If he denies or forgets,
the synthesis--again the word is a metaphor--which must establish itself
within him is fragmentary and false. The new event can wake but partial
echoes in his soul or none at all; it can neither be received into, nor
can it create a complete relation, and so it passes incommensurable from
limbo into forgetfulness.
Mr Hardy stands high above all other modern poets by the deliberate
purity of his responsiveness. The contagion of the world's slow stain
has not touched him; from the first he held aloof from the general
conspiracy to forget in which not only those who are professional
optimists take a part. Therefore his simplest words have a vehemence and
strangeness of their own:--
'It will have been:
Nor God nor Demon can undo the done,
Unsight the seen
Make muted music be as unbegun
Though things terrene
Groan in their bondage till oblivion supervene.'
What neither God nor Demon can do, men are incessantly at work to
accomplish. Life itself rewards them for their assiduity, for she
scatters her roses chiefly on the paths of those who forget her thorns.
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