The Worcester spy. [volume] (Worcester, Mass.) 1898-1904, 1899-02-05
"WEssEx PoEMs.u
BY the Author of Tess Of the D'urber-
vile !"

BY the Author Of Tess Of the D'Urber.
"Wessex Poems and Other Verses. .
BY Thomas Hardy With 80 illustra-
tons by the author. Harper and
Brothers.
1t is difficult to speak justly concern
ing Mr.. Hardy's latest volume, be-
cause on the one hand the reader is
\ constantly moved to admiration by the
originality the surprising richness and
freshness, and the captivating quaint
ness OF the contents, While on the other
hand he feels himself impededi by the
hating heaviness and awkward rigor
OF rhyme and metre. Although the au-
/ thor Is clearly working in medium
that is essentially foreign to him, &c
that he exchanges his eeftness for a
| heavy hand and his ease for constraint,
| yet no one who had read "a Group of
Noble Danes or 1.-THE Woodlanders''
| or Two On a Tower" could fall to
| identify the author of ''Wessex
| POEMS"
Only few out Of the fifty poems in
the collection are Wessex in dialect
/ the majority are broadly human and
belong as well to New Zealand or New
/ York as to West Essex England, ex-
| cept that no Frenchman or Italian
! would have been likely to write them.
! They are suffused with passion and
| feeling, and although there is seldom
the inevitableness Of true poetry, there
is an Intensity, a vitality that make
not poor substitute. Running
| through them is that sense of the trag-
| euy OF life which seems to haunt Mr.
Hardy's brain and underlies so many
OF ms novels Destiny, the disappoint-
ments of love, the subterranean work.
| lngs of instinct, the awfulness of
chance, the passing of beauty, the ia
| tuousness Of fate, the life OF the dead
aIter death-these form the themes of
these poems.
A man whose love after marrying
another man has died, repairs to the
! place where last he saw her alive In
ms anguish he threatens to kill himself
that night, but her ghost tells him how
sne lives, but in his life, and that upon
his death she will cease to be. And
now his fear is lest he may die and so
murder her spirit. One who had early
loved maid and then forgotten her
nears by chance Of her death, and
IindIng his old passion revived, he
makes solemn pilgrimage TO her
grave. But when ne reaches it he finds
that it is the grave of another, and
that his sweetheart married to her
groom, is keeping a dow hot-house A
feeling stirs in him thai the Cicily who
lay wrapped in her long reverIe and
not that Cicily of the barroom was he
love: and that death bae etolan ai,,+a+t
herr Young dearness ana ionooarle9, :,
The Inhabitants of graveyard whisper
at "mothy curfeW-tide' how it fares
with them. The squire murmurs to the
passerby that he may take the manse,
ana ms lady yields up all her treasures
an -
more for his heirer nor his wife co.
the best blue china. none of tber, 90 , roI
at all for the living who ie har,, 80 ~ 4,
married on. dead op IL tba stooa stJl1
passes ONLY The da+enh,,eat' ~ ~
great Indifference of deafb ie laft Gne
who had loved a Girl and saa, ~
married IN anotber 10 s,,,,a,,,r,,od - t s'eI
death bed She tells him tbst sba ~ Inc, ,,ei
him and wishes that her TttIa i Ior9e
girl was their child. AS wife she has
life over again she would gladly have
the child his, and bear the scandals
passed and the widoIer ~ @1 yeats
and when other children came, the lit
tie lame child was neglected. Then
His after-life Is noisoned nv tba aS,ii
name he has bropghf fo the woman ha
love, :, although Tho he rel had told the lie for
fleets that perhaps she forgives the
if only 81 she could Id Kne ss w. . "ouiu'
Tbasa lrernaIe, or - ee,,,,, 30 ~ .
~, - le" ~ ne poems
Mr.. Hardy's imagiy alton works. To
call them merely IN AIRY curioslties is |
of tbe authors nerA ,aIjtv and ~ tl," ne