through the slow summer, when the sun
Called to each frond and whorl
That all he could for flowers was being done,
Why did it not uncurl?

It must have felt that fervid call
Although it took no heed,
Waking but now, when leaves like corpses fall,
And saps all retrocede.

Too late its beauty, lonely thing,
The season's shine is spent,
Nothing remains for it but shivering
In tempests turbulent.

Had it a reason for delay,
Dreaming in witlessness
That for a bloom so delicately gay
Winter would stay its stress?

- I talk as if the thing were born
With sense to work its mind;
Yet it is but one mask of many worn
By the Great Face behind.

[WICKES]

Boy do I love this poem. Playful, profound, penetrating, perfect. I don't know much about poetry or Hardy; and I wonder if it is a highly-regarded poem? Is it one of Hardy's most recognized works? I know public opinion is vanity but I can't help but to have a statistician's interest in tabulating the public regard for this poem I love so much. Even beyond these questions general discussion is invited!

Why should this flower delay so long
To show its tremulous plumes?
Now is the time of plaintive robin-song,
When flowers are in their tombs.

Through the slow summer, when the sun
Called to each frond and whorl
That all he could for flowers was being done,
Why did it not uncurl?

It must have felt that fervid call
Although it took no heed,
Waking but now, when leaves like corpses fall,
And saps all retrocede.

Too late its beauty, lonely thing,
The season's shine is spent,
Nothing remains for it but shivering
In tempests turbulent.

Had it a reason for delay,
Dreaming in witlessness
That for a bloom so delicately gay
Winter would stay its stress?

- I talk as if the thing were born
With sense to work its mind;
Yet it is but one mask of many worn
By the Great Face behind.

Yes, Hardy is a wonderful and underrated poet. My own favourite poet, Philip Larkin, revered him.

[virtuoso]

Yes, this is a great poem. I analyzed it intently in one of my college, poetry classes. The last, two lines are culminating genius. I think that he was saying the stresses in the human and natural environments cause all of us to instinctively respond to the stimuli that confront us. He neatly interwove the mystical aspect of growth with the instinctive, generative desire to blend in with the elements in ones environment. This is one of my favorite poems, period.

[Nick Capozzoli]

Through the slow summer, when the sun
Called to each frond and whorl
That all he could for flowers was being done,
Why did it not uncurl?

The scientific answer is that the chrysanthemum is what botanists call a "short day" plant. Many (but not all)
plants display what is called photoperiodism...meaning that they flower at different times depending on the length
of night and day. Short day plants bloom during the periods when the days are shorter (late summer through fall
and winter), whereas long day plants flower when the days are longer. The botanical terminology reflects older
understanding that is not correct. We now understand that it is the length of night that is the determining factor.

BTW, there are other "short day" plants that bloom later than chrysanthemums. Poinsettias, for example, bloom
very close to Xmas (which is why they are called Christmas plants).

Understanding the science behind the late blooming of chrysanthemums does help in the appreciation of Hardy's
poem. Hardy obviously didn't know about the science of photoperiodism, but he knew the fact that mums bloomed later
than most other common garden flowers. He used that fact to make some speculative remarks about the poetic
"meaning" of late blooming. This involves speculation about why, for example, mums might be delaying their blooms...

Had it a reason for delay,
Dreaming in witlessness
That for a bloom so delicately gay
Winter would stay its stress?

A scientist would probably say that the "reason" for the delay is that the mum has evolved to have
"short-day" phytochromes, and they did so because having them was selectively advantageous.

All the other comments about "why" the mum is a late bloomer have nothing to do with the biology
of mums (which don't "think" about anything so far as we can tell). These comments have more to
do with how we think about the fact that mums bloom in the Fall rather than in the summer.

The final stanza is pretty good:

- I talk as if the thing were born
With sense to work its mind;
Yet it is but one mask of many worn
By the Great Face behind.

Hardy indicates that he understands the problems in attributing "sense" to the
mums. He concludes by saying that whatever the reason for the fact that mums
bloom late, this is just one of the many "masks" worn by the "Great Face behind"
nature.

This final stanza does seem to me to "save" the poem from the pathetic fallacy.

[cupidsrose]

Hi, everybody, I am a new friend

[Pierre Menard]

Gorgeous poem. One of my favourites of Hardy's. I wish more people talked about Hardy's poetry, he has a really strong body's worth of poetic work.

Shut Out That Moon


Close up the casement, draw the blind,
Shut out that stealing moon,
She wears too much the guise she wore
Before our lutes were strewn
With years-deep dust, and names we read
On a white stone were hewn.

Step not forth on the dew-dashed lawn
To view the Lady’s Chair,
Immense Orion’s glittering form,
The Less and Greater Bear:
Stay in; to such sights we were drawn
When faded ones were fair.

Brush not the bough for midnight scents
That come forth lingeringly,
And wake the same sweet sentiments
They breathed to you and me
When living seemed a laugh, and love
All it was said to be.

Within the common lamp-lit room
Prison my eyes and thought;
Let dingy details crudely loom,
Mechanic speech be wrought:
Too fragrant was Life’s early bloom,
Too tart the fruit it brought!