Hardy, Thomas. "Under the Waterfall".

Summary

- the female speaker plunges her arm into a basin, which makes her recall a valley with a waterfall whose sound stands for her for the only "real love-rhyme"

- the 1^st stanza describes the hidden valley itself, the 2^nd the memories associated with the place

- the speaker sadly recalls the summer picnic she and her lover arranged "under the waterfall", the fruits they ate, the wine they drank, and the glass they lost in the water and failed to find it again

- later: the now long forgotten glass remained under the water untouched as a melancholy remainder of the lost relationship

Analysis

- regularly rhymed but experimental in terms of the shape of lines on page (resemble the shape of a waterfall) and the varying line length

- the speaker either muses to herself or relates her thoughts to a listener: the listener is implied graphically by the change of inverted commas and thematically by the question about further explanation of the related ideas

- sadly contrasts the permanence of the rocky valley even "in stir of kingdoms, in wars, in peaces" x the fleeting nature of human relationships