e, it is merely a
curious tweak of the fancy; but there comes to us in such lines as the
following an insistent vision of two youths of an age the one
masterful, the other indulgent, and carrying out his companion's firm
suggestion:--

'Remembering mine the loss is, not the blame
That Sportsman Time rears but his brood to kill,
Knowing me in my soul the very same--
One who would die to spare you touch of ill!--
Will you not grant to old affection's claim
The hand of friendship down Life's sunless hill?'

But, fancies aside, the effect of these early poems is twofold. Their
attitude is definite:--

'Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain
And dicing time for gladness calls a moan ...
These purblind Doomsters had as readily thrown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.'

and the technique has the mark of mastery, a complete economy of
statement which produces the conviction that the words are saying only
what poet ordained they should say, neither less nor more.

The early years were followed by the long period of the novels, in
which, we are prepared to admit, poetry was actually if not in intention
incidental. It is the grim truth that poetry cannot be written in
between times; and, though we have hardly any dates on which to rely, we
are willing to believe that few of Mr Hardy's characteristic poems were
written between the appearance of _Desperate Remedies_ and his farewell
to the activity of novel-writing with _The Well-Beloved_ (1897). But the
few dates which we have tell us that 'Thoughts of Phena,' the beautiful
poem beginning:--

'Not a line of her writing have I,
Not a thread of her hair....'

which reaches forward to the love poems of 1912-13, was written in 1890.

Whether the development of Mr Hardy's poetry was concealed or visible
during the period of the novels, development there was into a maturity
so overwhelming that by its touchstone the poetical work of his famous
contemporaries appears singularly jejune and false. But, though by the
accident of social conditions--for that Mr Hardy waited till 1898 to
publish his first volume of poems is more a social than an artistic
fact--it is impossible to follow out the phases of his poetical progress
in the detail we would desire, it is impossible not to recognise that
the mature poet, Mr Hardy, is of the same poetical substance as the
young poet of the 'sixties. The attitude is unchanged; the modifications
of the theme of 'cr