a wife in london

• Thomas hardy did not go to war
• the title represents any wife in London suggesting it has happened to multiple people
• "his hand whom the worm now knows"
• "and of new love that they would learn"
• "the street lamp glimmers cold"
• "page-full of his hoped return"
• "a messengers knock cracks smartly"
• the poem ia about a soldier who had fallen in the second Boer war
• the Boer war was fought in south africa
• the poem is set out in an unusual way

  • first stanza-the tragedy
  • second stanza-the irony
• the themes in this poem are war and relationships