Thomas Hardy, OM (English Novelist & Naturalist Poet 1840 - 1928)

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

Thomas Hardy, OM was an English novelist, short story writer, and poet of the naturalist movement born in Dorset near Dorchester. He mainly saw himself as a poet and wrote novels for financial gain only. Hardy's work reflected his stoical pessimism and sense of tragedy in human life. His novels Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895) -- both considered literary classics today -- received negative reviews and were criticized for being too pessimistic and for having a preoccupation with sex; The Jude The Obscure story dramatized the conflict between carnal and spiritual life...

In 1896, disturbed by the public uproar over the unconventional subjects of two of his greatest novels, Hardy announced that he would never write fiction again.

In 1898 Hardy, claiming poetry as his first love, published his first volume, Wessex Poems, a collection of poems written over 30 years. His poetry explores a fatalist outlook against the dark, rugged landscape of his native Dorset. He rejected the Victorian belief in a benevolent God, and much of his poetry reads as a sardonic lament on the bleakness of the human condition. He was lauded though for his traditionalist technique. He often combined rough-hewn rhythms and colloquial diction with an extraordinary variety of meters and stanzaic forms, making for a highly original style all his own.

In 1910, Hardy was awarded the Order of Merit for his literary accomplishments. He fell ill with pleurisy in December 1927 and died in January 1928, having dictated his final poem to his wife on his deathbed.

The Blinded Bird

By Thomas Hardy
So zestfully canst thou sing?
And all this indignity,
With God's consent, on thee!
Blinded ere yet a-wing
By the red-hot needle thou,
I stand and wonder how
So zestfully thou canst sing!

Resenting not such wrong,
Thy grievous pain forgot,
Eternal dark thy lot,
Groping thy whole life long;
After that stab of fire;
Enjailed in pitiless wire;
Resenting not such wrong!

Who hath charity?This bird.
Who suffereth long and is kind,
Is not provoked, though blind
And alive ensepulchred?
Who hopeth, endureth all things?
Who thinketh no evil, but sings?
Who is divine?This bird.

The Blinded Bird (a melancholy polemic against the sport of vinkenzetting), display Hardy's love of the natural world and his firm stance against animal cruelty...

The Darkling Thrush

By Thomas Hardy
I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

Composers who have set Hardy's text to music include Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst. Composer Lee Hoiby's setting of "The Darkling Thrush" became the basis of the multimedia opera Darkling and Timothy Takach, a graduate of St. Olaf, has also put "The Darkling Thrush" into arrangement for a 4-part mixed choir.

Hap

By Thomas Hardy
If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!"

Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
—Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . .
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

MsJacquiiC · #1 04-27-2008, 10:40 AM

Quote:

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

Tribute.
(for the loneliest swallow)

heartfelt emotion once I'd hollowed
my soul like the songbird swallow
and thus in simple chirp he dost merit
a simple plea from my ghost inherent
"flay thy gaunt and glorious gloom
far from my brown feathered plume."
said the peacock to the soul collector,
"ha-squawk tawk, taunt sawk illector."

Happy National Poetry Month

New To JPiC Forum?	JPiC Forum Network	Need Assistance?
Register to Participate Meet The JPiC Moderating Team View Forum Leaders Review The JPiC Posting Policy Privacy Statement View Our Terms of Service New Member Introductions RSS RSS 2.0 XML	ArticleGalleryOnline.com Poetry-Defined.com AllPoetryVids.com InfinityGamesGallery.com GreetingsGalleryOnline.com WobbleWobble.net BOOKMARK JPiC FORUM	Frequently Asked Questions Link To JPiC On Your Website Did You Forget Your Password? Support Tickets: JPiC Help Center View JPiC Video Tutorials Contact The JPiC Administrator Mark Forums Read ADVERTISE SITE MAP DONATE