17 pages • 34 minutes read
Thomas HardyA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
If biography is trusted, the inn recreated in the opening two stanzas was the George Inn, an out-of-the-way establishment in rural Winchester, an hour’s train ride south of London. Hardy and Henniker met there during the months in 1893 during which they were collaborating on a short story, “The Spectre of the Real.”
Although historically grounded and geographically defined, the inn, within the argument of the poem, symbolizes the lure of fantasy and how easily people seek the dazzle of the ideal. No one on the inn’s serving staff knows either of the two diners. Yet so hungry are they for some touch of fantasy, they conjure a romantic ambiance around the two companions sharing a meal, a fantasy uncomplicated by reality. Their “swift sympathy” (Line 9) for two strangers reveals the depth of their need for romance. Their lives exist only in day-to-day routine busyness, and they escape into their fantasy. The staff, the speaker notes, “warmed as they opined / us more than friends” (Lines 5-6).
The staff are moved by “the spheres above” (Line 12), the cosmos itself, to see epic “bliss” (Line 15) in this couple, and yearn for such bliss themselves.
By Thomas Hardy
Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave
Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave
Thomas Hardy
Channel Firing
Channel Firing
Thomas Hardy
Far From The Madding Crowd
Far From The Madding Crowd
Thomas Hardy
Jude the Obscure
Jude the Obscure
Thomas Hardy
Neutral Tones
Neutral Tones
Thomas Hardy
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Tess of the D'Urbervilles
Thomas Hardy
The Convergence of the Twain
The Convergence of the Twain: Lines on the loss of the "Titanic"
Thomas Hardy
The Darkling Thrush
The Darkling Thrush
Thomas Hardy
The Man He Killed
The Man He Killed
Thomas Hardy
The Mayor of Casterbridge
The Mayor of Casterbridge
Thomas Hardy
The Return of the Native
The Return of the Native
Thomas Hardy
The Withered Arm and Other Stories
The Withered Arm and Other Stories
Thomas Hardy
The Woodlanders
The Woodlanders
Thomas Hardy