Found among Thompson's papers after his death. For the allusion of the motto, see Psalms, CXXXVII, 4 (Authorized Version); Ephesians, II, 19; etc.

17-20. when so sad etc.: Cf. the preceding poem, lines 136-140, 177-179. 19. Shall shine etc.: See Genesis, XXVIII, 10-17.

20. Charing Cross: a central square in London; often resorted to as a resting-place by unfortunates, including Thompson himself in his days of poverty and wandering.

21-24. Yea, in the night etc.: For the allusions in this closing stanza, see Matthew, XIV, 24-36 (Authorized Version).

a

shire, he was gifted with an affectionate and absorbing eye for the life of the surrounding district the "Wessex" of his writings and with a faculty for architectural outline not surpassed by the greatest English novelists. Lacking their human wealth, Hardy could the more rapidly develop a critical clearness of aim and of design. It is significant that his first profession was architecture; and that he passed quickly from early verse to early tales, which lacked depth but not finish of outline (e.g., A Pair of Blue Eyes, 1873), and quickly brought him such a popularity as his optimistic friend Meredith never enjoyed. Most significantly, his pessimistic outlook, though it was present in unpublished lyrics of the 1860's, was introduced only gradually into his published works. It became rampant in certain passages of his later novels, and elaborately systematized in his climactic poem, vast Napoleonic drama, "The Dynasts" (1904-1908). But on the whole, Hardy's gloom has not interfered with professional success, and has been kept subordinate to artistic purposes. If it was responsible for turning the heroine of Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891) into what Meredith termed "a smudge in vapor," it lent power to the noted Egdon Heath scene that opens The Return of the Native (1878), and to the sombre forest atmosphere of a novel less noted but more veracious in its plot than the two just mentioned, The Woodlanders (1887). With brooding atmospheres, and affecting types of rustic personality, humorous or pathetic, Hardy is more successful than with complex characters and the inner logic of tragedy. He uses the element of chance excessively to bring about striking results, though his use of it is concealed from the hasty eye by his careful coherence of plot outline.

Chance, or "Crass Casualty" as he termed it in the sonnet "Hap" (1866), is in his view a main factor of life, a result of the blind "Immanent Will," or "First or Fundamental Energy," that moves the universe, without feeling or purpose. This "God" (like Caliban's "Setebos," line 111 ff., page 465) has created beings better than himself, and is mainly responsible for their sins and sorrows. The fact is that Hardy is naïve in

his thoughts upon central reality and, more explicitly than Shelley in "Prometheus Unbound" (page 182), blames the gods while denying their existence. In his dignified preface to "The Dynasts," he adduces in support of his own view the present "wide prevalence of the Monistic theory of the Universe." As a whole his doctrine belongs with the aftermath of Shelleyanism. In this connection, review the notes on James Thomson and Henley, pages 797-798, above; and compare Hardy's art and outlook with theirs.

Temperamental and artistic, rather than philosophic, is Hardy's pessimism. Lacking Browning's and, much more, Meredith's zest in the struggle of life, viewing that struggle increasingly from the standpoint of a highly conscious and successful "architectect," Hardy came to regard the universe as a blundering, meaningless process. He reacted from Wordsworthian serenity: "Some people would like to know whence the poet whose philosophy is in these days deemed as profound and trustworthy as his song is breezy and pure, gets his authority for speaking of 'Nature's holy plan'" (from Tess). He reacted from the Victorian emphasis upon the development of character through affliction. For, above all, he feels extreme sympathy with the frustrated desires of individual lives. In an essay that values his work very highly a critic has remarked: "The one thing that moves the poet to a kind of cheerfulness is triumphant indulgence in sexual desire" (J. W. Cunliffe, English Literature during the Last Half Century). Though in this respect prophetic of the present sex-obsession in literature, Hardy's work is very far from impure; simply, he watches with grim satisfaction a vivid passion and joy that the dull fates and conventions cannot suppress. His sym

pathy with personal desires and aspirations, because insufficiently balanced by other regards, leans toward humanitarian sentimentality. But generally his spirit is finely tender, notably in the lyric on "Shelley's Skylark" (Collected Poems, page 92). The distinction of his poetry is that spirit in remarkable combination with an austere style-half concealed under sardonic tone, gray dramatic episode, and pungently etched image.

Like Robert Bridges, but pugnaciously, Sir William Watson (1858- ) upholds poetic tradition in an age of "new poetry." He expressed his reverence for the founder of nineteenth century verse, and won recognition for himself, in his fine elegy "Wordsworth's Grave" (1890). His outlook is akin to Arnold's stoicism; and he is at his best in verse that has a mental rather than imaginative aim. Often he attains a fine epigrammatic vigor. Here he is striking at a certain kind of "realism" in poetry. See the note under Gibson, below.

(649.) 6. Yet: in spite of the fact that her

aberrations are being "lustily acclaimed" by readers (line 1). (649.) 10-11. the things

rank excess: the low and ugly desires that Nature keeps on excessively breeding in man. These are referred to as "downward truth" (line 13) because Watson recognizes their reality and their down-pulling

power.

14. To the mountains etc.: alluding to Mount Helicon and its fountains of the Muses.

W. W. GIBSON (1878- )

The work of Mr. Wilfrid Wilson Gibson illustrates the "realism" which is prominent in recent verse, but which (if an "ism" be desired) may more accurately be termed "dark actualism": an interest in the actual, drab, and often sordid features of present day life, sometimes in the country, but principally in the industrial towns and cities. This sphere of poetry is well suited to Mr. Gibson's genius. Lacking the individual distinction and lyric gift of Brooke and Masefield, he has a patient, industrious sympathy with the poor and an aptness for dramatic episode, that carry the reader all the way through his large volume of collected Poems (1917). One may follow the poet's development and his interesting changes of method in the chief successive divisions of the book: "Stonefolds" (1906), "Daily Bread," Bread," "Fires," "Thoroughfares," "Battle" (written in the opening years of the Great War), "Friends," "Livelihood" (1914-1916). The student should compare this book with examples of the work of other latter day realists: Hardy, Masefield, E. L. Masters, Carl Sandburg, and (affording a more fruitful comparison than the others) Robert Frost. For such a study the viewpoint given in the following paragraph may be sugges

tive:

"Stonefolds" is a series of grim, sometimes bitter, dramatic dialogues representing the life of the shepherds of rugged Northumberland, the poet's native shire. There, in his earlier years, "he made subterranean expeditions with the miners, he followed his nose into slums, he talked

long hours with the unclassed, and listened sympathetically to the lamentations of sea-made widows. His nature. -extraordinarily delicate and sensitive - received deep wounds, the scars of which appeared in his subsequent poetry" (W. L. Phelps, in The Advance of English Poetry in the Twentieth Century, 1918). An inward sensitiveness and visionary tendency, though not nearly so pronounced as in the case of Masefield, are continually active beneath Gibson's devotion to the sombre aspects of life. For this reason he is inclined both to overemphasize the laborers' gloom, and to lighten it rather unexpectedly with dream-comforts, attributing his own outlook to his personages. But he does not deeply violate the laws of human character, for he does not attempt to penetrate deeply into them. He uses general character-types as carriers for the episodes and activities, and emotional moments, with which he is chiefly concerned. His art is perhaps fullest and most consistent in "Fires," notably in the delightful tale "The Hare," where the characters are merely boy and girl. Here, lure of the wild and sympathy with womanhood are woven together with a visionary touch, in a realistic rural setting. From this point of view the reader will better appreciate the charming introductory lyric of "Fires" (page 649). touch of the Shelleyan style may be felt in these lines. And something of the Shelleyan spirit pervades present realistic verse as a whole. The work of Masefield is a notable illustration, the work of Frost a notable exception.

PROEM OF FIRES

A

17. lustral: sacrificial and purifying. The allusion is to the cremation of Shelley's body on the Italian shore, six weeks after his death by drowning.

ON HAMPSTEAD HEATH

The "Heath" in the northern suburbs of London is a favorite holiday resort of the city's working-classes. Very characteristic are the "purple feather" of the girl and her mingled tears and jests while her soldier proposes.

PROMETHEUS

Alluding to the sufferings of Prometheus for providing the human race with useful fire; see Byron's "Prometheus" (page 127) and the note, page 678, above. (650.) 8. his world: According to one legend, Prometheus was the creator of man. The line suggests the potentiality of the modern proletariat.

HODGSON: EVE

For a tint of "dark actualism" (see the note under Gibson, above) in the work of Mr. Ralph Hodgson (1879- ), see “The Bull,” the most remarkable of the longer poems in his slender volume (1917). On the whole he is a secluded artist, with sharp sympathy for animals, and a quaint lyric humor in looking out upon the passing show of human life. In "My Books" he surveys his library with witty affection, and concludes with high praise of Shelley, who is "more than all the others mine.". The present tuneful comedy is exquisite in its narrative omissions, as well as in its creations. Similar rhythms appear in certain lines of Beddoes' "Dream-Pedlary" (page 231).

(650.) 48. Blasphemous Tree: alluding to the effect of its apples upon those who ate them, as in "Paradise Lost," IX, 834-838. (651.) 63. lewd: wicked, rude.

64. Under the hill: In folk-lore, demons and other spirits have feastinghalls inside of hills. - The Garden of Eden was on a hill (“Paradise Lost," IV, 131 ff.).

RUPERT BROOKE (1887-1915)

Some significant differences may be found between the poetry of the war which opened the nineteenth century (represented in this book by passages of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Campbell, Wolfe, and Byron) and the poetry of the war which may be said to have closed that era. The poems inspired by the Great War of 1914-1918 have been carefully collected in several anthologies.

retreat near

Among the very few that have any considerable value as poetry are Brooke's five sonnets of 1914, the first and last of which are here reprinted (page 651). That the struggle had a very special meaning for this young man appears from his vivid letters and the Memoir of him (1918) by his friend Edward Marsh. The War came to him as a great public opportunity, but also as a great solution for the growing perplexity of his own life and outlook. In spirit, he was more richly poetic than his friends Masefield and Gibson than any contemporary poet, it seems; but in expression, he had great difficulty in finding his special path. Personal circumstances seemed all in his favor. A prizewinner at Rugby, where his father was a master, he afterwards enjoyed a full life at King's College, Cambridge, a loved at hand in Grantchester Vicarage (commemorated in a delightful poem), a period of study and widened experience in Germany, and a host of admiring friends, who encouraged him in his writing. His personality was intense, clear, and singularly charming. His outlook was potentially wide, for he possessed the rare combination of sharp humor (as in "Heaven," page 651) and mystic idealism. "What happens," he wrote to a friend, in regard to his mysticism, “is that I suddenly feel the extraordinary value and importance of everybody I meet. I tell you that a Birmingham gouty Tariff Reform fifth-rate business man is splendid and immortal and desirable." current sense of social responsibility — "the social vision" was in him at its purest, and more and more induced selfcriticism. "The worst of solitude—or the best is, that one begins poking at his own soul, examining it, cutting the soft and rotten parts away. And where's one to stop?"

The

But his constructive imagination was limited largely, perhaps, as a result of the age in which he grew to maturity. His late letters show him still reacting from "Victorianism," and anxious that his mystic intuitions should not "cheat" him, as he put it, "into any kind of belief." He dabbled in Platonism; but on the whole his thinking was confined by the rather vague flux of contemporary spiritual opinion.