Stars

The stars symbolize the inevitable cruel fate brought about by the advent of modernity. This symbolism is especially evident with the ending lines of “Drummer Hodge” in which “strange-eyed constellations reign / His stars eternally,” a description that draws upon the ancient association between fortune-telling and astronomical objects in the Heavens – how a person’s fate is, as the saying goes, written in the stars (17-18). Structurally, the image of the stars recurs at the end of each stanza with the mention of “foreign constellations,” “Strange stars,” and “strange-eyed constellations [that] reign / His stars eternally,” suggesting that even at the level of the poem’s format, the reader is forced to encounter the messaging of the stars (5-18). The stars contribute to the fatalism especially evident at the end of the poem, the suggestion that Hodge’s death and loss of human dignity is inevitable against the...