Thomas Hardy—Logs on the Hearth p1078

This passage is a narration about an individual who is remembering sitting in front of a fireplace and enjoying quality time spent with a sister. As I read it, I could imagine myself sitting in front of a fireplace with a cup of hot chocolate during a cold winter’s night. Hardy made is so easy to relate because of the great detail that he described his surrounding—his depiction of the fireplace was really detailed in even the small things that he saw.

The fire advances along the log
Of the tree we felled (lines 1-2)
Where the bark chars is where, one year,
It was pruned, and bled—
Then overgrew the wound. But now, at last,
Its growing all have stagnated. (lines 9-12)

Hardy’s use of words made it really easy to develop a mental image of what he was seeing. I could see the flames of the fire slowing dancing from one end of a log to the other as the fire gets bigger and casting shadows on the wall. It’s a beautiful way that he remembers such a simple time that was spent with a sister. I think that it really shows how it is the little moments that count the most in life. Instead of remembering an expensive vacation or something similar; he thought of a moment that most people tend to take for granted. That’s what I admired most about it.