He asked for a Shakespeare. And without a moment's hesitation, she went upstairs again, lit another match and got that for him.
And I believe if he had said "Rats," she would have shot out silently into the dark and tried to catch one for him. Only a woman is capable of such service.
Hardy's Poetry
"You did not come,
And marching time drew on and wore me numb—
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure loving-kindness' sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
You did not come."
I thoroughly enjoy Hardy's poetry for its masterfulness, for his sheer muscular compulsion over the words and sentences. In his rough-hewn lines he yokes the recalcitrant words together and drives them along mercilessly with something that looks like simple brute strength. Witness the triumphant last line in the above where the words are absolute bondslaves to his exact meaning, his indomitable will. All this pleases me the more for I know to my cost what stubborn, sullen, hephæstian beasts words and clauses can sometimes be. It is nice to see them punished. Hardy's poetry is Michael Angelo rather than Greek, Browning not Tennyson.
December 14.
What a day! After a night of fog signals, I awoke this morning to find it still foggy and the ground covered with a grey rime. All day the fog has remained: I look out now thro' the yellowish atmosphere across a field which is frosted over, the grass and brambles stiff and glassy. My back is aching and the cold is so intense that unless I crouch over the fire hands and feet become immediately stone-cold. All day I have crouched over the fire, reading newspapers, listening to fog signals and the screaming of the baby.... I have been in a torpor, like a Bat in a cavern—really dead yet automatically hanging on to life by my hind legs.
December 15.
"To stand upon one's guard against Death exasperates her malice and protracts our sufferings." W.S. Landor.
December 19.