Beeny - Literary Allusions

Literary Allusions

In "A Death-Day Recalled," collected in Satires of Circumstance (1914), Thomas Hardy wrote:

Beeny did not quiver,
Juliot grew not gray,
Thin Vallency's river
Held its wonted way.
Bos seemed not to utter
Dimmest note of dirge,
Targan mouth a mutter
To its creamy surge.

Yet though these, unheeding,
Listless, passed the hour
Of her spirit's speeding,
She had, in her flower,
Sought and loved the places
Much and often pined
For their lonely faces
When in towns confined.

Why did not Vallency
In his purl deplore
One whose haunts were whence he
Drew his limpid store?
Why did Bos not thunder,
Targan apprehend
Body and Breath were sunder
Of their former friend?