suggestion:--

'Remembering mine the loss is, not the blame
That Sportsman Time rears but his brood to kill,
Knowing me in my soul the very same--
One who would die to spare you touch of ill!--
Will you not grant to old affection's claim
The hand of friendship down Life's sunless hill?'

But, fancies aside, the effect of these early poems is twofold. Their
attitude is definite:--

'Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain
And dicing time for gladness calls a moan ...
These purblind Doomsters had as readily thrown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.'

and the technique has the mark of mastery, a complete economy of
statement which produces the conviction that the words are saying only
what poet ordained they should say, neither less nor more.

The early years were followed by the long period of the novels, in
which, we are prepared to admit, poetry was actually if not in intention
incidental. It is the grim truth that poetry cannot be written in
between times; and, though we have hardly any dates on which to rely, we
are willing to believe that few of Mr Hardy's characteristic poems were
written between the appearance of _Desperate Remedies_ and his farewell
to the activity of novel-writing with _The Well-Beloved_ (1897). But the
few dates which we have tell us that 'Thoughts of Phena,' the beautiful
poem beginning:--