RPO -- Thomas Hardy : Hap

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

Hap

1If but some vengeful god would call to me

2From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing,

3Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,

4That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!"

5Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,

6Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;

7Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I

8Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

9But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,

10And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?

11--Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,

12And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . .

13These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown

14Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

1866.

Notes

1] The title is an archaic word, meaning luck, fortune, or chance.

11] Casualty is the state of being governed by chance, or hap. Casualty is here a personification of a force of the universe, much like Time in the next line.

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: Collected Poems of Thomas Hardy (London: Macmillan and Co., 1932): 7. PR 4741 F32 Robarts Library.
First publication date: 1898
Publication date note: Wessex Poems and Other Verses (London: Macmillan, Sept. 1898).
RPO poem editor: Marc R. Plamondon
RP edition: 2005
Recent editing: 2:2005/6/7

Form: sonnet
Rhyme: abab cdcd efeffe

Other poems by Thomas Hardy