The meter of Thomas Hardy's rather haunting four stanza
quatrain poem "The Voice" is built around the phrases "call to me" and "all to me" and
the words "listlessness" and "wistlessness," and has the abab cdcd efef ghgh rhyme
scheme that is usual for a quatrain. The meter undergoes a change at line 12: "Heard no
more again far or near?," with this and the following four lines built around "no more /
again" and "woman / calling."
The meter starts out with the
rhythmic beat of ( / ^ ^ )--which is stressed followed by two unstressed beats and is
called a dactyl rhythm--and carries on for four feet (measures) in each line, thus
making the rhythmic meter dactylic tetrameter: ( / ^ ^ ) for four feet. At line 12 the
rhythm changes to trochaic, which is ( / ^ ). or stressed followed by one unstressed
beat. Line 12 has four feet, making it trochaic tetrameter, but lines 13 through 16 are
trochaic trimeter, or three feet of trochees.
Line 1 has an
apostrophe to "Woman." An apostrophe is an appeal to someone who is absent or dead or to
something that is inanimate. In this case, the apostrophe is to a woman who is not
present. One instance of personification occurs at line 9. Personification is giving
human traits, motives, actions etc. to inanimate objects. In line 9 "the breeze" is
personified with the human trait of "listlessness." Line 4 contains a metaphor comparing
a day with a human feature of beauty: "fair."
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