Love Poems I

Abstract

That this affirmation is true no one could doubt for a moment after reading through the Complete Poems. Nearly two hundred of them, over a fifth of Hardy’s large output, may fairly be classed as love poetry. They are scattered through all eight volumes of his verse and, taken as a whole, they constitute the ultimate touchstone of his poetic genius. No one else in this century, not even W. B. Yeats, has produced so extensive, so varied and so majestic a tribute to that force in human life which Dr Samuel Johnson — surely the last man to be called sentimental — categorised as ‘A passion which he who has never felt never was happy, and he who laughs at never deserves to feel; a passion which has caused the change of empires and the loss of worlds.’ For anything approaching Hardy’s testimony in scope and scale we must go back to Browning and beyond him to Donne, whose poetry both Browning and Hardy admired.

… Love and its ecstasy Will always have been great things’ Great things to me. Great Things (414/C/G/W/H/*)