2 quotations linked to De Profundis I — Thomas Hardy by or associated with Thomas Hardy, with source notes, explanations and related topics.
Returning winter, flower-petals, remembered severance, grief that changes with recurrence, time and acceptance of an event that cannot happen first again.
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“Wintertime nighs; But my bereavement-pain It cannot bring again: Twice no one dies.”
Returning winter cannot recreate the first shock of bereavement, suggesting that repeated seasons may revisit memory without reproducing an earlier loss in exactly the same form.
Source note: “De Profundis I,” Poems of the Past and the Present (1901), Project Gutenberg #3168. The poem reflects on recurring seasons and a past bereavement; it does not prescribe a universal grief timetable.
“Flower-petals flee; But, since it once hath been, No more that severing scene Can harrow me.”
Falling petals accompany a recognition that a severing event belongs to the past and cannot happen for the first time again, joining natural recurrence to changed grief.
Source note: “De Profundis I,” Project Gutenberg #3168. The passage belongs to one speaker's reflection on bereavement and seasonal return.