memory emerges as a critical component to this experience of loss, given that he has nothing else to hold onto and no physical reminders from her time alive. It is a very introverted depiction of grief, personal rather than public, and in this sense, it seems to be more about Hardy's experience of loss than it is about the dead woman herself.

On a technical level, the poem contains rhyming meter, featuring an abab rhyme scheme. In addition, it is worth noting that much of the poem's sense of rhythm is shaped by Hardy's use of alternation between metrical lines of varying lengths. You can see this pattern in effect in the poem's opening four lines (quoted above), where the third line in this stanza contains nearly as many syllables as the first two lines combined. This is part of a consistent metrical pattern, by which the third line and the second to the last line in each stanza are significantly longer and more intricate than the others, and this pattern holds true across the poem.

Figures of speech that Hardy use include anaphora, which is when the same word or words at the beginning of a line are repeated in consecutive lines. This occurs at the beginning of the poem, when "Not a" is repeated twice:

Not a line of her writing have I
Not a thread of her hair.

Another figure of speech is metaphor or comparison. Hardy uses a metaphor when he calls his dead cousin "my lost prize" and later when he refers to his memory of her as a "phantom" and a "relic."

Hardy also employs alliteration, which is when words beginning with the same consonant are placed close together, such as in "forebodings, or fears." He likewise uses assonance, which occurs when words starting with the same vowel are placed near each other, as in "enray and enarch." Words such as "enray," "enarch," and "haply" are also examples of archaic or little used language. They capture our attention and slow down our reading. In the term "aureate nimb," Hardy uses an archaic image of a glowing rainbow to describe his cousin's talents and kindness.

Hardy employs refrain or repetition when he repeats the lines:

No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby
I may picture her there.

Sound devices include an abab pattern of end rhymes, with rhyming words such as "hair" and "there" and "prize" and "eyes" creating a pleasing sense of rhythm. Further, the repeated use of words beginning with "no" or "un" sounds create a sound sensation of negation, absence, and loss.

In the first stanza of the poem, Hardy tries to recall the woman who has died, and who he loved. He calls her his "lost prize," indicating that he regrets not trying harder to make a relationship with her work. He also describes her as a woman whose "dreams were upbrimming with light," and who had "laughter in her eyes." These images are very positive, and suggest a woman who was happy and hopeful. Light is often symbolic of hope, clarity and joy, and the light imagery used here suggests that the woman was overflowing, or "upbrimming" with these characteristics.

In the second stanza Hardy imagines what this woman's final days may have been like. He again uses light imagery but this time to suggest a passing of light and the coming of darkness. Hardy speculates that her "life-light decline[d]," and here the light symbolizes her life, and the darkness the death that awaited her. Hardy also wonders if the darkness of death took away some of the woman's joy and happiness, and "Disennoble[d]" her soul.

In the third and final stanza of the poem, Hardy says that he now struggles to evoke the image of the woman as she was when she was young, when she was full of light and full of life, and that his memory of her now has been reduced to "but the phantom" of the woman. In other words, the image of the woman has faded in his memory, and is now like the echo of a sound, or the reflection of an image. It is on this rather melancholy note that Hardy ends the poem.