Week 8

The Echo Elf Answers             By THOMAS HARDY (1840-1928)

How much shall I love her?

For life, or not long?

                “Not long.”

Alas! When forget her?

In years, or by June?

                “By June.”

And whom woo I after?

No one, or a throng?

                “A throng.”

Of these shall I wed one

Long hence, or quite soon?

                “Quite soon.”

And which will my bride be?

The right or the wrong?

                “The wrong.”

And my remedy – what kind?

Wealth-wove, or earth-hewn?

                “Earth-hewn.”

The Ruined Maid                    By THOMAS HARDY

"O 'Melia, my dear, this does everything crown!

Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town?

And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?" —

"O didn't you know I'd been ruined?" said she.

— "You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks,

Tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks;

And now you've gay bracelets and bright feathers three!" —

"Yes: that's how we dress when we're ruined," said she.

— "At home in the barton you said thee' and thou,'

And thik oon,' and theäs oon,' and t'other'; but now

Your talking quite fits 'ee for high compa-ny!" —

"Some polish is gained with one's ruin," said she.

— "Your hands were like paws then, your face blue and bleak

But now I'm bewitched by your delicate cheek,

And your little gloves fit as on any la-dy!" —

"We never do work when we're ruined," said she.

— "You used to call home-life a hag-ridden dream,

And you'd sigh, and you'd sock; but at present you seem

To know not of megrims or melancho-ly!" — "True. One's pretty lively when ruined," said she.

— "I wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown,

And a delicate face, and could strut about Town!" —

"My dear — a raw country girl, such as you be,

Cannot quite expect that. You ain't ruined," said she.

Thomas Hardy is the author of Far From the Madding Crowd (one of 14 novels, three volumes of short stories, and over a thousand poems, among other writings).  The story is set in the southwest countryside of England, the county Dorset (which he calls Wessex, after a pre-Norman conquest kingdom of early England), near the ruins of Stonehenge and others of Roman antiquity, and features the rural people of that area, whose traditional lives he found profoundly interesting.  One of his recurrent themes is the tension between the traditional past and established faith and the modernizing world with its scientific developments and emphasis on evidence.  In the imaginative life of the poet, his art reflects the displacement and loss occasioned by historical developments, including Darwin's Origin of the Species and, later, the catastrophe of WWI. Hardy was fascinated by history, perhaps the more so as he lived through the modernizing period of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the great event of WWI.

He's been accused of pessimism, of having a dark, fatalistic view of human prospects, and admitted that age did not dispose him to optimism.   This novel, despite dark currents, ends happily, and in the current film version by Thomas Vinterberg, as at least one critic has opined, much of what was unsettling in the novel and earlier film version, has been softened.  The heroine is Bathsheba Everdene, a powerful and beautiful young woman who inherits an estate and determines to run it herself. The pastoral form here belies the strange tensions and disconcerting passions that visit Hardy's characters.