A wife in London - Hardy

• What is the context?

  • Set during the time of the Boer war
  • Victorian London women waiting for husband after war
  • futility of war
  • Influenced by romantic poems
  • critical of the industry of war
  • hated made conflict
• She sits in the tawny vapour
• Street lamp glimmers cold
• Flashed news in her hand
• He - has fallen - in the far south land
• Hid hand whom the worm now knows
• And of new love that they would learn