It is fitting at this jolly season of the year to redress gloomy stereotypes such as that of Milton: April’s poems showed us Thomas Hardy in his familiar image as the pessimist, seeing mankind in the power of an Immanent Will unconcerned with his sufferings; but there is also Hardy the Dorset countrymen, who, although he lived to the age of eighty-eight, was young once. This is his poem, “Great Things”:
Sweet cyder is a great thing,
A great thing to me,
Spinning down to Weymouth town
By Ridgway thirstily,
And maid and mistress summoning
Who tend the hostelry:
O cyder is a great thing,
A great thing to me!The dance it is a great thing,
A great thing to me,
With candles lit and partners fit
For night-long revelry;
And going home when day-dawning
Peeps pale upon the lea:
O dancing is a great thing
A great thing to me!
A great thing to me,
Spinning down to Weymouth town
By Ridgway thirstily,
And maid and mistress summoning
Who tend the hostelry:
O cyder is a great thing,
A great thing to me!The dance it is a great thing,
A great thing to me,
With candles lit and partners fit
For night-long revelry;
And going home when day-dawning
Peeps pale upon the lea:
O dancing is a great thing
A great thing to me!
Love is , yea, a great thing,
A great thing to me,
When having drawn across the lawn
In darkness silently,
A figure flits like one a-wing
Out from the nearest tree:
O love is, yes, a great thing,
A great thing to me!Will these be always great things,
Great things to me?
Let it befall that One will call,
“Soul, I have need of thee:”
What then? Joy-jaunts, impassioned flings,
Love and its ecstasy,
Will always have been great things,
Great things to me!
A great thing to me,
When having drawn across the lawn
In darkness silently,
A figure flits like one a-wing
Out from the nearest tree:
O love is, yes, a great thing,
A great thing to me!Will these be always great things,
Great things to me?
Let it befall that One will call,
“Soul, I have need of thee:”
What then? Joy-jaunts, impassioned flings,
Love and its ecstasy,
Will always have been great things,
Great things to me!
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