Part 20 (1/2)

XXVII

MR. THOMAS HARDY

1. HIS GENIUS AS A POET

Mr. Thomas Hardy, in the opinion of some, is greater as a poet than as a novelist. That is one of the mild heresies in which the amateur of letters loves to indulge. It has about as much truth in it as the statement that Milton was greater as a controversialist than as a poet, or that Lamb's plays are better than his essays. Mr. Hardy has undoubtedly made an original contribution to the poetry of his time. But he has given us no verse that more than hints at the height and depth of the tragic vision which is expressed in _Jude the Obscure_. He is not by temperament a singer. His music is a still small voice unevenly matched against his consciousness of midnight and storm. It is a flutter of wings in the rain over a tomb. His sense of beauty is frail and midge-like compared with his sense of everlasting frustration. The conceptions in his novels are infinitely more poetic than the conceptions in his verse. In _Tess_ and _Jude_ destiny presides with something of the grandeur of the ancient G.o.ds. Except in _The Dynasts_ and a few of the lyrics, there is none of this brooding majesty in his verse. And even in _The Dynasts_, majestic as the scheme of it is, there seems to me to be more creative imagination in the prose pa.s.sages than in the poetry.

Truth to tell, Mr. Hardy is neither sufficiently articulate nor sufficiently fastidious to be a great poet. He does not express life easily in beautiful words or in images. There is scarcely a magical image in the hundred or so poems in the book of his selected verse.

Thus he writes in _I Found Her Out There_ of one who:--

would sigh at the tale Of sunk Lyonesse As a wind-tugged tress Flapped her cheek like a flail.

There could not be an uglier and more prosaic exaggeration than is contained in the image in the last line. And prose intrudes in the choice of words as well as in images. Take, for example, the use of the word ”domiciled” in the pa.s.sage in the same poem about--

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 called _At an Inn_:--

When we, as strangers, sought Their catering care, Veiled smiles bespoke their thought Of what we were.

They warmed as they opined Us more than friends-- That we had all resigned For 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 in _The Return of the Native_ more 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 which _A Broken Appointment_ begins:--

You did not come, And marching time drew on, and wore me numb,-- Yet less for loss of your dear presence there Than that I thus found lacking in your make That high compa.s.sion which can overbear Reluctance for pure loving kindness' sake Grieved 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 pa.s.sion of human beings. Especially is he sensitive to the pain and pa.s.sion 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 in _The 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. Compare _The Last Ride Together_ with Mr.

Hardy's _The 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 Gla.s.s_, is the cry of a soul dark but not utterly darkened:--

I look into my gla.s.s, And view my wasting skin, And say: ”Would G.o.d, it came to pa.s.s My heart had shrunk as thin!”

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

But Time, to make me grieve, Part steals, lets part abide; And shakes this fragile frame at eve With 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” of _The 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 flock By the embers in hearthside ease.