Explain the speaker's feeling in the last stanza of the poem "The Voice" by Thomas Hardy, and the metaphor.

It seems a bit like unnecessary surgery to isolate the
last stanza from this tear evoking poem because the feeling and meaning of the metaphor
are inextricably bound to what precedes. Nonetheless, a discussion of the
feeling expressed must refer to the preceding stanzas.
"Thus I;" refers though a figure of speech word scheme technique called
ellipsis to all that is said prior to "Thus I;". The word
thus has several meanings and usages; Random House Dictionary
(Dictionary.com) lists the first meaning and usage as: in the way just
indicated. Thus, thus indicates what went before, not
what follows. In this meaning, what follows sums up the consequences, results,
conclusions, etc of what preceded.

Therefore, "Thus I;"
isn't paraphrased as "See me go faltering forward ..." but rather as, "That's pathetic
me, listening to an imaginary voice on the wind telling me you'll be back and well and
young and fair; that's me, asking the voice to let me see you in the "air-blue gown" you
first wore; that's me ... knowing the voice is only the wind and you are nothingness."
If we were to fill in the ellipsis references, we might write: "Thus sadly go I;". The
semicolon at the end of the ellipsis is significant, which
is why I keep including it: It corroborates the division between the meaning of "Thus I"
and "faltering forward." Bear in mind that while there is a relationship between "Thus
I" and "faltering forward," the emotional impact, the feeling, is evoked by the
relationship of "Thus I" to the three stanzas that preceded
it.

Yet, the feeling is carried further by the relationship
with "faltering forward," which has a similar ellipsis and might be filled in this way:
"Now I go faltering forward," making "faltering forward" more clearly the
result of the feeling, not the whole feeling. This doubling
of effect, this doubling of feeling, results in this sorrowful poem, which evokes
sympathetic tears, having a second emotional plateau in which the reader may experience
an added twist to the heart, adding tears to tears, as the reader realizes how the
speaker's feelings affect his physical presence and activities: his feelings of
suffering and loss are not just internal; they make him falter and stumble; they show
his pain tangibly to any passer-by.

The
metaphor of the poem at large is a comparison of a voice
calling on the wind to the poetic speaker's longing for a beloved woman lost to a
seemingly old-age- and illness-ridden death ("When you had changed from the one who was
all to me, / But as at first, when our day was fair"). A metaphor is a comparison
between two unlike things, which is written without
the use of the comparative words as, like,
though (e.g., love though a rose), even
though (e.g., love even though a
thorn).

The final metaphor comparing a cold northern wind
to ooze ("Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,") gives a liquid quality to
the movement of air suggesting a slow passage of liquid through the bare branches of
thorn bushes while late autumn or early winter leaves fall about the speaker. This
imagery adds to the sense of faltering and accentuates the physical manifestation of the
speaker's suffering while also expanding his private loss and grief to the physical
elements around him: not only has he lost his love, but the world has turned unfriendly
and difficult without her "air-blue gown."