ABSTRACT
In his pseudonymous biography, Hardy says that on the day ‘the bloody battle’ of Gravelotte was fought he and his future wife, Emma Lavinia Gifford, were reading Tennyson in the grounds of her brother’s rectory in Cornwall.
It was at this time and spot that Hardy was struck by the incident of the old horse harrowing the arable field in the valley below, which, when in far later years it was recalled to him by a still bloodier war, he made it into a little poem. 2
