Robert, your interpretation of "lute" is probably better than mine. I sat for a very long time trying to figure out what he was using that as a metaphor for. On the other hand, it could be argued that a metaphor that is so obscure that a reasonably intelligent reader can't get it after a great deal of thought isn't a very good metaphor (let's not debate my level of intelligence, okay?).

You guys wanted an example of clumsiness, and I gave you one. The problem with Hardy is that this clumsiness infects too many of his poems, certainly a higher proportion than with other famous authors.

But you guys don't listen to me when I say that I like many of his poems. I acknowledge that much of his poetry is good. We've now made all our points on both sides, so the debate doesn't need to continue.


[This message has been edited by Caleb Murdock (edited August 11, 2001).]

It's not a question of your intelligence at
all. But being put off by what you see as
awkwardness, you probably haven't read enough
Hardy to realize that in this poem he's not
just griping about old age and lost youth
(though he was in his late 60s, which is no
picnic), he's lamenting what has happened
between him and Emma. This poem appeared
in TIME'S LAUGHINGSTOCKS in 1909, so it was
very likely written a little earlier in that
decade, by which time his relationship with
Emma had deteriorated into silence and cold
misery, and that deep sadness and regret
entered into many of the poems of those years.
(Of course, he had other moods, as in "Great
Things," a later poem of joy and gratitude.)

I read your book from cover to cover, including the biographical information about Hardy, but I have a lot of things to think about and can't remember everything. If this poem is about Emma, perhaps a footnote would have been in order.

Caleb

Hardy
 

I posted this on Musing on Mastery as a bit of mid-summer mischief, but now I'm thinking we can all chime in with our own faux Hardy poems here.

Atque Vale

Ah, we shall see them go,
All who in depths of fire
Sang their desire
To those who went before,
Beauties and more,
All of the best of them.

Where shall we find them now,
Those of the shining hair?
Where shall we, where
Conjure them in the dawn,
Those who are gone,
None to the west of them?

Who are we who remain,
Once fraught with burning youth
Seeking a truth
Of all we claimed we felt?
See them now melt,
E'en the most blessed of them.

Gentlemen, we grow few,
Going to grave or grass,
Lifting our glass
To every errant star
Now that we are
Going with the rest of them.

Thomas Hardy
January, 1906

The Going
 

The Going

Why did you give no hint that night
That quickly after the morrow’s dawn,
And calmly, as if indifferent quite,
You would close your term here, up and be gone
     Where I could not follow
     With wing of swallow
To gain one glimpse of you ever anon!

      Never to bid good-bye,
      Or lip me the softest call,
Or utter a wish for a word, while I
Saw morning harden upon the wall,
      Unmoved, unknowing
      That your great going
Had place that moment, and altered all.

Why do you make me leave the house
And think for a breath it is you I see
At the end of the alley of bending boughs
Where so often at dusk you used to be;
      Till in darkening dankness
      The yawning blankness
Of the perspective sickens me!

      You were she who abode
      By those red-veined rocks far West,
You were the swan-necked one who rode
Along the beetling Beeny Crest,
      And, reining nigh me,
      Would muse and eye me,
While Life unrolled us its very best.

Why, then, latterly did we not speak,
Did we not think of those days long dead,
And ere your vanishing strive to seek
That time’s renewal? We might have said,
      “In this bright spring weather
      We’ll visit together
Those places that once we visited.”

     Well, well! All’s past amend,
     Unchangeable. It must go.
I seem but a dead man held on end
To sink down soon. . . . O you could not know
     That such swift fleeing
     No soul foreseeing—
Not even I—would undo me so!

Christmas: 1924

"Peace upon earth!" was said. We sing it,
And pay a million priests to bring it.
After two thousand years of mass
We've got as far as poison gas.

THE SIGH

Little head against my shoulder,
Shy at first, then somewhat bolder,
And up-eyed;
Till she, with a timid quaver,
Yielded to the kiss I gave her;
But, she sighed.

That there mingled with her feeling
Some sad thought she was concealing
It implied.
- Not that she had ceased to love me,
None on earth she set above me;
But she sighed.

She could not disguise a passion,
Dread, or doubt, in weakest fashion
If she tried:
Nothing seemed to hold us sundered,
Hearts were victors; so I wondered
Why she sighed.

Afterwards I knew her throughly,
And she loved me staunchly, truly,
Till she died;
But she never made confession
Why, at that first sweet concession,
She had sighed.

It was in our May, remember;
And though now I near November,
And abide
Till my appointed change, unfretting,
Sometimes I sit half regretting
That she sighed.

Rome: The Vatican-Sala Delle Muse.

I sat in the Muses' Hall at the mid of the day,
And it seemed to grow still, and the people to pass away,
And the chiselled shapes to combine in a haze of sun,
Till beside a Carrara column there gleamed forth One.

She was nor this nor that of those beings divine,
But each and the whole—an essence of all the Nine;
With tentative foot she neared to my halting-place,
A pensive smile on her sweet, small, marvellous face.

"Regarded so long, we render thee sad?" said she.
"Not you," sighed I, "but my own inconstancy!
I worship each and each; in the morning one,
And then, alas! another at sink of sun.

"To-day my soul clasps Form; but where is my troth
Of yesternight with Tune: can one cleave to both?"
- "Be not perturbed," said she. "Though apart in fame,
As I and my sisters are one, those, too, are the same.

- "But my loves go further—to Story, and Dance, and Hymn,
The lover of all in a sun-sweep is fool to whim -
Is swayed like a river-weed as the ripples run!"
- "Nay, wight, thou sway'st not. These are but phases of one;

"And that one is I; and I am projected from thee,
One that out of thy brain and heart thou causest to be -
Extern to thee nothing. Grieve not, nor thyself becall,
Woo where thou wilt; and rejoice thou canst love at all!

Mine was bogus, of course, but I'm pleased to make or remake the acquaintance of the genuine articles posted here.

Whoops, sorry, I'm still new here, so I completely missed the point.

We're supposed to do a fake Hardy poem? Um, ok... give me a couple hours, I'll need to drink some coffee first.

Wonder if I can get out of cabinet duty? ;)

Thanks,

Bill