In "the Workbox" by Thomas Hardy, there are many ironic points. This poem is filled with irony, yet there are mainly two types of irony that I see happening again and again. These two types of irony are verbal and cosmic irony. I have still yet to find dramatic and situational irony even though I have read this poem many times. I believe that the author put so many ironic points in it because he wanted the reader to think. In order for us to even get a glimpse of what he is trying to express, we must use critical thinking.
             I will first start off with the cosmic irony. Cosmic irony is a twist of fate, fate with a sense of humor. In this poem it seems to me that the cosmic irony was at first where a man made a workbox out of some wood that he got from someone's coffin. He then gave the workbox to a woman who knew the dead guy in the coffin. "I warrant it will. And longer too. 'Tis a scantling that I got Off poor John Wayward's coffin, who Died of they knew not what." That is very ironic because out of anyone's coffin she had to know that guy. Not only know him but he came from her native town. We see that she knows him when she says "The shingled pattern that seems to cease Against your box's rim Continues right on in the piece That's underground with him." This shows that she knows him because how else would she know what his coffin looks like unless she was at the funeral. The key to this irony is not that she just knew him, but that she killed him. And out of every piece of wood that he would use, he used John Wayward's . Now that is cosmic irony.
             Now to the verbal irony, there is much verbal irony that helps us more understand the poem. Unless you were an uncritical thinker in which verbal irony will only confuse you more, as It did to me in the beginning. Verbal irony is where you say something but mean the opposite. The verbal irony that hit me the most was near the end. "Don't, dear, despise my intellect, Mere accidental t...