Ah Are you Diggin on My Grave and When I Have Fears
Ah Are you Diggin on My Grave and When I Have FearsThe insignificance of human life compared to the passage of time and continuation of the life cycle are explored in both Thomas Hardy’s “Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave” and John Keats “When I Have Fears”. Hardy uses the relationships between a dead woman and her family, friends and pet to show this insignificance, while Keats uses the grandiosity of nature.
Although the poems use different rhyming techniques, similarities are found in their structures. Hardy writes in a style of his own creation but uses four of the six verses to highlight different examples of the woman’s relationships with those left behind. The fifth is used as a building up of hope, and the final verse is used to show both the narrator and the reader how soon what we consider important and meaningful in life, can be diminished or forgotten in the lives and daily routines of those left behind. Keats, meanwhile, uses a standard sonnet form, using his three quatrains to each give a different example of what the man hopes to accomplish in life. The final rhyming couplet shows his acceptance of his life as small and insignificant as compared to the largeness of nature and the world as a whole;
“-then in the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.”
These poems are written from different viewpoints; Hardy writes as a woman already in her grave, and Keats as a man still alive. Yet both narrators come to the conclusion that what we consider to be of great importance in our lives, is often of little to no importance after we die. Time will pass, and life will go on just as will without us. However, both of the narrators figure this fact out in very different ways. The man in Keats’ poem, while alive, has given time to stop and consider how his concerns are proved trivial, and therefore prevent his worrying. Assumeably this will help him to enjoy his life, and to be grateful for whatever time he is left with. The woman in Hardy’s poem, however, is still preoccupied with her life, even after she is dead and buried in her grave. It takes the “daily trot” of her dog to make her realize how little she truly has affected the lives of those around her.
The insignificance of the woman in Hardy’s poem is shown in four separate examples. The first examines the relationship with her husband. Instead of going to her grave site with flowers and sadness, he has just wed another, richer woman. While...
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