“Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave?” By: Thomas Hardy

1. “Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave?” By: Thomas Hardy

2. Author Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy is an author, poet born June 02, 1840 in Stinsford, Dorchester, Dorset, England. By the last two decades of Hardy's life, he had achieved the award Dickens' fame. In 1910, he was awarded the Order of Merit. New readers had also discovered his novels by the publication of the Wessex Editions, the definitive versions of all Hardy's early works. Hardy was an accomplished man, Hardy also found happiness in his personal life, His first wife, Emma, died in 1912. In 1914, he married Florence Dugale. After a long and highly successful life, Thomas Hardy died on January 11, 1928, at the age of 87. His ashes were buried in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey.

3. Historical Background Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave?” was published on September 27, 1913, in Thomas Hardy’s 1914 collection, Satires of Circumstance: Lyrics and Reveries with Miscellaneous Pieces.

4. Summary • In “Ah, Are You Digging On My Grave?” a deceased woman carries on a dialogue with an individual who is disturbing her grave site. The identity of this figure, the “digger” of the woman’s grave, is unknown through the first half of the poem. As the woman try to guess who the digger is, she reveals that she is happy that yet she is remembered, when she thought she was forgotten. In a series of ironic turns, the responses of the digger shows that the woman’s —a “loved one,” family relatives, and a despised enemy, have all forsaken her memory. Finally, it is revealed that the digger is the woman’s dog, but is unconcerned about his belated mistress and is digging only so it can bury a bone. Though the poem contains a humorous tone, the picture Hardy paints is bleak; the dead are almost completely eliminated from the memory of the living and is showing that we’re not as important as we think it shows that we’re forgotten after death.

5. Analysis Of Poem “Then, who is digging on mygrave?   Say—since I have not guessed!”                      —“O it is I, my mistress dear,Your little dog, who still lives near,And much I hope my movements here   Have not disturbed your rest?”“Ah, yes! You dig upon mygrave …                        Why flashed it not on meThat one true heart was left behind!What feeling do we ever findTo equal among human kind   A dog’s fidelity!”“Mistress, I dug upon your graveTo bury a bone, in caseI should be hungry near this spotWhen passing on my daily trot.I am sorry, but I quite forgot                         It was your resting place.” • “Ah, are you digging on my grave   My loved one?—planting rue?”—“No; yesterday he went to wedOne of the brightest wealth has bred.‘It cannot hurt her now,’ he said,                       ‘That I should not be true’.”“Then who is digging on my grave?   My nearest dearest kin?”—“Ah, no; they sit and think, ‘What use!What good will planting flowers produce?               No tendance of her mound can loose   Her spirit from Death’s gin’.”“But someone digs upon my grave?   My enemy?—prodding sly?” “Nay; when she heard you had passed the Gate          That shuts on all flesh soon or late,She thought you no more worth her hate,   And cares not where you lie.”

6. Theme and Tone The theme of this poem is we’re not as important as we think it shows that we’re forgotten after death. The tone of the poem is Humor and Ironic

7. Personification and Repetition was the figurative language used in the poem “Ah ,Are you digging on my grave” ? ( repitition) —“O it is I, my mistress dear,Your little dog, who still lives near,And much I hope my movements here   Have not disturbed your rest?” (personification)

8. Charnecia DavisMrs.JohnsonD3