Thomas Hardy - At the Royal Academy

Song Meaning

The poem opens with a vivid, almost tactile depiction of summer landscapes, presenting them as lush and immediate. The "clump, and copse, and croft" feel alive, brimming with "limp grass and leafery new and soft." This initial impression is one of vibrant, present-day nature, "caught from the immediate season's yield" and seen "last noonday shining over the field." The central tension arises from the contrast between this apparent freshness and the underlying reality of time and decay. The narrator observes that the "young foils so fresh upon each tree" and "soft verdures" are not truly of this summer. The lyrics suggest a deliberate imitation or a lingering echo of life, where the present scene is a "mime" of what once was, rather than its genuine, spontaneous expression. The craft hinges on the subtle unveiling of this temporal deception. The poem moves from the immediate sensory experience of summer's bounty to the stark realization that these elements are "not this summer's, though they feign to be." The final lines deliver the poignant truth: these depicted elements have already lived and died, their "May to Michaelmas term was run," and they "know they sight of any sun" no more, highlighting a profound disconnect between appearance and reality. This disconnect is what gives the poem its emotional weight. It captures a feeling of artifice or memory superimposed onto the present, where even the most vibrant natural scenes can be mere representations of past life. The effect is a quiet melancholy, a contemplation of how time erodes even the most immediate and seemingly robust expressions of nature, leaving behind only a semblance.