Throughout the poet, Thomas Hardy includes: restless dealings linked to loss and landscape, and the personal connotations of which these natural settings display. Hardy’s sense of inadequacy of all consolation is frequently reflected in the variations in form. Due to his intense and abiding love for nature, Hardy often reflects this in his poetry, setting them within rural locations, creating settings which derived from an inner landscape of his own. Instantly, humankind had begun to change rapidly as the Victorian society, in all its glory and onward march into industrialisation, modernisation, and expansion, developed over society, therefore Hardy frequently demonstrated nature’s superiority over mankind.
A noticeable thread which progressively binds various texts is the significant transition and contrast of the natural and manmade world, as Hardy generally demonstrates a continuation of the natural gaining dominance within the setting. Hardy illustrates an apparent contrast in Beeny Cliff among the unchanging persistence and transience of nature and the fragility of humans and their personal relationships. The anaphora, “chasmal beauty”, is specifically meaningful due to the representation of attempting to consume memories. Additionally, the setting of Beeny Cliff, whilst it marks the sharp division and transition of land and sea; Hardy is reminded of the separation between himself and Emma that can never be bridged now that she has gone, therefore occasionally mythologizes elements of their marriage. It is identifiable that the use of colour imagery to produce a vision of the setting as a significant element of their marriage whereby they initially met; is present in all three lines, as “an irised rain”, “dyed” and “stain” and “purples prinked the main and that this is a pointer to Emma’s current status as a spirit that haunts this place. Similarly, “The Ruined