2. A Poet in Winter

that western sea,As it swells and sobs,Where she once domiciled.

There are infelicities of the same kind in the first verse of the poem calledAt an Inn:—

When we, as strangers, soughtTheir catering care,Veiled smiles bespoke their thoughtOf what we were.They warmed as they opinedUs more than friends—That we had all resignedFor love's dear ends.

When we, as strangers, soughtTheir catering care,Veiled smiles bespoke their thoughtOf what we were.

They warmed as they opinedUs more than friends—That we had all resignedFor love's dear ends.

"Catering care" is an appalling phrase.

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 inThe Return of the Nativemore highly for persuading ourselves that:—

Intermissive aim at the thing sufficeth,

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 whichA Broken Appointmentbegins:—

You did not come,And marching time drew on, and wore me numb,—Yet less for loss of your dear presence thereThan that I thus found lacking in your makeThat high compassion which can overbearReluctance for pure loving kindness' sakeGrieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,You did not come.

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.

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—Too Late, Cristina, The Lost Mistress, The Last Ride Together, The Statue and the Bust, 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 inThe Statue and the Bust, 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. CompareThe Last Ride Togetherwith Mr. Hardy'sThe Phantom Horsewoman, 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.

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 Look into my Glass, is the cry of a soul dark but not utterly darkened:—

I look into my glass,And view my wasting skin,And say: "Would God, it came to passMy heart had shrunk as thin!"For then, I, undistrest,By hearts grown cold to me,Could lonely wait my endless restWith equanimity.But Time, to make me grieve,Part steals, lets part abide;And shakes this fragile frame at eveWith throbbings of noontide.

I look into my glass,And view my wasting skin,And say: "Would God, it came to passMy heart had shrunk as thin!"

For then, I, undistrest,By hearts grown cold to me,Could lonely wait my endless restWith equanimity.

But Time, to make me grieve,Part steals, lets part abide;And shakes this fragile frame at eveWith throbbings of noontide.

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" ofThe City of Dreadful Night. And despair is by no means triumphant in what is perhaps the most attractive of all Mr. Hardy's poems,The Oxen:—

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock,"Now they are all on their knees,"An elder said as we sat in a flockBy the embers in hearthside ease.We pictured the meek mild creatures whereThey dwelt in their strawy pen,Nor did it occur to one of us thereTo doubt they were kneeling then.So fair a fancy few would weaveIn these years! Yet, I feel,If some one said on Christmas Eve,"Come; see the oxen kneel"In the lonely barton by yonder coombOur childhood used to know,"I should go with him in the gloom,Hoping it might be so.

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock,"Now they are all on their knees,"An elder said as we sat in a flockBy the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures whereThey dwelt in their strawy pen,Nor did it occur to one of us thereTo doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weaveIn these years! Yet, I feel,If some one said on Christmas Eve,"Come; see the oxen kneel

"In the lonely barton by yonder coombOur childhood used to know,"I should go with him in the gloom,Hoping it might be so.

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 songMen who March Away. 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:—

How long, O ruling Teutons, Slavs, and Gaels,Must your wroth reasonings trade on lives like these,That are as puppets in a playing hand?When shall the saner softer politiesWhereof we dream, have sway in each proud land,And Patriotism, grown Godlike, scorn to standBondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas?

But, perhaps, his characteristic attitude to war is to be found, not in lines like these, but in that melancholy poem,The Souls of the Slain, 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:—

"And, General, how hold out our sweethearts,Sworn loyal as doves?""Many mourn; many thinkIt is not unattractive to prinkThem in sable for heroes. Some fickle and fleet heartsHave found them new loves.""And our wives?" quoth another, resignedly,"Dwell they on our deeds?""Deeds of home; that live yetFresh as new—deeds of fondness or fret,Ancient words that were kindly expressed or unkindly,These, these have their heeds."

"And our wives?" quoth another, resignedly,"Dwell they on our deeds?""Deeds of home; that live yetFresh as new—deeds of fondness or fret,Ancient words that were kindly expressed or unkindly,These, these have their heeds."

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 readThe Dynastsalong withBarrack-room Balladsto 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 inIn the Time of the Breaking of Nations:—

Only a man harrowing clodsIn a slow silent walkWith an old horse that stumbles and nodsHalf asleep as they stalk.Only thin smoke without flameFrom the heaps of couch grass:Yet this will go onward the sameThough Dynasties pass.Yonder a maid and her wightCome whispering by;War's annals will fade into nightEre their story die

Only a man harrowing clodsIn a slow silent walkWith an old horse that stumbles and nodsHalf asleep as they stalk.

Only thin smoke without flameFrom the heaps of couch grass:Yet this will go onward the sameThough Dynasties pass.

Yonder a maid and her wightCome whispering by;War's annals will fade into nightEre their story die

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:—

Rain on the windows, creaking doors,With blasts that besom the green,And I am here, and you are there,And a hundred miles between!

InBeyond the Last Lampwe 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:—

When I re-trod that watery waySome hours beyond the droop of day,Still I found pacing there the twainJust as slowly, just as sadly,Heedless of the night and rain.One could but wonder who they wereAnd what wild woe detained them there.Though thirty years of blur and blotHave slid since I beheld that spot,And saw in curious converse thereMoving slowly, moving sadly,That mysterious tragic pair,Its olden look may linger on—All but the couple; they have gone.Whither? Who knows, indeed.... And yetTo me, when nights are weird and wet,Without those comrades there at trystCreeping slowly, creeping sadly,That love-lane does not exist.There they seem brooding on their pain,And will, while such a lane remain.

Though thirty years of blur and blotHave slid since I beheld that spot,And saw in curious converse thereMoving slowly, moving sadly,That mysterious tragic pair,Its olden look may linger on—All but the couple; they have gone.

Whither? Who knows, indeed.... And yetTo me, when nights are weird and wet,Without those comrades there at trystCreeping slowly, creeping sadly,That love-lane does not exist.There they seem brooding on their pain,And will, while such a lane remain.

And death is no kinder than life to lovers:—

I shall rot here, with those whom in their dayYou never knew.And alien ones who, ere they chilled to clay,Met not my view,Will in yon distant grave-place ever neighbour you.No shade of pinnacle or tree or tower,While earth endures,Will fall on my mound and within the hourSteal on to yours;One robin never haunt our two green covertures.

I shall rot here, with those whom in their dayYou never knew.And alien ones who, ere they chilled to clay,Met not my view,Will in yon distant grave-place ever neighbour you.

No shade of pinnacle or tree or tower,While earth endures,Will fall on my mound and within the hourSteal on to yours;One robin never haunt our two green covertures.

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 inA Common-place Day:—

The day is turning ghost,And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively,To join the anonymous hostOf those that throng oblivion; ceding his place, maybe,To one of like degree....Nothing of tiniest worthHave I wrought, pondered, planned; no one thing asking blame or praise,Since the pale corpse-like birthOf this diurnal unit, bearing blanks in all its rays—Dullest of dull-hued days!Wanly upon the panesThe rain slides, as have slid since morn my colourless thoughts; and yetHere, while Day's presence wanes,And over him the sepulchre-lid is slowly lowered and set,He wakens my regret.

The day is turning ghost,And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively,To join the anonymous hostOf those that throng oblivion; ceding his place, maybe,To one of like degree....

Nothing of tiniest worthHave I wrought, pondered, planned; no one thing asking blame or praise,Since the pale corpse-like birthOf this diurnal unit, bearing blanks in all its rays—Dullest of dull-hued days!

Wanly upon the panesThe rain slides, as have slid since morn my colourless thoughts; and yetHere, while Day's presence wanes,And over him the sepulchre-lid is slowly lowered and set,He wakens my regret.

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.

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.

In the last poem in his last book,Moments of Vision, Mr. Hardy meditates on his own immortality, as all men of genius probably do at one time or another.Afterwards, the poem in which he does so, is interesting, not only for this reason, but because it contains implicitly a definition and a defence of the author's achievement in literature. The poem is too long to quote in full, but the first three verses will be sufficient to illustrate what I have said:

When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the people say:"He was a man who used to notice such things"?If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid's soundless blink,The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alightUpon the wind-warped upland thorn, will a gazer think:"To him this must have been a familiar sight"?If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,Will they say: "He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm,But he could do little for them; and now he is gone"?

If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid's soundless blink,The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alightUpon the wind-warped upland thorn, will a gazer think:"To him this must have been a familiar sight"?

If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,Will they say: "He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm,But he could do little for them; and now he is gone"?

Even without the two other verses, we have here a remarkable attempt on the part of an artist to paint a portrait, as it were, of his own genius.

Mr. Hardy's genius is essentially that of a man who "used to notice such things" as the fluttering of the green leaves in May, and to whom the swift passage of a night-jar in the twilight has "been a familiar sight." He is one of the most sensitive observers of nature who have written English prose. It may even be that he will be remembered longer for his studies of nature than for his studies of human nature. His days are among his greatest characters, as in the wonderful scene on the heath in the opening ofThe Return of the Native. He would have written well of the world, one can imagine, even if he had found it uninhabited. But his sensitiveness is not merely sensitiveness of the eye: it is also sensitiveness of the heart. He has, indeed, that hypersensitive sort of temperament, as the verse about the hedgehog suggests, which is the victim at once of pity and of a feeling of hopeless helplessness. Never anywhere else has there been such a world of pity put into a quotation as Mr. Hardy has put into that line and a half fromThe Two Gentlemen of Verona, which he placed on the title-page ofTess of the D'Urbervilles:—

Poor wounded name, my bosom as a bedShall lodge thee!

In the use to which he put these words Mr. Hardy may be said to have added to the poetry of Shakespeare. He gave them a new imaginative context, and poured his own heart into them. For the same helpless pity which he feels for dumb creatures he feels for men and women:

... He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm,But he could do little for them.

It is the spirit of pity brooding over the landscape in Mr. Hardy's books that makes them an original and beautiful contribution to literature, in spite of his endless errors as an artist.

His last book is a reiteration both of his genius and of his errors. As we read the hundred and sixty or so poems it contains we get the impression of genius presiding over a multitude of errors. There are not half a dozen poems in the book the discovery of which, should the author's name be forgotten, would send the critics in quest of other work from the same magician's hand. One feels safe in prophesying immortality for only two,The OxenandIn Time of "the Breaking of Nations"; and these have already appeared in the selection of the author's poems published in the Golden Treasury Series. The fact that the entirely new poems contain nothing on the plane of immortality, however, does not mean thatMoments of Visionis a book of verse about which one has the right to be indifferent. No writer who is so concerned as Mr. Hardy with setting down what his eyes and heart have told him can be regarded with indifference. Mr. Hardy's art is lame, but it carries the burden of genius. He may be a stammerer as a poet, but he stammers in words of his own concerning a vision of his own. When he notes the bird flying past in the dusk, "like an eyelid's soundless blink," he does not achieve music, but he chronicles an experience, not merely echoes one, with such exact truth as to make it immortally a part of all experience. There is nothing borrowed or secondhand, again, in Mr. Hardy's grim vision of the yew-trees in the churchyard by moonlight inJubilate:

The yew-tree arms, glued hard to the stiff, stark air,Hung still in the village sky as theatre-scenes.

Mr. Hardy may not enable us to hear the music which is more than the music of the earth, but he enables us to see what he saw. He communicates his spectacle of the world. He builds his house lopsided, harsh, and with the windows in unusual places; but it is his own house, the house of a seer, of a personality. That is what we are aware of in such a poem asOn Sturminster Foot Bridge, in which perfect and precise observation of nature is allied to intolerably prosaic utterance. The first verse of this poem runs:

Reticulations creep upon the slack stream's faceWhen the wind skims irritably past.The current clucks smartly into each hollow placeThat years of flood have scrabbled in the pier's sodden base;The floating-lily leaves rot fast.

One could make as good music as that out of a milk-cart. One would accept such musicless verse only from a man of genius. But even here Mr. Hardy takes us home with him and makes us stand by his side and listen to the clucking stream. He takes us home with him again in the poem calledOverlooking the River Stour, which begins:

The swallows flew in the curves of an eightAbove the river-gleamIn the wet June's last beam:Like little crossbows animate,The swallows flew in the curves of an eightAbove the river-gleam.Planing up shavings made of spray,A moor-hen darted outFrom the bank thereabout.And through the stream-shine ripped her way;Planing up shavings made of spray,A moor-hen darted out.

The swallows flew in the curves of an eightAbove the river-gleamIn the wet June's last beam:Like little crossbows animate,The swallows flew in the curves of an eightAbove the river-gleam.

Planing up shavings made of spray,A moor-hen darted outFrom the bank thereabout.And through the stream-shine ripped her way;Planing up shavings made of spray,A moor-hen darted out.

In this poem we find observation leaping into song in one line and hobbling into a hard-wrought image in another. Both the line in which the first appears, however—

Like little crossbows animate,

and the line in which the second happens—

Planing up shavings made of spray,

equally make us feel how watchful and earnest an observer is Mr. Hardy. He is a man, we realize, to whom bird and river, heath and stone, road and field and tree, mean immensely more than to his fellows. I do not suggest that he observes nature without bias—that he mirrors the procession of visible things with the delight of a child or a lyric poet. He makes nature his mirror as well as himself a mirror of nature. He colours it with all his sadness, his helplessness, his (if one may invent the word and use it without offence) warpedness. If I am not mistaken, he once compared a bleak morning inThe Woodlandersto the face of a still-born baby. He loves to dwell on the uncomfortable moods of nature—on such things as:—

... the watery lightOf the moon in its old age;

concerning which moon he goes on to describe how:

Green-rheumed clouds were hurrying past where mute and cold it globedLike a dying dolphin's eye seen through a lapping wave.

This, I fear, is a failure, but it is a failure in a common mood of the author's. It is a mood in which nature looks out at us, almost ludicrous in its melancholy. In such a poem as that from which I have quoted, it is as though we saw nature with a drip on the end of its nose. Mr. Hardy's is something different from a tragic vision. It is a desolate, disheartening, and, in a way, morbid vision. We wander with him too often under—

Gaunt trees that interlace,Through whose flayed fingers I see too clearlyThe nakedness of the place.

And Mr. Hardy's vision of the life of men and women transgresses similarly into a denial of gladness. His gloom, we feel, goes too far. It goes so far that we are tempted at times to think of it as a factitious gloom. He writes a poem calledHoneymoon Time at an Inn, and this is the characteristic atmosphere in which he introduces us to the bridegroom and bride:

At the shiver of morning, a little before the false dawn,The moon was at the window-square,Deedily brooding in deformed decay—The curve hewn off her cheek as by an adze;At the shiver of morning, a little before the false dawn,So the moon looked in there.

There are no happy lovers or happy marriages in Mr. Hardy's world. Such people as are happy would not be happy if only they knew the truth. Many of Mr. Hardy's poems are, as I have already said, dramatic lyrics on the pattern invented by Robert Browning—short stories in verse. But there is a certain air of triumph even in Browning's tragic figures. Mr. Hardy's figures are the inmates of despair. Browning's love-poems belong to heroic literature. Mr. Hardy's love-poems belong to the literature of downheartedness. Browning's men and women are men and women who have had the courage of their love, or who are shown at least against a background of Browning's own courage. Mr. Hardy's men and women do not know the wild faith of love. They have not the courage even of their sins. They are helpless as fishes in a net—a scarcely rebellious population of the ill-matched and the ill-starred.

Many of the poems in his last book fail through a lack of imaginative energy. It is imaginative energy that makes the reading of a great tragedy likeKing Learnot a depressing, but an exalting experience. But is there anything save depression to be got from reading such a poem asA Caged Goldfinch:—

Within a churchyard, on a recent grave,I saw a little cageThat jailed a goldfinch. All was silence, saveIts hops from stage to stage.There was inquiry in its wistful eye.And once it tried to sing;Of him or her who placed it there, and why,No one knew anything.True, a woman was found drowned the day ensuing,And some at times averredThe grave to be her false one's, who when wooingGave her the bird.

Within a churchyard, on a recent grave,I saw a little cageThat jailed a goldfinch. All was silence, saveIts hops from stage to stage.

There was inquiry in its wistful eye.And once it tried to sing;Of him or her who placed it there, and why,No one knew anything.

True, a woman was found drowned the day ensuing,And some at times averredThe grave to be her false one's, who when wooingGave her the bird.

Apart even from the ludicrous associations which modern slang has given the last phrase, making it look like a queer pun, this poem seems to one to drive sorrow over the edge of the ridiculous. That goldfinch has surely escaped from a Max-Beerbohm parody. The ingenuity with which Mr. Hardy plots tragic situations for his characters in some of his other poems is, indeed, in repeated danger of misleading him into parody. One of his poems tells, for instance, how a stranger finds an old man scrubbing a Statue of Liberty in a city square, and, hearing he does it for love, hails him as "Liberty's knight divine." The old man confesses that he does not care twopence for Liberty, and declares that he keeps the statue clean in memory of his beautiful daughter, who had sat as a model for it—a girl fair in fame as in form. In the interests of his plot and his dismal philosophy, Mr. Hardy identifies the stranger with the sculptor of the statue, and dismisses us with his blighting aside on the old man's credulous love of his dead daughter:

Answer I gave not. Of that formThe carver was I at his side;His child my model, held so saintly,Grand in feature.Gross in nature,In the dens of vice had died.

This is worse than optimism.

It is only fair to say that, though poem after poem—including the one about the fat young man whom the doctors gave only six months to live unless he walked a great deal, and who therefore was compelled to refuse a drive in the poet's phaeton, though night was closing over the heath—dramatizes the meaningless miseries of life, there is also to be found in some of the poems a faint sunset-glow of hope, almost of faith. There have been compensations, we realize inI Travel as a Phantom Now, even in this world of skeletons. Mr. Hardy's fatalism concerning God seems not very far from faith in God in that beautiful Christmas poem,The Oxen. Still, the ultimate mood of the poems is not faith. It is one of pity, so despairing as to be almost nihilism. There is mockery in it without the merriment of mockery. The general atmosphere of the poems, it seems to me, is to be found perfectly expressed in the last three lines of one of the poems, which is about a churchyard, a dead woman, a living rival, and the ghost of a soldier:

There was a cry by the white-flowered mound,There was a laugh from underground,There was a deeper gloom around.

How much of the art of Thomas Hardy is suggested in those lines! The laugh from underground, the deeper gloom—are they not all but omnipresent throughout his later and greatest work? The war could not deepen such pessimism. As a matter of fact, Mr. Hardy's war poetry is more cheerful, because more heroic, than his poetry about the normal world. Destiny was already crueller than any war-lord. The Prussian, to such an imagination, could be no more than a fly—a poisonous fly—on the wheel of destiny's disastrous car.

Back to Index Next