H04042 HARDY'S "DITTY" QUESTION 6/28/04 HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE

From: ? mikewoodward@easynet.co.uk

Subject: Hardy's 'Ditty'

Date: June 28, 2004 3:19:26 AM PDT

Hi

I was hoping to find out some further information regarding Thomas Hardy's

poem 'Ditty', I'm due to be singing Finzi's setting of it in a concert soon

and am searching for some further background to it and what Hardy was

thinking at the time when he wrote it.

Can anyone help?

kind regards

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From: hardycor@owl.csusm.edu

Subject: Re: Hardy's 'Ditty'

Date: June 28, 2004 7:34:17 AM PDT

Hardy tells us in the LIFE that he wrote this poem in May 1870. This was

after his first visit to Cornwall in the previous March when he met Emma

Lavinia Gifford, later his wife, for the first time. The poem stresses the

chanciness of that meeting. The thought that, had he not met her at that

time he might have fallen just as deeply in love with someone else, adds an

equivocal elemental to this otherwise simple love song. It reminds me a

little of Wordsworth's "She Delt Among Untrodden Ways."

Best Wishes,

Betty Cortus

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From: schweikr@localnet.com

Subject: Re: Hardy's 'Ditty'

Date: June 28, 2004 9:50:22 AM PDT

Dear Mike,

For anyone singing "Ditty," one bit of background information

might be useful. In the very last line of the poem, Hardy

originally did not use a dash at the start or an exclamation

mark at the end. He added both later. Apparently he thought

those punctuation marks of particular importance as guides to

how the line should be expressed.

What that suggests to me is that Hardy wanted to give a special

emphasis to that last line--that, perhaps, there be just a

slight pause before it and that the line be sung with fervent

expression. You, of course, would be the best judge of how

to do that.

Bob Schweik

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