Hardy was an old man of 72 when he wrote this poem recalling the early days of his first marriage, which was a happy time for him and his wife, Emma. Her death provided him with material of the deepest personal significance and the "Poems of 1912-13", from which this work came, are his most personal utterance and most typical poems - often touching, as they do, on the inexorability of time and the meaning and inevitability of suffering. His first wife changed as she grew older, however, believing that she had married beneath her, and she and her husband did not speak to each other for a lo…
