How To Live, Part Twenty-One: "He Never Expected Much"

My previous post contained five epitaphs written by Thomas Hardy.  I suggested that two of them -- "A Placid Man's Epitaph" and "Epitaph" (which begins: "I never cared for Life: Life cared for me") -- were descriptive of Hardy himself.  My suggestion was based upon, among other things, the following poem, which was published after his death.  But this sort of sentiment can be found throughout Hardy's poetry.

          He Never Expected Much

Well, World, you have kept faith with me,
                    Kept faith with me;
Upon the whole you have proved to be
          Much as you said you were.
Since as a child I used to lie
Upon the leaze and watch the sky,
Never, I own, expected I
          That life would all be fair.

'Twas then you said, and since have said,
                    Times since have said,
In that mysterious voice you shed
          From clouds and hills around:
'Many have loved me desperately,
Many with smooth serenity,
While some have shown contempt of me
          Till they dropped underground.

'I do not promise overmuch,
                    Child; overmuch;
Just neutral-tinted haps and such,'
          You said to minds like mine.
Wise warning for your credit's sake!
Which I for one failed not to take,
And hence could stem such strain and ache
          As each year might assign.

Thomas Hardy, Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres (1928).


Hardy died on January 11, 1928.  The poem was first published in The Daily Telegraph on March 19, 1928.  When it was published in book form later that year, it contained the following subtitle: "[or] A Consideration [A Reflection] on My Eighty-Sixth Birthday."  Hardy never decided upon the final version of the subtitle prior to his death:  the words in italics represent an alternative version.

"Just neutral-tinted haps and such" (line 19) brings to mind two of Hardy's earliest poems:  "Neutral Tones" ("We stood by a pond that winter day,/And the sun was white, as though chidden of God . . .") and "Hap" (with its references to "Crass Casualty," "dicing Time," and "purblind Doomsters"). Wessex Poems and Other Verses (1898).

"Leaze" (line 6) is "pasture; pasturage; meadow-land; common."  OED.  It    -- along with "lea" -- is a word that Hardy used on more than one occasion.  (For instance, in the poem entitled "In a Eweleaze near Weatherbury.")  "Lea" appears in the following poem, which is reminiscent of the image that appears in lines 5 and 6:  "as a child I used to lie/Upon the leaze and watch the sky."


          Childhood Among the Ferns

I sat one sprinkling day upon the lea,
Where tall-stemmed ferns spread out luxuriantly,
And nothing but those tall ferns sheltered me.

The rain gained strength, and damped each lopping frond,
Ran down their stalks beside me and beyond,
And shaped slow-creeping rivulets as I conned,

With pride, my spray-roofed house.  And though anon
Some drops pierced its green rafters, I sat on,
Making pretence I was not rained upon.

The sun then burst, and brought forth a sweet breath
From the limp ferns as they dried underneath:
I said:  'I could live on here thus till death;'

And queried in the green rays as I sate:
'Why should I have to grow to man's estate,
And this afar-noised World perambulate?'

Thomas Hardy, Winter Words in Various Moods and Metres (1928).

"The green rays" (line 13) is lovely, I think.  The idea of dwelling forever within the shelter of the ferns reminds me of Robert Devereux's "Happy were he could finish forth his fate/In some unhaunted desert," particularly its closing lines:  "Where, when he dies, his tomb may be a bush,/Where harmless robin dwells with gentle thrush."