Friday, November 22, 2013

HAP



 
 

If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!"

Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so.   How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
—Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . .
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.






"Hap" by Thomas Hardy, 1866

Slapp Happy: Slow Moon's Rose (Link) 

Thunderbolts At Play (above); Formation Above The Clouds (below) by Eric Sloane
 

2 comments:

  1. Such a grand and miserable poem it is. Ah, Hardy.

    There was once the expression -- "that's the haps".

    Hardy's subject matter, for life.

    The Eric Sloanes do nicely here.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks so much. His subject matter, my mood. I'm trying to jog myself out of it and reading beautiful poems and opening and surveying inward eyes and seeing scenes like these help. I'm about take a short trip to the Apple Store, apparently to meet a Genius at a Genius Bar. Sounds promising. But first I need to write one more letter feigning outrage at something or other. I love "that's the haps." Curtis

      Delete