{"id":3245,"date":"2005-06-21T12:17:52","date_gmt":"2005-06-21T16:17:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3245"},"modified":"2024-10-27T21:52:32","modified_gmt":"2024-10-28T01:52:32","slug":"thomas-hardy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=3245","title":{"rendered":"Thomas Hardy the Poet"},"content":{"rendered":"

Recently re-read Tess of the D’urbervilles<\/a>\"\"<\/i> (after not having read it since high school) and was amazed at not only how well he writes, but how much of a page-turner that book is. You can’t put the damn thing down, and that is totally not how I remember it from high school.<\/p>\n

But he was also a poet (he came to it late – long after he became a successful novelist), and in a way I am more partial to his poetry than his novels.<\/p>\n

Ezra Pound said, after reading Hardy’s poems: “Now there <\/i>is clarity. There <\/i>is the harvest of having written 20 novels first.”<\/p>\n

The poem he wrote about the Titanic frankly just cannot be beat. I put that one in the extended entry. It gives me chills up my back every time I read it.<\/p>\n

But here’s another beauty. It’s simple, no big revelation, no flowery language … just a moment described. He’s great at that.<\/p>\n

A Thunderstorm in Town <\/b><\/p>\n

She wore a new ‘terra-cotta’ dress,
\nAnd we stayed, because of the pelting storm,
\nWithin the hansom’s dry recess,
\nThough the horse had stopped; yea, motionless
\nWe sat on, snug and warm.<\/p>\n

Then the downpour ceased, to my sharp sad pain,
\nAnd the glass that had screened our forms before
\nFlew up, and out she sprang to her door:
\nI should have kissed her if the rain
\nHad lasted a minute more.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\nThe Convergence of the Twain <\/b><\/p>\n

I<\/p>\n

In a solitude of the sea
\nDeep from human vanity,
\nAnd the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.<\/p>\n

II<\/p>\n

Steel chambers, late the pyres
\nOf her salamandrine fires,
\nCold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.<\/p>\n

III<\/p>\n

Over the mirrors meant
\nTo glass the opulent
\nThe sea-worm crawls — grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.<\/p>\n

IV<\/p>\n

Jewels in joy designed
\nTo ravish the sensuous mind
\nLie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.<\/p>\n

V<\/p>\n

Dim moon-eyed fishes near
\nGaze at the gilded gear
\nAnd query: “What does this vaingloriousness down here?”. . .<\/p>\n

VI<\/p>\n

Well: while was fashioning
\nThis creature of cleaving wing,
\nThe Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything<\/p>\n

VII<\/p>\n

Prepared a sinister mate
\nFor her — so gaily great —
\nA Shape of Ice, for the time fat and dissociate.<\/p>\n

VIII<\/p>\n

And as the smart ship grew
\nIn stature, grace, and hue
\nIn shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.<\/p>\n

IX<\/p>\n

Alien they seemed to be:
\nNo mortal eye could see
\nThe intimate welding of their later history.<\/p>\n

X<\/p>\n

Or sign that they were bent
\nBy paths coincident
\nOn being anon twin halves of one August event,<\/p>\n

XI<\/p>\n

Till the Spinner of the Years
\nSaid “Now!” And each one hears,
\nAnd consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.<\/p>\n

\n