Vol. VI No. 1 - Modernist Magazines Project

THE BERMONDSEY BOOK
Montague loved. For he was of those whose impulse was to be to a friend
what a bright fire is, something which puts you at your ease and may help you
to be at your best and to shine, but vaunteth not itself and seeketh not its
own. And Mr. Montague himself was of this rare kind who are the real salt
of the earth.
WINTER WORDS. By THOMAS HARDY (Macmillan).
This volume of poems would, we are told have undergone further revision,
had the author lived to issue it on his birthday.
The poems may safely be said to be the last from one whose reputation
as a poet is now so vigorously assailed. The reputation can take care of
itself whatever the modern school of criticism may say, but it has to be
admitted that the poems here collected do not add to it. There is throughout
these poems the familiar, knotty style, the awkward gait of the words (so
dearly beloved in the earlier work) but less of the profound philosophy.
Yet here and there the real lyric note of which Hardy was a master even
in old age, comes clear and true, as in "Proud Songsters."
There are brand new birds of twelve-months growing,
Which a year ago, or less than twain,
No finches were, nor nightingales, nor thrushes,
But only particles of grain,
And earth, and air, and rain.
But little can be said in praise of the long poem "Aristodemus the
Messinian" in which occur such lines as;
Nay, white tippings above the Delphic tripod
Mangle never their message! And they lip such.
There are many more poems in the book showing an awkward style at
its worst. But where there is, as always in the best of Hardy's poetry,
economy of words on a dramatic theme. We find a fine poem like "Her Second
Husband Hears Her Story." This poem, one of the best in the book, opens
marvellously with;
Still, Dear, it is incredible to me that here, alone,
You should have sewed him up until he died,
And in this very bed. I do not see
How you could do it, seeing what might betide.
It must be said of this volume as a whole that the short poems are
the best. There are one or two pungent epigrams, as the author would have
called them. Of these the best are "Not Known" and "Christmas 1924."
The first is clearly an answer to those who have misjudged his work.
They know a phasm they name as me,
In whom I should not find
A single self-held quality
Of body or mind.
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