'
[NOVEMBER, 1919.
We have read these poems of Thomas Hardy, read them not once, but many
times. Many of them have already become part of our being; their
indelible impress has given shape to dumb and striving elements in our
soul; they have set free and purged mute, heart-devouring regrets. And
yet, though this is so, the reading of them in a single volume, the
submission to their movement with a like unbroken motion of the mind,
gathers their greatness, their poignancy and passion, into one stream,
submerging us and leaving us patient and purified.
There have been many poets among us in the last fifty years, poets of
sure talent, and it may be even of genius, but no other of them has this
compulsive power. The secret is not hard to find. Not one of them is
adequate to what we know and have suffered. We have in our own hearts a
new touchstone of poetic greatness. We have learned too much to be
wholly responsive to less than an adamantine honesty of soul and a
complete acknowledgment of experience. 'Give us the whole,' we cry,
'give us the truth.
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