As yet not understood,
Of Evil stormed by Good;
We the Forlorn Hope over which Achievement strides?”
And having no conclusion for his own heart—
“No answerer I....
Meanwhile, the winds, and rains,
And Earth’s old glooms and pains,
Are still the same, and gladdest Life Death
Neighbors nigh.”
One instinctively compares this with Tennyson’s spirit of noble meditation in “In Memoriam;” and it must be confessed that Hardy suffers by comparison as lacking the essential attributes of Anglo-Saxon courageousness. One regrets the publication of “Wessex Poems,” for it reveals the character of a great writer in an unfortunate and belittling light; to reconstruct one’s impression of his power and personality one feels the need of reopening one of his most delightful books, such as “The Woodlanders,” to breathe its good smells of Mother Earth, and under its domination as an exquisite pastoral production find there, and not in “Wessex Poems,” Thomas Hardy, the poet.