Hardy's Hap

Hap- Thomas Hardy

If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorry 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 strewn
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

Hardy unveils his determinism in this poem as a refreshing start to the Twentieth Century. This poem seems to take the shape of an altered sonnet. Divided into the three stanza, the poem has a scientific feel due to the start of each stanza sounding like an equation: “if”, “then”, “but not so”. The first two stanzas are very formulated in an abab rhyme scheme and are very direct. This structure seems to contradict the theme of the poem quite nicely by contrasting form versus the random. The third stanza, however, feels much more colloquial, and is more abstract and personal than the first two stanzas. Hardy uses a caesura, an ellipses, and a rhetorical question to add to the scepticism contained in his argument, and to make the stanza feel more conversational that the other two.

The first stanza creates an imaginary being by arguing that IF there was a god to blame for wrongs against him, it would be a vengeful god that rejoices in pain, rather than the opposing notion of a benevolent god. In this poem, Hardy rejects the religious standard of God, and imagines one who delights in loss and suffering. It seems to pervert the previous notion of a divine god by imagining one who states “know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy”. By using “if”, Hardy seems to be wishing for such a god, for reasons explained in the following stanzas.

In stanza two, Hardy describes the presence of this imagined vengeful god as a relief by ‘knowing’ the truth as to why he is allotted pain. It is because of this ‘knowing’ that Hardy would be able to “bear it, clench myself, and die”… “half-eased”. His mention of the unmerited seems in reference to religion again, as it is believed that God’s mercy is unmerited to the human race, just as Hardy’s vengeful god’s anger is unmerited to him.

Finally, in stanza three, Hardy seems to give his own world view in a colloquial nature. The image of ‘unblooming’ symbolizes hope falling to pieces as a rose may unbloom. Hardy also names fate “Crass Casualty”: chance, and “dicing Time” : either meant as fragmented time, or a gambling of time. Hardy states that the “Doomsters”, or half blind judges of fate (Crass Casualty and dicing Time) randomly allot both pain and pleasure, and with that, he accepts the uncertainty of fate.

Pound's River Merchant's Wife

The River-Merchant’s Wife: a Letter
While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married My Lord you.
I never laughed, being bashful.
Lowering my heard, I looked at the wall.
Called to, a through sand times, I never looked back.
At fifteen I stopped scowling,
I desired my dust to be mingled with yours
Forever and forever and forever.
Why should I climb the look out?
At sixteen you departed,
You went into far Ku-to-yen, by the river of swirling eddies,
And you have been gone five months.
The monkeys make sorrowful noise overhead.
You dragged your feet when you went out.
By the gate now, the moss is grown, the different mosses,
Too deep to clear them away!
The leaves fall early this autumn, in wind.
The paired butterflies are already yellow with August
Over the grass in the West garden;
They hurt me. I grow older.
If you are coming down through the narrows of the right Kiang,
And I will come out to meet you
As far as Cho-fu-Sa.
By Riaku 1915
Pound does an excellent job of showing progression through this poem. The young narrator takes the reader on a progression from childhood to young adulthood that shows her transformation from innocence to resistance, to finally submission. Through this progression, Pound is able to show a definite power struggle between the male and female; but more relevantly, man and wife. It shows the subservient role of the wife to her husband, yet also sheds light on the eventual acceptance and appreciation of this role through the absence of the husband. However, through maturation, the wife (narrator) is also able to find emotional attachment to her husband, yet it is gradual, and involves not only an emotional connection, but also a physical and spiritual connection. This is evident in the line “ I desired my dust to be mingled with yours/forever and forever and forever.” It is unclear to me whether this “mingling” refers to a sexual connection, but I mostly feel that the narrator is referring to a more spiritual or emotional connection. The longing of the narrator for her husband is apparent through the imagery of the last stanza. Her description of the moss that is overgrown is a strong image of the time that has past in his absence, and she states, “I grow older”.

Adam's Curse

Adam's Curse - William Butler Yeats

We sat together at one summer's end,
That beautiful mid woman, your close friend,
And you and I, and talked of poetry.
I said, "A line will take us hours maybe;
Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought,
Our stitching and unstiching has been naught.
Better go down upon your marrow-bones
And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones
Like an old pauper, in all kinds of weather;
Is to work harder than all these, and yet
Be thought an idler by the noisy set
Of bankers, schoolmasters, and clergy men
The martyrs call the world."


---And thereupon
That beautiful mild woman for whose sake
There's many a one shall find out all heartache
On finding that her voice is sweet and low
Replied, "to be born woman is to know-
Although they do not talk of it at school-
That we must labour to be beautiful."

I said, "It's certain there is no fine thing
Since Adam's fall but needs much labouring.
There have been lovers who thought love should be
So much compounded of high courtesy
That they would sigh and quote with learned looks
Precendents out of beautiful old books;
Yet now it seems an idle trade enough."

We sat grown quiet at the name of love;
We saw the last embers of daylight die,
And in the trembling blue-green of the sky
A moon, worn as if it had been a shell
Washed by time's waters as they rose and fell
About the stars and broke in days and years.

I had a thought for no one's but your ears:
That you were beautiful, and that I strove
To love you in the old high way of love;
That it had all seemed happy, and yet we'd grown
As weary-hearted as that hollow moon.

Yeats' ballad "Adam's Curse" caught my eye because it seemed to be such a realistic and everyday tale. It read very nicely due to its rhyming couplets and smooth simplistic language that is straightforward, and yet eloquent. The most enjoyable portion of the poem for me was the social comments on poetry, beauty, and love. Firstly, the narrator's comment on the hard work of poetry that is unrecognized by the 'layman' was not only very realistic, but very well articulated, that to "articulate sweet sounds together Is to work harder than all these"- 'these' referring to the manual labours that he lists previous to that line. Secondly, the "beautiful mild woman" abruptly makes a comment on beauty, and women's unwritten task of labour to be beautiful. It seems this comment comes out of the blue, however, it does add to the social comment that the narrator is trying to portray. Thirdly, the narrator speaks of trivial duties of love that are based on "high courtesy" as the labour of man. In general, this poem speaks of trivial labours in three seperate circumstances, in order to perhaps reveal Truth in each case. This poem is a fine example of social commentary in an arbitrary fashion. I enjoyed it thoroughly!