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

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 highest peaks of poetry, any more than it served Caponsacchi in his spiritual crisis. He thinks interesting thoughts, because he has an original mind. It is possible to be a great poet without possessing much intellectual wealth; just as it is possible to be a great singer, and yet be both shallow and dull. The divine gift of poetry seems sometimes as accidental as the formation of the throat. I do not believe that Tennyson was either shallow or dull; but I do not think he had so rich a mind as Thomas Hardy's, a mind so quaint, so humorous, so sharp. Yet