'J:)ecemb(n- ij, 3917 
tAND & WATER 
I' 
By J. G Squire . 
.fii.C 
Thomas Hardy's Verse 
MH. THOMAS HARDY, in liis old age, is ('.cvotinff 
himself exdiisi\c'ly to that art of poetry vyitli 
which ho dallied throughout his, active life as a 
novelist. His later poems have iDcen enormously- 
liner than his earlier, and there are some of lis who iiiclhie to 
think them even more certainly durable than his novels. They 
ha\'e their great limitation, as one will presently suggest, but 
thev are extraordinarily powerful, original in language, 
rhvtlim and shape, and ama/.ing as the work of an ohl man. 
Monti'nts of Vision (Macmillan, (>s. net) contains the latest 
of them, and there seems every prnba!)ility (if Mr. Hardy 
adding to them as long as he lives. 
' * * « » * 
Mr. Hardy's poems fall into two broad classes : the narra- 
tive and the' non-narrative, though poems of .tht first class 
frequently contain a reflective element and the others an 
clement of dramatic reminiscence. Almost all his finest 
poems belong to the second class ; and the best of all are 
those intensely moving lyrics, one group of whicii appeared 
in his last book and oi which a secoild series is now printed, 
written in the last few years under the pressure of a perlsonal 
grief. The, narrative poems are almost ' always tragic, and 
they are marred (as some ()f his prose stories, including 'J\'ss. 
are marred) by his determination to Jay the gloom on as thick 
as he can. His Satires nf Circitmslance. in which a number 
'■ ot preposterously grim situations and' plots were 'com- 
pressed into a few lines each, invited, and were accorded^ tlte 
affenlioii of parody, and all his books of 'verse contain ex- 
amples in this kind. They often move more to laughter than 
i tp tears — so grotesque is the persistentferocitv with whicli 
no arranges that his characters shall get it in the neck from 
I fale. There is only one bad examj)le of this in the ne\v book. 
"OiC story that Mr Hardy's extraordinary brain has constructed 
■ cbricerns a marquis and his wife, who have secured ,'-' Royal 
* 'Sponsors " for their baby T ' ' " 
Tlie morning came. To the park of the peer 
The royal couple bore ; 
And the font was tilled with the Jordan water. 
And the household awaited their guests before 
The carpeted door. 
Hut when they went to the silk-lined cot 
The child was fonnd to have died. 
" What's now to be done ? We can disappoint not 
The King and Queen ! " the family cried 
With eyes spread wide. 
ICven now they approach the chestnut-drive !• 
The service must be read. 
" Well, .since we can't christen the child alive. 
By Clod we shall liave to christen him dead ! " •, • 
The Marquis said. , 
This these extremely loyal subjects do, and the roval' couple 
depart from ' the park of the peer " without knowing what 
has been done ! One need scarcely lx)ther to point out that 
the hopelessness of the subject has drawn Mr. Hardy into 
woi-sf; writing than he usually perpetrates. The first two 
line?' are thoroiitihlv comic. 
• * ♦ * « 
The other poems are a different matter. This bcxjk is not, 
as a whole, as ,goo<l as Mr. Hardy's last ; there is nothing in i t 
equal to, for instance. The Vtnee of flu- Past, one of the most 
jK-rfcct songs a living jwet has written. But it is intenselv 
interesting, and often moving. One mood dominates it .All: 
that of regret for the past, for old happiness and old enjox- 
mcnt, for one figure loved and lost, or for " the bevv now 
imdergro\md." Allowing his irony and his bleak fatalistic, 
philosophy only an occasional peep in. he sits and broods in 
iiis old age over things that iiave gone, and draws music fiom 
that sensitive heart of his that no rationalising has ever been 
able to' petrify. Wherever he starts from he reaches the same 
goal ; any small thing is a key which ojiens the chamber of 
his sorrows. The log slowly charring in the fire comes 
from the tree which he climbed and sin- stood under years ago ; 
the skeleton ribs of a sunshade found imdor n cliff was left 
1 here by a womaiY now dead. He burns a photograuh of 
r-omco'ne, not a particular friend, an<'i the eyes of the reproach- 
ful dead watch him from the air ; a moth bc;'.ting at his 
window may be the forlorn spirit of the dead ; a pedigree 
that he is studyin,!;,- springs to life before hini, and he medi- 
tates over-all the departed generations whose ^bloof! is in his 
veirt^: ^e'starts rtut on n familiar road to pay c;dts and ru- 
niombers that all tho'^c he- nsed to call on arc gone. ' , F.very- 
t?iing is beliind him and nothing before !iim ; he watches 
with resignation and melancliolv the clianges of his own fli'sh 
just as he watches the decay of an old ruined house where the 
tiddlcs once i)layed and rustic feet twined in the forgotten 
countrv dances. Time after time he writes what is virtually 
the same poem, l)ut the constant freshnes.s and poignancy of 
his feeling maki^s it always new. The Annivrrf.ary is 
characteristic ; 
Tt was at the very date to which we have come, 
In the nionlli of the matching name, 
When, at a late minute, the sun had upswiun. 
Its couch-time at night being the same. 
.\n(l the same path stretched here that people now follow. 
And the same stile crossed their way, 
.\nd beyond the same green hillock and hollow 
The. same horizon lay;. . ,.;'"> , i 
.\ii(l the sanic man passes now herebv" w'lio passed thereby • 
that day. ' ^ 
Let so much be said of the date-dav's sameness r^ ' 
Hut the tree that neighbours the track,, , 
And stoops like a pedlar altlictcd with lameness. 
Had no waterlogged vvountl or wind-crack. ., , 
.\n<l the stones of that wall were not enshroudec 
With mosses of many tones, * 
.\nd the garth up afar was not overcrowded 
With a n\ultitude of white stones, ^ ^ 
And the man's eyes then were not so sunk'fliat you saw 
Die socket-bones. 
It will be observed that there are several awkwardnesses ol 
phraseology here. Mr. Hardy bristles with them. In a 
spring poem he even says, "The j>rimrose pants in its heoclless 
push," and in a search for a rhyme lie will embellish a modern 
.mf! simple lyric with " a maid and her wight." But the odd 
thing is that we will accept from him words and phrases that 
would seriously damage aJiyone else, and that sounds which 
from any one rise would be sheer cacophornes are, in Mr. 
.Hardy, as it were, overborne and absprb^d by the compelling 
music of his emotion. It may be monotonous, but it ii 
scarcely ever a,iiything but genuine and strong. 
■^ ' '■ - « « « « *.-■'"- — - .- ■■ 
His monotony is his weakness. He can soften one's 
bones with his lamentations, wrijig one's heart with- his 
regrets. He can vary bis interest a great deal by the accuracy 
with which he describes the landscapes and peopk^ that pass 
through his mournful chants. But a major poet has more 
moods than one. It is characteristic of Mr. Ilatdy that oti ly 
the landscapes of his past are ever sunny ; when he is writing 
in the present tense the chances are a himdred to one that it 
will Ix' raining hard, on window-pane and bereaved tree, au'l 
there is quite a strong jMobability that he will actually hud 
himself in a churchyard where the natural inclemency of the 
weather is reinforced by the rain-worn cherubs on the tomb- 
stones, the. half-effaced names, the dripping moss and the 
direct reminders of the dead. It is a welcome change when 
he makes the admission that even a life like this is worth •' 
having, as in this : 
^' travel as a phantom now, , 
I'or people do not wish to see 
In flesh and blood .so bare a bough 
As Nature makes of me. 
.\nd thus T visit bodiless 
Strange gloomy Ijouscholds often at- odtls, 
.■Xnd wonder if Man's consciousness 
Was a mistake of God's. 
_And next I meet you, and T pause, 
.^nd think *hat if mistake it were; 
As some have said, O then it was-ji _ 
One that 1 well can bear ! 
.And twice he goes so far as to hanker after a belief fhat is 
not his and of which he perceives the inaccessible loveliness 
anchWwcetness. On a Christmas Eve, at midnight, someone 
mentions the legend about the o.xen kneeling in the stall, and 
he feels : 
H some one said on Christmas Eve, 
" Come : see the o.xen kneel 
In the lonely- barton by yonder coomb, 
Our childhood used to know," 
1 should go with him in the gloom. 
Hoping it might be so. 
But these arc exceptions, and ^Ir. Hardy, as a poet,- must he 
described as one who had he been less strong, coidd not liave 
escaped the appellation of " morbid." ■ - 
