Many of you know that I have mixed feelings about Hardy, feeling that a lot of his verse is clumsy. However, I'm not posting this poem to attack him, as this is a poem I like a great deal.

I'll explain the numbers later:


In Church

"And now to God the Father", he ends, (I-3/A-1)
And his voice thrills up to the topmost tiles: (I-2/A-2)
Each listener chokes as he bows and bends, (I-3/A-1)
And emotion pervades the crowded aisles. (I-2/A-2)
Then the preacher glides to the vestry-door, (I-2/A-2)
And shuts it, and thinks he is seen no more. (I-2/A-2)

The door swings softly ajar meanwhile, (I-3/A-1)
And a pupil of his in the Bible class, (I-1/A-3)
Who adores him as one without gloss or guile, (I-1/A-3)
Sees her idol stand with a satisfied smile (I-1/A-3)
And re-enact at the vestry-glass (I-3/A-1)
Each pulpit gesture in deft dumb-show (I-3/A-1)
That had moved the congregation so. (I-3/A-1)

Thomas Hardy


The meter is interesting. Is it iambic tetrameter, or anapestic tetrameter? I'm not sure. 6 lines have 3 iambs and 1 anapest, 4 lines have 2 of each, and 3 lines have 1 iamb and 3 anapests. It's hard to tell which one is the base meter and which the variation, especially since the anapests can occur at either the beginning or end of the line. Another interesting thing is that the poem appears to be a 13-line sonnet, though the stanzas are broken into 6 and 7 lines.

I must say that I am curious to hear what some of you hard-nosed, Hardy-loving metrists have to say about a poem that has 29 iambs and 23 anapests. (If the iambs are the base meter, that means that 44% of the poem is variations.)

Line 10 is a total stopper for me. Here is how I scan it:

sees her I / dol STAND / with a SAT / is fied SMILE

However, I naturally want to put an emphasis on the first syllable ("Sees"), and once I do, the whole line is thrown off terribly, as the tendency is then to read the first 6 syllables as 3 trochees.

Any comments?

------------------
Caleb
www.poemtree.com



[This message has been edited by Caleb Murdock (edited August 07, 2001).]

G'd morning, Caleb. I would call this anapestic verse, because the anapest becomes, in sufficient numbers, and in the absence of other substitutions, the signature foot--the characteristic departure from the iambic norm in this poem.

I think Hardy relies on the anapestic momentum being sufficient to override any stress on "sees." I agree the line would be an unpleasant one if a reader took it otherwise. In our time, with fewer metrically sophisticated readers, it might be unwise to craft a line like this.

Alan Sullivan

This seems rather a slight poem for Hardy (whom I love), though charming and accomplished.

I'd agree this is basically anapestic (iambic substitutions, particularly at ends of lines, seem to be fairly common in such a meter--takes some of the sing-songy edge off without losing the swing). Hardy is, of course, both a very skilled and very adventurous metrist. "Sees" doesn't bother me much, coming late as it does, after the rhythm is firmly established. (Perhaps we are too used to running across contemporaries' headless iambic lines that try to start on monosyllables.) While I appreciate Alan's sobering point, I'd have to say I tend to disagree with the suggestion that we might be somehow more metrically limited in what we can pull off than Hardy by the lack of sophistication of our readers.

Much of Hardy's verse IS "clumsy"--but deliberately so, not through accidental ineptitude. Hardy disliked too much smoothness and polish (a fault, he felt, of much well-turned but aetiolated Victorian verse), and strove for the appearance of a certain spontanaity. He talks about leaving the rough edges on. (Who else could get away with "powerfuller"?) I'm a bit curious, Caleb, about your reaction to Hardy. I'd have thought from other discussions you'd be quite sympathetic to such a stance.

Thanks very much for posting this enjoyable piece.


Alicia

It's not exactly iambic or anapestic,
but a mixture. Four-beat lines, what Frost
would have called loose iambic. Once you
hear the measure (which should be about at
the end of line 1), you hear it easily all
the way through. "Sees" in line 10 should
cause no problem at all---for Hardy, that's
a normal anapest. (You'd make things easier
for yourself, Caleb, if you didn't break all
the lines down into feet. Hardy, like any
other poet, is not composing in feet, but in
lines, and he knows, and expects the reader
to know when the meter has been fulfilled in
every line.) If you want to see Hardy doing
amazing things with anapests, read "The Missed
Train" (and, if you have the book, the brief
metrical analysis in the Introduction, p. xxix,
beginning, "Ransom said that no poet understood
the function of meter better than Hardy and had
the highest praise for the sureness and delicacy
of his ear and his fresh way with the meters").

So, Alan, you are saying that anapestic meter doesn't have to be as strict as iambic meter?

Alicia, my problem with Hardy -- many of his poems but certainly not all of them -- is primarily about clumsy word choices, not unusual rhythms. Also, I don't find in his poetry the flow that I associate with excellent poetry, not even as much flow as I see in, say, Kate Benedict's work, or in your work or Tim's or Michael's or Alan's. However, this poem doesn't have any clumsy choices to speak of, which is one of the reasons I like it and have put it on my site; but I've read other Hardy poems which really jarred me -- I even analyzed one in an article for my site, though the article is unfinished and not yet posted. I'll post that poem here, if you like.

Robert, I don't know what it means to compose "in lines". I also don't see why I shouldn't have broken the lines down into feet -- that's what metrical poetry analysis is supposed to be about: analyzing rhythms by breaking the lines into feet.

I agree that it's probably because I'm used to reading headless iambs and trochees at the beginnings of lines that line 10 is such a stopper for me -- once I started taking the emphasis off of "Sees" there was no longer a problem.



[This message has been edited by Caleb Murdock (edited August 07, 2001).]

Robert, Caleb has both your Selected Poems of Thomas Hardy and your Selected Robinson. I gave them to him in the hopes that he would post some of their poems on poemtree.com, which he did. This was part of yours truly's missionary work on behalf of great poetry, but preaching to the heathen is a difficult and never-ending task.

How nice. I get called a heathen even though I posted 11 poems by Hardy and 10 poems by Robinson. I didn't say that I hate everything that they wrote.

Actually, Caleb, it is precisely the diction and syntax that Hardy deliberately left the rough edges on, not, of course, his meters. For instance, he says, in one preface, "Whenever an ancient and legitimate word of the district for which there was no equivalent in received English, suggested itself as the most natural, nearest, and often only expression of a thought, it has been made use of, on what seemed good grounds." (Actually, this could as well be a preface to Seamus Heaney's work...) Anyway, I think Hardy will grow on you.

Mezey is merely saying that poets COMPOSE in lines rather than feet (and so are not so deliberate/conscious about "substitutions" etc., as a statistical analysis might suggest). This is surely true. Analysis and composition are opposite processes. We lack much in the way of good alternatives to the Greek terms, which bring so much baggage with them, so they must suffice. Even the very useful & much-needed term "loose iambics" (a Frost coinage?) seems to me somewhat misleadling. Perhaps this should be called a "swinging tetrameter" or somesuch.

Alicia

I guess it's just a matter of taste. I do like many Hardy poems, but none of them has become a favorite in the way that, say, Robinson's "Dear Friends" has become a favorite. There's a smoothness and sophistication in that poem which is nowhere to be found in any of Hardy's work, even in his most famous poem about the thrush (I forgot what it's called). Actually, this simple poem by Hardy has become a favorite, but it doesn't "send me" like some other poems I've read:

Expectation and Experience

"I had a holiday once," said the woman--
~~ Her name I did not know--
"And I thought that where I'd like to go,
Of all the places for being jolly,
And getting rid of melancholy,
~~ Would be to a good big fair:
And I went. And it rained in torrents, drenching
Every horse, and sheep, and yeoman,
~~ And my shoulders, face, and hair;
And I found that I was the single woman
~~ In the field—and looked quite odd there!
Everything was spirit-quenching:
I crept and stood in the lew of a wall
To think, and could not tell at all
~~ What on earth made me plod there!"

I understand why you like Hardy, Alicia, as there seems to be a little Hardy in you, as in this poem of yours which most certainly has become a favorite of mine:

Consolation for Tamar
on the occasion of her breaking
an ancient pot

You know I am no archeologist, Tamar,
And that to me it is all one dust or another.
Still, it must mean something to survive the weather
Of the Ages--earthquake, flood, and war--

Only to shatter in your very hands.
Perhaps it was gravity, or maybe fated--
Although I wonder if it had not waited
Those years in drawers, aeons in distant lands,

And in your fingers' music, just a little
Was emboldened by your blood, and so forgot
That it was not a rosebud, but a pot,
And, trying to unfold for you, was brittle.

Alicia E. Stallings

This poem of yours (which I hope you don't mind that I posted) has more sophisticated and interesting syntax than I find in most Hardy poems. In a way, I feel that you do Hardy better than Hardy does. You speak plainly, using familiar speech patterns and phrasing, but with more elegance.

Just taking a look at the last stanza alone, I find it filled with unique and memorable phrases: "your fingers' music", "Was emboldened by your blood", "forgot/That it was not a rosebud", and "trying to unfold for you, was brittle". A memorable phrase in every line! There's not a wasted word in this entire poem -- it's just wonderful.

------------------
Caleb
www.poemtree.com



[This message has been edited by Caleb Murdock (edited August 08, 2001).]

Decided to give Hardy another pass today. Of course, no Mezey edition at Powell's. One by Ransom though. The Intro was interesting. Ransom's kinda tough on this one, though I really like the theme:

Wives in the Sere

Never a careworn wife but shows,
If a joy suffuse her,
Something beautiful to those
Patient to peruse her,
Some one charm the world unknows
Precious to a muser,
Haply what, ere years were foes,
Moved her mate to choose her.

But, be it a hint of rose
That in a instant hues her,
Or some early light or pose
Wherewith thought renews her -
Seen by him at full, ere woes
Practiced to abuse her -
Sparely comes, swifly goes,
Time again subdues her.

The Ransom selection of Hardy is a curious book---
a wonderful introduction but a very odd choice of
poems; perhaps because of his own 19th century
theological preoccupations. In any case, he leaves
out a good many of Hardy's best things.
Caleb, it's not my business to correct your taste
or judgment---maybe time and more reading will do
the job. Alicia's poem is lovely but not Hardyesque,
as far as I can see. Also, Hardy has many poems in
which there are no awkwardnesses or eccentricities
of diction, just plain, accurate language and, always,
his marvelous ear. Here's an example:

TRANSFORMATIONS

Portion of this yew
Is a man my grandsire knew,
Bosomed here at its foot:
This branch may be his wife,
A ruddy human life
Now turned to a green shoot.

These grasses must be made
Of her who often prayed,
Last century, for repose;
And the fair girl long ago
Whom I vainly tried to know
May be entering this rose.

So, they are not underground,
But as nerves and veins abound
In the growths of upper air,
And they feel the sun and rain,
And the energy again
That made them what they were!


We should all live to write half so well.

"Caleb, it's not my business to correct your taste or judgment---maybe time and more reading will do the job"

Egotistical comments like that are not going to do anything to improve my respect for your judgement.

[This message has been edited by Caleb Murdock (edited August 08, 2001).]

Dr. Mezey, I'm curious about Hardy's relationship with his critics and his audience. His poetry must have been nearly guaranteed a certain amount of attention, because of his renown as a novelist. What was it's critical and popular reception? Was he ignored, dismissed, controversial, or well-received? Did opinion change during his lifetime?

Sorry---didn't mean to hurt your feelings. But
I don't know what to say to many of your comments.
Hardy is one of the great poets, perhaps the
greatest of the last century (in fact the last
two), and there's nothing idiosyncratic about
my passion for his work. Frost, Pound, Ransom,
Larkin, Yeats, Jeffers, Lowell, Larkin, etc etc
etc, regarded him as a master, and none of them
were easy to please. Furthermore, your complaint
about awkwardness is a very old one, made off and
on for a hundred years or so, and few readers of
Hardy take it seriously.

It's been said so often that Hardy's poetry is awkward because that's how many people feel! I can, and will, post examples (although, do I really need to? -- we all know it's true of at least some of his work). Even Richard Wilbur, in an interview reprinted in his Conversations book, expressed reservations. But as I said, I do like a great deal of Hardy's poetry, I just don't love it with a passion.

Mac, please don't Doctor me; the nearest I got
to a PhD was a BA in Classics---a very long
way from a Doctor. (My mother wanted me to be
a real doctor, the kind that makes a lot of
money, but I didn't even get to be a fake one.)
Your questions are very interesting and good
ones; to save myself the hour or two it would
take to answer them in the detail they deserve,
let me ask you to get hold of my little book
of Hardy's Selected Poems, published in the
Penguin Classics series for the modest price
of nine bucks---in my introduction, I begin
with the very questions you ask and go on
discussing them for most of the next 20-some
pages.
Caleb, I know you could produce many examples
of Hardy's awkwardness or eccentricity of diction,
as any reader could, but they are often
to be found in his best poems and not only don't
mar them but partly account for their success.
For example, the opening stanza of To an
Unborn Pauper Child:

BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBreathe not, hid heart: cease silently,
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTAnd though thy birth-hour beckons thee,
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTSleep the long sleep:
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTThe Doomsters heap
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTTravails and teens around us here,
And Time-wraiths turn our songsingings to fear.

Odd, yes, but powerful. And Hardy didn't use words
like teens because he didn't know any better---
when he used archaic and dialect words, it was usually
because they were the richest and most accurate words.
If you're not convinced, go read the whole thing and
see if it doesn't move you. In fact, Hardy is so
good, there's so much to him, so much heart and soul,
that he can survive much worse "flaws"--- in a long
poem I regretfully felt I must omit from my edition,
"A Conversation at Dawn," you have to wade through
some of the stiffest, most literary dialogue you can
imagine, and a melodramatic story, but it ends up
being worth it. A newly married man is talking to
his bride in a hotel room and asks her why she seems
so sad; she confesses that she had loved a man before
her marriage but they couldn't marry because he was
already married; but that the day before, she had
caught sight of him at a distance, at what turns out
to have been his wife's funeral. She says,

"He was there, but did not note me, veiled,
Yet I saw that a joy, as of one unjailed,
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTNow shone in his gaze;
He knew not his hope of me just had failed!"

Her husband is not happy to hear this, and pouts;
she feels she must tell him the whole truth and
further confesses that she had received a letter
from her lover that morning, "reminding [her]
faithfully of his claim," and that she had a
sudden hope that she might go to him and that
her husband could have their marriage annulled
if he wished. The husband, furious, says that
he won't release her from her vows; she must
stay with him and suffer. She then confesses
that she and her lover had married privately
and in secret, "a contract vain / To the world,
but real to Him on High." The husband realizes
that she is telling him that she had consummated
that private marriage and was not a virgin, and
he swears again that he'll keep her, however
sinful she had been and however much she wanted
to leave. She begs him again, and says that she
had married him only because she thought she
might be pregnant and was scared, and she reminds
him that he had told her before the wedding that
marriage is just a practical matter and that the
sentiments of the couple are immaterial. He won't
relent and insists that she kneel and "and [her]
king uncrown" and when she has done so, he says,

"Since you've played these pranks and given no sign,
You shall crave this man of yours; pine and pine
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTWith sighings sore,
Till I've starved your love for him; nailed you mine!"

Awful, huh? Yes, pretty bad. But here are the last
two stanzas:

"I'm a practical man, and want no tears;
You've made a fool of me, it appears;
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTThat you don't again
Is a lesson I'll teach you in future years."

She answered not, lying listlessly
With her dry dark eyes on the coppery sea,
BANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTBANNED POSTThat now and then
Flung its lazy flounce at the neighbouring quay.


There it is. If that doesn't break your heart,
you have a heart of stone.

I approach narrative verse a little differently from lyrical verse, feeling that, since it is so long and requires a great deal of exposition, more clumsiness is permitted. Even so, I didn't find the verses you quoted to be particularly clumsy, especially the first verse. Nonetheless, some of it has a pedestrian quality which is inelegant. I like elegance.

Later tonight I'll post an example of clumsy Hardy verse -- a short poem, and not so dramatic as that.

On my site, I started an article about Hardy but never finished it. Here is the first stanza of the poem that I used to exemplify Hardy's awkwarness, from his poem "Shut Out That Moon":

Close up the casement, draw the blind,
~~ Shut out that stealing moon,
She wears too much the guise she wore
~~ Before our lutes were strewn
With years-deep dust, and names we read
~~ On a white stone were hewn.

The awkwardness starts with "stealing", though I'll let that pass because it's debatable. The real awkwardness starts with the 4th line, "Before our lutes were strewn / With years-deep dust". Apparently, Hardy was using the word "lute" as a metaphor for life, though it isn't an appropriate symbol for life -- it could be used to symbolize creativity, but creativity isn't the subject of the poem. A lute is a small object, and it is inappropriate to say that it is "strewn" with dust -- a larger area might be "strewn" with something, but certainly not a small item like a lute. Furthermore, dust is never "strewn" on anything; dust settles on things. It's clear that he chose "strewn" simply to rhyme with "hewn".

Even I, with my meager talent, can come up with an improved line:

She wears too much the guise she wore
~~ Before our lives were strewn
With time's debris, and names we read
~~ On a white stone were hewn.

His next lines -- "and names we read / On a white stone were hewn" -- have their own awkwardness. What he's apparently saying is, "before people died". The line is convoluted and I personally find little beauty in it. Indeed, all those lines have a convoluted quality. He should have scrapped the whole strewn/hewn rhyme and started over. "Strewn" and "hewn" aren't particularly sonorous words anyway.

The remainder of the poem isn't quite as awkward (though it's certainly depressing). But even if the remainder of the poem were gorgeous, it was already ruined in the first stanza. And that's what makes hardy so frustrating: he ruined a lot of otherwise good poems. At his worst, Hardy sounds like someone who slapped words together without any sense of appropriateness.

Here is the whole thing:

Shut Out That Moon

Close up the casement, draw the blind,
~~ Shut out that stealing moon,
She wears too much the guise she wore
~~ Before our lutes were strewn
With years-deep dust, and names we read
~~ On a white stone were hewn.

Step not forth on the dew-dashed lawn
~~ To view the Lady's Chair,
Immense Orion's glittering form,
~~ The Less and Greater Bear:
Stay in; to such sights we were drawn
~~ When faded ones were fair.

Brush not the bough for midnight scents
~~ That come forth lingeringly,
And wake the same sweet sentiments
~~ They breathed to you and me
When living seemed a laugh, and love
~~ All it was said to be.

Within the common lamp-lit room
~~ Prison my eyes and thought;
Let dingy details crudely loom,
~~ Mechanic speech be wrought:
Too fragrant was Life's early bloom,
~~ Too tart the fruit it brought!


------------------
Caleb www.poemtree.com

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

Too bad you weren't around when Hardy was struggling
with his poems; you could have taught him a lot.
I think "stealing" is a good word: it calls up not
only the movement of the moon across the sky but
the suggestion of all that time has stolen from him
and his wife. The lutes stand not so much for life
as for young love & courtship & song; as it happens,
Hardy was a very good violinist, but lutes are stringed
instruments more apt in this context. And "strewn"
is adequate, at least; it has a number of meanings
and can certainly mean dusted or covered as with a
powder. A bit literary? Yes; and okay with me. The
rest of the sentence doesn't seem all that convoluted,
and "white" is an excellent touch. I would agree that
the poem has flaws and is here and there a bit too
poetical, and maybe a little awkward too; but it's
still alive and convincing. Not among his greatest
lyrics, but good enough, and better than many much
smoother and more graceful poems. If you're looking
for elegance, Hardy's not your man. He has something
better than elegance to offer.
Well, that's enough, more than enough. Hardy doesn't
need to be defended.

Dear Caleb,

There's some pretty clumsy, indeed inept, blank verse in Shakespeare's plays. Come to think of it, many of Homer's dactylic hexameters aren't nearly as smooth or polished as Virgil's. Maybe you could rewrite them too?

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

Maybe we could move this to D&A.

Sam,

I'm astonished! That's quite a trick, even for an old trickster like you. Beautiful work.

I love Sam's piece, and I also love the choices and reminders of Hardy's own. I'm guessing we'll do better remembering and discussing Hardy than trying to duplicate him--as long as Gregory doesn't mind, of course.

Well known as it is, "Afterward" is my own long-time favorite, but you all may make me reconsider.

There are some people, I guess, who don't like Hardy. I think the one I've linked to has no ear.

Editing back for clarity: Sam, if a D&A thread for Hardy hommages is what you're after, may I suggest starting it fresh over there? I think that would be clearer.

Given the fact that most of the replies after Sam's initial posting are not exactly 'Drills and Amusements', maybe Maryann's suggestion is a good one. So those who wish to continue the 'serious' discussion of Hardy can linger here, and maybe Sam could re-start a lighter thread over on D&A.

Here's our Hardy thread, in which his editor Bob Mezey participated, that dates from eight years ago.

Thanks for resurrecting this old thread, Timmy - which was before my time here.

Some interesting reading above.

Personally, I adore Hardy's verse. And I love the "rough edges" especially.

Smoothness has its virtues, but I do enjoy a touch of the old asperitas in verse.

Anyway, this thread gives me an excuse to post one of my all-time favs:

The Voice

– Thomas Hardy


WOMAN much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness
Heard no more again far or near?

Thus I; faltering forward,
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward
And the woman calling.


============

Edited back:

The version I found on the web has this for line 11:

"You being ever consigned to existlessness,"

But I prefer the one above.

Double rip-snorter bonza pome!

Yes Mark, one of his greatest, and I too say wan listlessness when I recite it. A close examination of the rhythms in The Voice demonstrates that in metrical matters, Hardy has no rival. Ransom was Warren's tutor and Warren mine, and it was he who taught me to appreciate Hardy's meters. But I brought a deep high school love to the study. As the burgeoning crop of widows of Dad's acquaintance began remarrying, he delighted in reciting Ah Are You Digging on my Grave? When Aaron Poochigian became my sole pupil, his first year examination in meter was to scan The Voice, which he did to perfection.

I look into my glass,
  And view my wasting skin,
And say, “Would God it came to pass
  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.

Joe Kennedy once wrote a fine essay arguing why The Wound is superior to the formally identical A Dust of Snow. Any misquotation due to flagging memory:

I climbed to the crest
Fog-festooned
Where the sun lay west
Like a crimson wound,

Like that wound of mine
Of which none knew
For I'd given no sign
It had pierced me through.

Another of the poems, like The Voice, written after Emma's death. Thanks for the post, Bob.

Timmy, that little poem ("The Wound") is one of the most potent little word-bombs that ever exploded among my frontal lobes. It's phenomenal how so much power can be packed into eight short lines.

Bob, thanks for posting that one - the current story of my life, and I suspect of many libido-whipped geriatrics.

Here is one of the great truths of metrical poetry from the master himself:

"The whole secret of a living style and the difference between it and a dead style, lies in having not too much style - being, in fact, a little careless, or rather seeming to be, here and there ... Inexact rhymes and rhythms now and then are far more pleasing than correct ones."

Although light-years from his talent, I do identify with Hardy a great deal, and I echo his psychology when he claims he was "a child till he was sixteen, a youth till he was five-and-twenty, and a young man till he was nearly fifty." At 62, going on 20, I can identify with that!