Oh, Thomas Hardy. Such a dreadful novelist. Such a sublime poet

I can’t tell you how much I feel this.  I really tried.  I read all of them:

The Mayor of Casterbridge

Far From the Madding Crowd

Tess of the d’Urbervilles

Jude the Obscure

Et Cetera

But, when it came down to it, electronically, virtually, or boookishly, I just couldn’t.

And yet.  Here’s Hardy the poet (from about a thousand poems):

The Voice—

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.
Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town the town – Boscastle near where Hardy met Emma
Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!
Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness listlessness – lack of purpose, energy
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness, wan wistlessness – pale inattentiveness
Heard no more again far or near?
Thus I; faltering forward, faltering – stumbling
Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward, norward – the north
And the woman calling.

The Blinded Bird–

So zestfully canst thou sing? zestfully – with enthusiasm and energy
And all this indignity, treatment that makes one lose one’s dignity
With God’s consent, on thee! consent – agreement
Blinded ere yet a-wing ere – before; a-wing – you could fly
By the red-hot needle thou,
I stand and wonder how
So zestfully thou canst sing!
Resenting not such wrong,
Thy grievous pain forgot, grievous – severe
Eternal dark thy lot, lot – what you were fated to experience in life
Groping thy whole life long;
After that stab of fire;
Enjailed in pitiless wire; enjailed – imprisoned; pitiless wire – of a birdcage
Resenting not such wrong!
Who hath charity? This bird.
Who suffereth long and is kind, suffereth – endures
Is not provoked, though blind
And alive ensepulchred? ensepulchred – buried
Who hopeth, endureth all things?
Who thinketh no evil, but sings?
Who is divine? This bird.

And, The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate

      When Frost was spectre-grey,

And Winter’s dregs made desolate

      The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

      Like strings of broken lyres,

And all mankind that haunted nigh

      Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be

      The Century’s corpse outleant,

His crypt the cloudy canopy,

      The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

      Was shrunken hard and dry,

And every spirit upon earth

      Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among

      The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

      Of joy illimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

      In blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

      Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings

      Of such ecstatic sound

Was written on terrestrial things

      Afar or nigh around,

That I could think there trembled through

      His happy good-night air

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

      And I was unaware.

I was never unaware.  I’ve rolled around at midnight in the muck.  And I’ve been there at two in the morning.  On the barn floor with a goat struggling to give birth.  I’ve traversed down the field, in the mud, the frost, and the slime, and I’ve placed a ewe on a tarpaulin and dragged her back up the hill into safety and into a position where I could help her do what should come naturally.  I’ve fiddled around to a degree I couldn’t have thought possible to entice a chicken to lay an egg.  I’ve helped cats to do what they are supposed to, and given God knows how many dogs a chance to live a life of love and opportunity.

And–more often than not–I’ve been successful.

Glory be.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t always work.  That’s devastating, too. And along the way, I’ve developed my own mantra to deal with it, when I talk to the animal in need.  It goes “I can stand it as long as you can stand it.  And when you are ready to let go, I’ll let go too.”

When I decide that he or she (and I) can’t stand it anymore, I pull the plug. I let go.  I love them.  I remember them.  And I move on.  Because I think that’s the right thing to do.

Anything else, I believe–especially when it comes to any moment of prolonging their misery while shouting about my own crass psychological need to vent about my own unhappiness at their situation–is just cruel.

This is an especially difficult thing.  Those of you who can only see such things from your own point of view and who’d like to have a go at changing my mind, please do.