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