On His Eighty-Sixth Birthday

Thomas Hardy was a novelist and a poet of 19th century whose works were really famous about nature, romantic and supernatural. Most of his works are belonged to natural literary movement and he expressed his sense of naturalism through poetry. One of his poetry which has a very interesting title and close meaning to the everyday life is On His Eighty-Sixth Birthday.

The theme of this poetry is about a condition of relationship between a person and the world, or specifically the earth, which has lasted for at least 86 years. The main subject in this poetry start to express his feelings and thankfulness to the earth by saying “Well, World, you have kept faith with me”. From the first until the second stanza, we can see that the perspective of the main subject about the earth is positive because he considers it faith and full of responsibility. He thinks that the earth has given everything it should give and do everything it should do.

On the contrary, the earth does not exactly feel the same way. From the third until the sixth stanza, the lines with direct quotation, it is certain that the earth is like giving responses to the person. The responses are not as good as the main subject has said. “I do not promise overmuch” is the earth’s statement that can represent the contradictive ideas between them. It thinks that what many people have done to it, especially the negative things, are obstacles for it to do its responsibility as an earth. So overall, the mood of this poetry is not lovely or happy but more to the deep, meaningful, and also sorrow.

The unique title of this poetry, On His Eighty-Sixth Birthday, has attracted me to figure out who is celebrating the birthday and why it is the 86th and not other ages. Relating the fact that this poetry was published in 1928, the year when Hardy passed away on his age of 88, and the title, I find possibilities that Hardy wrote it before he turned 88, could be on his age of 86, and the content of the poetry refers to his experiences and thoughts about nature. Although it is not totally true, and of course no one can exactly know the purpose of writers, but the fact that Hardy was a naturalistic writer and the use of ‘his’ on the title makes it clear that the main subject of this poetry is a man.

Another reason that can strengthen that posibility is the time of Hardy’s dedication as a poet. He stopped writing novels and started making works of poetries since 1890 when he was 50 years old. His 30 years devotion as a naturalistic poet is reasonable enough for him to make such deep realization poetry like this and put 86 on the title which really makes the readers curious unless they search information about Hardy first.

In addition, there is another possibility that ‘his’in thia poetry is refered to the people in general, so I can say that it can be a satire for people who do not really care about their environment. The satirical lines which show the dislikeness of the earth to the people are mostly written in the stanzas with direct quotation. “While some have shown contempt of me till they dropped underground” is the example of the line which indirectly talks about people’s bad behaviour.

Here we can also see the characteriatic of naturalistic works: nameless. The stanzas where the earth gives its responses to the main subject have strong meaning but they were written smoothly without any directions of whom it talks to. For example, Hardy used ‘many’ to state the feelings of the earth which does not sound obvious instead of ‘many people’. This way makes the readers able to interpret the subjects of the poetry freely and at the same time it touches their curiosity and sensitivity about the content. Considering the beauty of a poem, not giving name to subjects is worth enough to do because the more difficult to figure out the subject the deeper the meaning we can get by the end.

The combination of Personification used in the third until the fifth stanzas with the nameless method is very interesting as well. Hardy put quotation mark which actually shows the change of the subject but he kept holding the principle not to tell readers any clues of what the second subject is so readers really have to think more to this most interesting and mysterious part.

Although the rhyme of this poetry is not as beautiful as its meaning, but I like it so much because It is flexible for all people to read. The content is also very useful to remind us that we need to extremely keep our earth like it has kept us for thousands years or more. And of course it is better to realize our responsibility to the earth now than later when we turn 86.