A Wife in London

Read the poem and then place the statements relating to context on the scale below, depending on how important you think they are in adding to the reader’s appreciation of the poem. Be prepared to make a case for your decisions. Drag the statements in the list below so that they are ranked from most to least important.

A Wife in London

I – The Tragedy


She sits in the tawny vapour

That the City lanes have uprolled,

Behind whose webby fold on fold

Like a waning taper

The street-lamp glimmers cold.

A messenger’s knock cracks smartly,

Flashed news is in her hand

Of meaning it dazes to understand

Though shaped so shortly:

He – has fallen – in the far South Land …


II – The Irony


’Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker,

The postman nears and goes:

A letter is brought whose lines disclose

By the firelight flicker

His hand, whom the worm now knows:


Fresh – firm – penned in highest feather –

Page-full of his hoped return,

And of home-planned jaunts by brake and burn

In the summer weather,

And of new love that they would learn.


Thomas Hardy

Drag the statements

Drag the statements in the list below so that they are ranked from most to least important.

Very important
Not important at all
  • A Wife in London was written in 1899, and the Boer War was from 1899 – 1902.
  • The Boer War was between the British Empire and the Boers (South Africa Dutch descent) Although Britain finally won, it suffered a lot of casualties.
  • The South Land referred to here is South Africa, and the woman’s husband has been killed there, while fighting in the Boer War.
  • Hardy was a successful novelist as well as a poet.
  • Hardy was born in 1840 and died in 1928.
  • He worked for a while in London, as an architect.
  • Thomas Hardy spent much of his life in Dorset.
  • This would have been a really contemporary and topical poem when it was first published, although nowadays it describes a historic war that is often forgotten. Hardy was opposed to the Boer War.

Do you think this poem can only be appreciated as a product of a very specific time, or could it apply to other casualties and their loved ones, in different times and places?

What is the significance of the two parts, The Tragedy and The Irony? How may these headings help a reader appreciate the writer’s point of view?

For all of the themes you have found jot down other poems in the anthology that share those themes.