<SPAN name="XXVII"></SPAN>
<h2>XXVII</h2>
<h2><b>MR. THOMAS HARDY</b></h2>
<h3><b><SPAN name="1._His_Genius_as_a_Poet"></SPAN>1. His Genius as a Poet</b></h3>
<br/>
<p>Mr. Thomas Hardy, in the opinion of some, is greater as a poet than
as a
novelist. That is one of the mild heresies in which the amateur of
letters loves to indulge. It has about as much truth in it as the
statement that Milton was greater as a controversialist than as a poet,
or that Lamb's plays are better than his essays. Mr. Hardy has
undoubtedly made an original contribution to the poetry of his time.
But
he has given us no verse that more than hints at the height and depth
of
the tragic vision which is expressed in <i>Jude the Obscure</i>. He is
not by
temperament a singer. His music is a still small voice unevenly matched
against his consciousness of midnight and storm. It is a flutter of
wings in the rain over a tomb. His sense of beauty is frail and
midge-like compared with his sense of everlasting frustration. The
conceptions in his novels are infinitely more poetic than the
conceptions in his verse. In <i>Tess</i> and <i>Jude</i> destiny
presides with
something of the grandeur of the ancient gods. Except in <i>The Dynasts</i>
and a few of the lyrics, there is none of this brooding majesty in his
verse. And even in <i>The Dynasts</i>, majestic as the scheme of it
is, there
seems to me to be more creative imagination in the prose passages than
in the poetry.</p>
<p>Truth to tell, Mr. Hardy is neither sufficiently articulate nor
sufficiently fastidious to be a great poet. He does not express life
easily in beautiful words or in images. There is scarcely a magical
image in the hundred or so poems in the book of his selected verse.
Thus he writes in <i>I Found Her Out There</i> of one who:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span class="i6">would sigh at the tale<br/>
</span><span>Of sunk Lyonesse<br/>
</span><span>As a wind-tugged tress<br/>
</span><span>Flapped her cheek like a flail.<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>There could not be an uglier and more prosaic exaggeration than is
contained in the image in the last line. And prose intrudes in the
choice of words as well as in images. Take, for example, the use of the
word "domiciled" in the passage in the same poem about—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span class="i6">that western sea,<br/>
</span><span>As it swells and sobs,<br/>
</span><span>Where she once domiciled.<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>There are infelicities of the same kind in the first verse of the
poem
called <i>At an Inn</i>:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>When we, as strangers, sought<br/>
</span><span class="i2">Their catering care,<br/>
</span><span>Veiled smiles bespoke their thought<br/>
</span><span class="i2">Of what we were.<br/>
</span></div>
<div class="stanza"><span>They warmed as they opined<br/>
</span><span class="i2">Us more than friends—<br/>
</span><span>That we had all resigned<br/>
</span><span class="i2">For love's dear ends.<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>"Catering care" is an appalling phrase.</p>
<p>I do not wish to over-emphasize the significance of flaws of this
kind.
But, at a time when all the world is eager to do honour to Mr. Hardy's
poems, it is surely well to refrain from doing equal honour to his
faults. We shall not appreciate the splendid interpretation of earth in
<i>The Return of the Native</i> more highly for persuading ourselves
that:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>Intermissive aim at the thing sufficeth,<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>is a line of good poetry. Similarly the critic, if he is to enjoy
the
best of Mr. Hardy, must also be resolute not to shut his eyes to the
worst in such a verse as that with which <i>A Broken Appointment</i>
begins:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>You did not come,<br/>
</span><span>And marching time drew on, and wore me numb,—<br/>
</span><span>Yet less for loss of your dear presence there<br/>
</span><span>Than that I thus found lacking in your make<br/>
</span><span>That high compassion which can overbear<br/>
</span><span>Reluctance for pure loving kindness' sake<br/>
</span><span>Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,<br/>
</span><span>You did not come.<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>There are hints of the grand style of lyric poetry in these lines,
but
phrases like "in your make" and "as the hope-hour stroked its sum" are
discords that bring it tumbling to the levels of Victorian commonplace.</p>
<p>What one does bless Mr. Hardy for, however, both in his verse and in
his
prose, is his bleak sincerity. He writes out of the reality of his
experience. He has a temperament sensitive beyond that of all but a few
recent writers to the pain and passion of human beings. Especially is
he
sensitive to the pain and passion of frustrated lovers. At least half
his poems, I fancy, are poems of frustration. And they, hold us under
the spell of reality like a tragedy in a neighbour's house, even when
they leave us most mournful over the emptiness of the world. One can
see
how very mournful Mr. Hardy's genius is if one compares it with that of
Browning, his master in the art of the dramatic lyric. Browning is also
a poet of frustrated lovers. One can remember poem after poem of his
with a theme that might easily have served for Mr. Hardy—<i>Too Late,
Cristina, The Lost Mistress, The Last Ride Together, The Statue and the
Bust</i>, to name a few. But what a sense of triumph there is in
Browning's
tragedies! Even when he writes of the feeble-hearted, as in <i>The
Statue
and the Bust</i>, he leaves us with the feeling that we are in the
presence
of weakness in a world in which courage prevails. His world is a place
of opulence, not of poverty. Compare <i>The Last Ride Together</i>
with Mr.
Hardy's <i>The Phantom Horsewoman</i>, and you will see a vast energy
and
beauty issuing from loss in the one, while in the other there is little
but a sad shadow. To have loved even for an hour is with Browning to
live for ever after in the inheritance of a mighty achievement. To have
loved for an hour is, in Mr. Hardy's imagination, to have deepened the
sadness even more than the beauty of one's memories.</p>
<p>Not that Mr. Hardy's is quite so miserable a genius as is commonly
supposed. It is false to picture him as always on his knees before the
grave-worm. His faith in beauty and joy may be only a thin flame, but
it
is never extinguished. His beautiful lyric, <i>I Look into my Glass</i>,
is
the cry of a soul dark but not utterly darkened:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>I look into my glass,<br/>
</span><span>And view my wasting skin,<br/>
</span><span>And say: "Would God, it came to pass<br/>
</span><span>My heart had shrunk as thin!"<br/>
</span></div>
<div class="stanza"><span>For then, I, undistrest,<br/>
</span><span>By hearts grown cold to me,<br/>
</span><span>Could lonely wait my endless rest<br/>
</span><span>With equanimity.<br/>
</span></div>
<div class="stanza"><span>But Time, to make me grieve,<br/>
</span><span>Part steals, lets part abide;<br/>
</span><span>And shakes this fragile frame at eve<br/>
</span><span>With throbbings of noontide.<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>That is certainly worlds apart from the unquenchable joy of
Browning's
"All the breath and the bloom of the world in the bag of one bee"; but
it is also far removed from the "Lo! you may always end it where you
will" of <i>The City of Dreadful Night</i>. And despair is by no means
triumphant in what is perhaps the most attractive of all Mr. Hardy's
poems, <i>The Oxen</i>:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock,<br/>
</span><span class="i2">"Now they are all on their knees,"<br/>
</span><span>An elder said as we sat in a flock<br/>
</span><span class="i2">By the embers in hearthside ease.<br/>
</span></div>
<div class="stanza"><span>We pictured the meek mild creatures where<br/>
</span><span class="i2">They dwelt in their strawy pen,<br/>
</span><span>Nor did it occur to one of us there<br/>
</span><span class="i2">To doubt they were kneeling then.<br/>
</span></div>
<div class="stanza"><span>So fair a fancy few would weave<br/>
</span><span class="i2">In these years! Yet, I feel,<br/>
</span><span>If some one said on Christmas Eve,<br/>
</span><span class="i2">"Come; see the oxen kneel<br/>
</span></div>
<div class="stanza"><span>"In the lonely barton by yonder coomb<br/>
</span><span class="i2">Our childhood used to know,"<br/>
</span><span>I should go with him in the gloom,<br/>
</span><span class="i2">Hoping it might be so.<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>The mood of faith, however—or, rather, of delight in the memory of
faith—is not Mr. Hardy's prevailing mood. At the same time, his unfaith
relates to the duration of love rather than to human destiny. He
believes in "the world's amendment." He can enter upon a war without
ironical doubts, as we see in the song <i>Men who March Away</i>. More
than
this, he can look forward beyond war to the coming of a new patriotism
of the world. "How long," he cries, in a poem written some years ago:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>How long, O ruling Teutons, Slavs, and Gaels,<br/>
</span><span>Must your wroth reasonings trade on lives like these,<br/>
</span><span>That are as puppets in a playing hand?<br/>
</span><span>When shall the saner softer polities<br/>
</span><span>Whereof we dream, have sway in each proud land,<br/>
</span><span>And Patriotism, grown Godlike, scorn to stand<br/>
</span><span>Bondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas?<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>But, perhaps, his characteristic attitude to war is to be found, not
in
lines like these, but in that melancholy poem, <i>The Souls of the
Slain</i>,
in which the souls of the dead soldiers return to their country and
question a "senior soul-flame" as to how their friends and relatives
have kept their doughty deeds in remembrance:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>"And, General, how hold out our sweethearts,<br/>
</span><span class="i4">Sworn loyal as doves?"<br/>
</span><span class="i2">"Many mourn; many think<br/>
</span><span class="i2">It is not unattractive to prink<br/>
</span><span>Them in sable for heroes. Some fickle and fleet hearts<br/>
</span><span class="i4">Have found them new loves."<br/>
</span></div>
<div class="stanza"><span>"And our wives?" quoth another, resignedly,<br/>
</span><span class="i4">"Dwell they on our deeds?"<br/>
</span><span class="i2">"Deeds of home; that live yet<br/>
</span><span class="i2">Fresh as new—deeds of fondness or fret,<br/>
</span><span>Ancient words that were kindly expressed or unkindly,<br/>
</span><span class="i4">These, these have their heeds."<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>Mr. Hardy has too bitter a sense of reality to believe much in the
glory
of war. His imagination has always been curiously interested in
soldiers, but that is more because they have added a touch of colour to
the tragic game of life than because he is on the side of the military
show. One has only to read <i>The Dynasts</i> along with <i>Barrack-room
Ballads</i> to see that the attitude of Mr. Hardy to war is the
attitude of
the brooding artist in contrast with that of the music-hall politician.
Not that Mr. Kipling did not tell us some truths about the fate of our
fellows, but he related them to an atmosphere that savoured of beer and
tobacco rather than of eternity. The real world to Mr. Hardy is the
world of ancient human things, in which war has come to be a hideous
irrelevance. That is what he makes emphatically clear in <i>In the
Time of
the Breaking of Nations</i>:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>Only a man harrowing clods<br/>
</span><span class="i2">In a slow silent walk<br/>
</span><span>With an old horse that stumbles and nods<br/>
</span><span class="i2">Half asleep as they stalk.<br/>
</span></div>
<div class="stanza"><span>Only thin smoke without flame<br/>
</span><span class="i2">From the heaps of couch grass:<br/>
</span><span>Yet this will go onward the same<br/>
</span><span class="i2">Though Dynasties pass.<br/>
</span></div>
<div class="stanza"><span>Yonder a maid and her wight<br/>
</span><span class="i2">Come whispering by;<br/>
</span><span>War's annals will fade into night<br/>
</span><span class="i2">Ere their story die<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>It may be thought, on the other hand, that Mr. Hardy's poems about
war
are no more expressive of tragic futility than his poems about love.
Futility and frustration are ever-recurring themes in both. His lovers,
like his soldiers, rot in the grave defeated of their glory. Lovers are
always severed both in life and in death:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>Rain on the windows, creaking doors,<br/>
</span><span class="i2">With blasts that besom the green,<br/>
</span><span>And I am here, and you are there,<br/>
</span><span class="i2">And a hundred miles between!<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>In <i>Beyond the Last Lamp</i> we have the same mournful cry over
severance.
There are few sadder poems than this with its tristful refrain, even in
the works of Mr. Hardy. It is too long to quote in full, but one may
give the last verses of this lyric of lovers in a lane:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>When I re-trod that watery way<br/>
</span><span>Some hours beyond the droop of day,<br/>
</span><span>Still I found pacing there the twain<br/>
</span><span class="i2">Just as slowly, just as sadly,<br/>
</span><span class="i2">Heedless of the night and rain.<br/>
</span><span>One could but wonder who they were<br/>
</span><span>And what wild woe detained them there.<br/>
</span></div>
<div class="stanza"><span>Though thirty years of blur and blot<br/>
</span><span>Have slid since I beheld that spot,<br/>
</span><span>And saw in curious converse there<br/>
</span><span class="i2">Moving slowly, moving sadly,<br/>
</span><span class="i2">That mysterious tragic pair,<br/>
</span><span>Its olden look may linger on—<br/>
</span><span>All but the couple; they have gone.<br/>
</span></div>
<div class="stanza"><span>Whither? Who knows, indeed.... And yet<br/>
</span><span>To me, when nights are weird and wet,<br/>
</span><span>Without those comrades there at tryst<br/>
</span><span class="i2">Creeping slowly, creeping sadly,<br/>
</span><span class="i2">That love-lane does not exist.<br/>
</span><span>There they seem brooding on their pain,<br/>
</span><span>And will, while such a lane remain.<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>And death is no kinder than life to lovers:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span>I shall rot here, with those whom in their day<br/>
</span><span class="i6">You never knew.<br/>
</span><span>And alien ones who, ere they chilled to clay,<br/>
</span><span class="i6">Met not my view,<br/>
</span><span>Will in yon distant grave-place ever neighbour you.<br/>
</span></div>
<div class="stanza"><span>No shade of pinnacle or tree or tower,<br/>
</span><span class="i6">While earth endures,<br/>
</span><span>Will fall on my mound and within the hour<br/>
</span><span class="i6">Steal on to yours;<br/>
</span><span>One robin never haunt our two green covertures.<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>Mr. Hardy, fortunately, has the genius to express the burden and the
mystery even of a world grey with rain and commonplace in achievement.
There is a beauty of sorrow in these poems in which "life with the sad,
seared face" mirrors itself without disguise. They bring us face to
face
with an experience intenser than our own. There is nothing common in
the
tragic image of dullness in <i>A Common-place Day</i>:—</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza"><span class="i4">The day is turning ghost,<br/>
</span><span>And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively,<br/>
</span><span class="i4">To join the anonymous host<br/>
</span><span>Of those that throng oblivion; ceding his place, maybe,<br/>
</span><span class="i4">To one of like degree....<br/>
</span></div>
<div class="stanza"><span class="i4">Nothing of tiniest worth<br/>
</span><span>Have I wrought, pondered, planned; no one thing asking
blame or praise,<br/>
</span><span class="i4">Since the pale corpse-like birth<br/>
</span><span>Of this diurnal unit, bearing blanks in all its rays—<br/>
</span><span class="i4">Dullest of dull-hued days!<br/>
</span></div>
<div class="stanza"><span class="i4">Wanly upon the panes<br/>
</span><span>The rain slides, as have slid since morn my colourless
thoughts; and yet<br/>
</span><span class="i4">Here, while Day's presence wanes,<br/>
</span><span>And over him the sepulchre-lid is slowly lowered and set,<br/>
</span><span class="i4">He wakens my regret.<br/>
</span></div>
</div>
<p>In the poem which contains these verses the emotion of the poet
gives
words often undistinguished an almost Elizabethan rhythm. Mr. Hardy,
indeed, is a poet who often achieves music of verses, though he seldom
achieves music of phrase.</p>
<p>We must, then, be grateful without niggardliness for the gift of his
verse. On the larger canvas of his prose we find a vision more
abundant,
more varied, more touched with humour. But his poems are the genuine
confessions of a soul, the meditations of a man of genius, brooding not
without bitterness but with pity on the paths that lead to the grave,
and the figures that flit along them so solitarily and so ineffectually.</p>
<br/>
<div style="break-after:column;"></div><br />