In this work, as in some of Hardy's other poetry, the dead still have a voice. Here the deceased is a woman, who at the opening of the poem senses a shifting in the earth above her grave. The woman's call, repeated in the title of the poem, first reaches out to the man who was her beloved. The reply she receives is not from this man--he has wed another woman. As the digger says, the beloved felt that "It cannot hurt her now. . . That I should not be true" (ll. 5-6). Romantic love is the first casualty of the woman's death. The "loved one" is still alive, and thus finds another woman, "One of the brightest wealth has bred" (l. 4), to marry. Hardy's choice to describe the beloved's new bride as prosperous is not an accident. Not only has the beloved forgotten his dead loved one, as any attention he would pay towards the deceased could never be returned, he may have found someone even "better".
Romantic love having failed the woman, she turns to familial love. Such emotions should be far more durable: the bond of a common background calls for respect, even after death. This view is broken by the response the deceased receives upon her second call. Her beloved having failed her, the woman calls out to her "nearest dearest kin" (l. 8). The speaker digging at the grave relates that they have not come to the site, for they feel the tending of her burial place to be useless; nothing will alter the fact she has died. If she can not be brought back to the living, she is best forgotten. Though the woman's influence as a daughter, a sister, or a mother has no doubt been great on the lives of her family, this influence has ended with her death. Thus the woman's family fails her.
No form of love serving to keep the woman in the minds of others, her next call is directed toward one who held a very different emotion. Hate can be just as strong as love and shows a great tendency to remain strong over time. Thus the woman calls out to her enemy, thinking that perhaps she has come to continue her machinations against the deceased. The answering voice reveals that even this emotion fails to maintain its strength once its object has disappeared. The extremes of human emotion have failed to endure past the woman's death, removing all human interactions from this consideration. Hardy's words relate that all human emotion is transitory; all can decay with time.
Once the woman has exhausted all hope of resuming a lost relationship, the answering voice finally reveals itself to be her pet dog. Though all her human relationships have failed her, the more basic and natural fondness of a pet remains. Upon discovery of the speaker's identity, the deceased praises the animal's faithfulness as the "one true heart . . . left behind" (l. 27). The dog's presence gives her hope of a continued presence in the world, but even this is finally shattered. The dog was digging at the burial site only by chance; it simply wished to bury a bone in a convenient location. The woman's relationship with the natural world seemed to have been the only interaction that remained intact. What the deceased praises as "A dog's fidelity" (l. 30) proves only to be a random event.
This is perhaps the most unsettling conclusion Hardy makes: though one may make a fleeting connection with the world, its unthinking nature prevents any long-lasting influence. The final lines of the poem relate the animal's confession: "I am sorry, but I quite forgot / It was your resting-place" (ll. 35-36). Soon after the conversation between the dog and the woman is over, the animal will again forget the incident. The hound's interaction only seems to show concern with his mistress's welfare.
"Are You Digging" shows a strong central idea: relationships with anyone or anything outside one's self are tenuous and not to be fully trusted. For Hardy, the natural world is a chaotic entity, with which any connection is even more fleeting that those with his fellow men. This inability to fully connect with others not only causes disappointment when the realization of one's situation is fully formed, but it also relegates everyone to the corpse-like condition of the poem's deceased. Though we are not yet dead, our existence is very similar; we may at times connect with another, but only for a moment.