...
'Since then keen lessons that love deceives
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.'
[Footnote 12: _Collected. Poems of Thomas Hardy_. Vol. I.
(Macmillan.)]
That was written in 1867. The date of _Desperate Remedies_, Mr Hardy's
first novel, was 1871. _Desperate Remedies_ may have been written some
years before. It makes no difference to the astonishing contrast between
the immaturity of the novel and the maturity of the poem. It is surely
impossible in the face of such a juxtaposition then to deny that Mr
Hardy's poetry exists in its own individual right, and not as a curious
simulacrum of his prose.
These early poems have other points of deep interest, of which one of
the chief is in a sense technical. One can trace a quite definite
influence of Shakespeare's sonnets in his language and imagery. The four
sonnets, 'She to Him' (1866), are full of echoes, as:--
'Numb as a vane that cankers on its point
True to the wind that kissed ere canker came.
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