The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century | Page 6

troubling of the land,
And
red shall be the breaking of the waters.
Sit fast upon thy stalk, when the blast shall with thee talk, With the
mercies of the king for thine awning;
And the just understand that
thine hour is at hand,
Thine hour at hand with power in the dawning.

When the nations lie in blood, and their kings a broken brood, Look
up, O most sorrowful of daughters!
Lift up thy head and hark what
sounds are in the dark,
For His feet are coming to thee on the waters!
O Lily of the King! I shall not see, that sing,
I shall not see the hour
of thy queening!
But my song shall see, and wake, like a flower that
dawn-winds shake, And sigh with joy the odours of its meaning.
O
Lily of the King, remember then the thing
That this dead mouth sang;
and thy daughters,
As they dance before His way, sing there on the
Day,
What I sang when the Night was on the waters!
There is a man of genius living in England today who has been writing
verse for sixty years, but who received no public recognition as a poet
until the twentieth century. This man is Thomas Hardy. He has the
double distinction of being one of the great Victorian novelists, and one
of the most notable poets of the twentieth century. At nearly eighty
years of age, he is in full intellectual vigour, enjoys a creative power in
verse that we more often associate with youth, and writes poetry that in
matter and manner belongs distinctly to our time. He could not possibly
be omitted from any survey of contemporary production.
As is so commonly the case with distinguished novelists, Thomas
Hardy practised verse before prose. From 1860 to 1870 he wrote many
poems, some of which appear among the Love Lyrics in _Time's

Laughingstocks,_ 1909. Then he began a career in prose fiction which
has left him today without a living rival in the world. In 1898, with the

volume called Wessex Poems, embellished with
illustrations from his
own hand, he challenged criticism as a professional poet. The moderate
but definite success of this collection emboldened him to produce in
1901, _Poems of the Past and Present._ In 1904, 1906, 1908, were
issued successively the three parts of The Dynasts, a thoroughly
original and greatly-planned epical drama of the Napoleonic wars. This
was followed by three books of verse, Time's Laughingstocks_ in 1909,
Satires of
Circumstance,_ 1914, and Moments of Vision, 1917; and he
is a familiar and welcome guest in contemporary magazines.
Is it possible that when, at the close of the nineteenth century, Thomas
Hardy formally abandoned prose for verse, he was either consciously or
subconsciously aware of the coming renaissance of poetry? Certainly
his change in expression had more significance than an individual
caprice. It is a notable fact that the present poetic revival, wherein are
enlisted so many enthusiastic youthful volunteers, should have had as
one of its prophets and leaders a veteran of such power and fame.
Perhaps Mr. Hardy would regard his own personal choice as no factor;
the Immanent and Unconscious Will had been busy in his mind, for
reasons unknown to him, unknown to man, least of all known to Itself.
Leslie Stephen once remarked, "The deepest thinker is not
really--though we often use the phrase--in advance of his day so much
as in the line along which advance takes place."
Looking backward from the year 1918, we may see some new meaning
in the spectacle of two modern leaders in fiction, Hardy and Meredith,
each preferring as a means of expression poetry to prose, each thinking
his own verse better than his novels, and each writing verse that in
substance and manner belongs more to the twentieth than to the
nineteenth century. Meredith always said that fiction was his kitchen
wench; poetry was his Muse.
The publication of poems written when he was about twenty-five is
interesting to students of Mr. Hardy's temperament, for they show that
he was then as complete, though perhaps not so philosophical a
pessimist, as he is now. The present world-war may seem to him a
vindication of his despair, and therefore proof of the blind folly of

those who pray to Our Father in Heaven. He is, though I think not
avowedly so, an adherent of the philosophy of Schopenhauer and von
Hartmann. The primal force, from which all things proceed, is the
Immanent Will. The Will is unconscious and omnipotent. It is
superhuman only in power, lacking intelligence, foresight, and any
sense of ethical values. In The Dynasts, Mr. Hardy has written an epic
illustration of the doctrines of pessimism.
Supernatural machinery and celestial inspiration have always been
more or less conventional in the Epic. Ancient writers invoked the
Muse. When Milton began his great task, he