The Shadow on the Stone Source: The Complete Poems (2001)
Discover this poem’s context and related poetry, articles, and
media. Poet Thomas Hardy 1840–1928 POET’S REGION England SCHOOL
/ PERIOD Victorian Poetic Terms Rhymed Stanza Thomas Hardy: “The
Shadow on the Stone” After the poet lost his wife, he found his
voice. Emma Hardy lay dead in a coffin at the foot of Thomas
Hardy’s bed for three nights before her disconsolate widower
finally had her buried. By the winter of 1912, with Modernity
swiftly colonizing English culture, such an operatic gesture was
something of a throwback. But while Hardy grieved in the 20th
century, he grew up in the 19th. When he wrote about losing
Emma, he was dwelling on the Victorian era, when they fell in
love—and when Romanticism was still tempering into realism.
Decades later, their marriage had long since cooled into neglect
and estrangement, not a little due to Hardy, who slept by her
coffin out of enormous regret over lost time: their bedroom was
no warmer when Emma was al