The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century | Page 8

mystic form the foremost bore
the development of the conception of God through human history is
presented with skill in concision. He was man-like at first, then an
amorphous cloud, then endowed with mighty wings, then jealous,
fierce, yet long-suffering and full of mercy.
And, tricked by our own early dream
And need of solace, we grew
self-deceived,
Our making soon our maker did we dream,
And what
we had imagined we believed.
Till, in Time's stayless stealthy swing,
Uncompromising rude reality

Mangled the Monarch of our fashioning,
Who quavered, sank; and
now has ceased to be.
Among the mourners is no less a person than the poet himself, for in
former years--perhaps as a boy--he, too, had worshipped, and therefore
he has no touch of contempt for those who still believe.
I could not prop their faith: and yet
Many I had known: with all I

sympathized;
And though struck speechless, I did not forget
That
what was mourned for, I, too, once had prized.
In the next stanza, the poet's oft-expressed belief in the wholesome,
antiseptic power of pessimism is reiterated, together with a hint, that
when we have once and for all put God in His grave, some better way
of bearing life's burden will be found, because the new way will be
based upon hard fact.
Still, how to bear such loss I deemed
The insistent question for each
animate mind,
And gazing, to my growing sight there seemed
A
pale yet positive gleam low down behind,
Whereof, to lift the general night,
A certain few who stood aloof had
said,
"See you upon the horizon that small light--
Swelling
somewhat?" Each mourner shook his head.
And they composed a crowd of whom
Some were right good, and
many nigh the best....
Thus dazed and puzzled 'twixt the gleam and
gloom
Mechanically I followed with the rest.
This pale gleam takes on a more vivid hue in a poem written shortly
after God's Funeral_, called _A Plaint to Man, where God

remonstrates with man for having created Him at all, since His life was
to be so short and so futile:
And tomorrow the whole of me disappears,
The truth should be told,
and the fact he faced
That had best been faced in earlier years:
The fact of life with dependence placed
On the human heart's
resource alone,
In brotherhood bonded close and graced
With loving-kindness fully blown,
And visioned help unsought,
unknown.
Other poems that express what is and what ought to be the attitude of

man toward God are New Year's Eve, To Sincerity, and the
beautiful
lyric, Let Me Enjoy, where Mr. Hardy has been more than usually
successful in fashioning both language and rhythm into a garment
worthy of the thought. No one can read The Impercipient without
recognizing that Mr. Hardy's atheism is as honest and as sincere as the
religious faith of others, and that no one regrets the blankness of his
universe more than he. He would believe if he could.
Pessimism is the basis of all his verse, as it is of his prose. It is
expressed not merely philosophically in poems of ideas, but over and
over again concretely in poems of incident. He is a pessimist both in
fancy and in fact, and after reading some of our sugary "glad" books, I
find his bitter taste rather refreshing. The titles of his recent collections,
Time's Laughingstocks_ and Satires of
Circumstance_, sufficiently
indicate the ill fortune awaiting his personages. At his best, his lyrics
written in the minor key have a noble, solemn adagio movement. At his
worst--for like all poets, he is sometimes at his worst--the truth of life
seems rather obstinately warped. Why should legitimate love
necessarily bring misery, and illegitimate passion produce permanent
happiness? And in the piece, "Ah, are you digging on my grave?"
pessimism approaches a _reductio ad absurdum._
Dramatic power, which is one of its author's greatest gifts, is frequently
finely revealed. After reading _A Tramp-woman's
Tragedy,_ one
unhesitatingly accords Mr. Hardy a place among the English writers of
ballads. For this is a genuine ballad, in story, in diction, and in vigour.
Yet as a whole, and in spite of Mr. Hardy's love of the dance and of
dance music, his poetry lacks grace and movement. His war poem,
_Men Who March Away,_ is singularly halting and awkward. His
complete poetical works are interesting because they proceed from an
interesting mind. His range of thought, both in reminiscence and in
speculation, is immensely wide; his power of concentration recalls that
of Browning.
I have thought sometimes, and thought long and hard.
I have stood
before, gone round a serious thing,
Tasked my whole mind to touch

and clasp it close,
As I stretch forth my arm to touch this bar.
God
and man, and what duty I owe both,--
I dare to say I have confronted
these
In thought: but no such faculty helped here.
No such faculty alone could help Mr. Hardy to the