This photograph appears courtesy Dave Sands,
the webmaster of "Thomas Hardy Country," reviewed below.
It was taken by Terry Linney, the custodian at the Cottage.
"The Voice"
Sean Vernon is a singer, songwriter, teacher, and lover of poetry. He has written settings for more than 150 well-known poems, works by Blake, Burns, Cummings, Dickinson, Housman, Millay, Shakespeare, Wordsworth, Yeats, and heaven knows who else. His music is accessible but complex, thoughtful, songlike, often sweet, sometimes playful. Vernon has composed settings for 3 poems by Thomas Hardy -- "The Ruined Maid," "In Time of 'Breaking of Nations'," and "The Voice."
Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Or is only the breeze, in its listlessness
Thus I; faltering forward,
"The Voice"
A Musical Setting by Sean Vernon
Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
And the woman calling.
December 1912
Click on the title to hear the setting:
(3:21, RealAudio file, 392K)
Recorded December, 1999,
Sean Vernon, vocal and acoustic guitar
Jeff Kelliher, acoustic guitar.
©Sean Vernon, 1999
A page for "The Voice" exists on the "Poem-of-the-Month" discussion on The Thomas Hardy Association web site. To view what has been said about the poem, and perhaps add commentary of your own, click here.
Below is a clip of Sean Vernon and Jeff Kelliher performing "The Voice" at Phillips Academy on January 20, 1999.
There are also more than fifty photographs, all carefully identified as to their subject matter, on the web site. The photographs are clear and well-framed, but Mr. Sands is careful to assert, "I am not a professional photographer." In consequence he generously offers the photographs to whoever wants them: "Please feel free to use them if you wish. I took them myself but personally claim no copyright." He is even willing to take more photographs for those who need the image of a particular Hardy site. At the right is Mr. Sands's photograph of the "Cross-in-Hand Stone," the subject of Hardy's poem "The Lost Pyx." A page is devoted to this poem, with several photographs of the pillar, which is located a few miles northwest of Cerne Abbas. The Cross-in-Hand is also featured in Tess, the spot where Tess swears an oath to Alec d'Urberville.
