To tomb her whose light, in my deeming,
Extinguished had He,'
is not quite satisfactory. Why? Simply and solely because the form is grotesque. Here is the colour of poetry but not its sound, its essence but not its shape.
"It might seem only right that in the face of a volume of verse so violent and rugged as Wessex Poems we should protest that this is not the more excellent way of writing poetry. At the same time, every man must preserve his individuality, if he has one to preserve, as Mr Hardy assuredly has; and we have no reason to suppose that it is the desire of the author of 'The Peasant's Confession' to found a school or issue a propaganda. On the contrary, it is far more likely that he has put forth his Wessex verses with extreme simplicity and modesty, not asking himself in what relation they stand to other people's poetry. As a matter of fact, the Wessex Poems will probably enjoy a double fate. They will supply to lovers of emotional narrative verse several poetic tales which they will lay up in memory among their treasures; and in time to come professors of literary history, when observing the retrogression of an imaginative period, and when speaking of Lydgate, of Donne, of the Spasmodists here, of the Symbolists in France, will mention Mr Hardy also as a signal example of the temporary success of a violent protest against the cultivation of form in verse."
But critics of discrimination are now beginning to discover that Thomas Hardy's poems do not lack the qualities which give poetic form a true balance. He fails to achieve popularity as a poet, they argue, because the "concentrated and unpalatable expression of his philosophy proves too disagreeable to those who seek relief from life in literature," and because the first shock of the grinding harshness of his peculiar style "is a barrier against the recognition of his merits." Certainly he makes no direct appeal to the ear of the reader. But on reading his lyric poems a second time—some of which, it must be admitted, must assuredly offend those who have unbounded faith in the human soul, whether from the standpoint of the Church or otherwise—the first grotesqueness of effect wears off, leaving at times a clear-cut and bitter touch that it would seem impossible to improve upon. It is true we find among the youthful poems some of great gloom and sadness, but it is well to bear in mind when making an estimate of Hardy's work and personality that certain natures express their thoughts in unusual ways. It is all the time wrong to assume that Hardy does not perceive anything else in life but a bitter and hopeless procession, just because his eloquence is always keener upon perceiving tragedy. It is true, he himself has confessed, that he shares with Sophocles the conviction that "not to be born is best"; but at the same time the spirit which moves always under the surface of his poetry tells us that man, being born, must make the best of life, and especially do what he can to ease the burdens of his fellow-men. After his moments of depression he finds his own consolations. He takes a great pleasure in the trivial little objects and customs of rustic life—those simple things that are best of all, and his poem Afterwards is a good example both of his measured and harmonious style, and of his "dark, unconscious instinct of primitive nature-worship":
"If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,
When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,
One may say, 'He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm,
But he could do little for them; and now he is gone.'
If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door,