One feels inclined to say that Hardy’s prose is poetry and his poetry prose. The present volume reveals little of the genuine lyric gift, but the singing while labored is not without force and individual color. Some of the ballads possess considerable spirit, and where character is outlined it cuts the consciousness with Hardy’s well-known skill of vivid portraiture; as for instance, “The Dance at the Phœnix,” describing the passion of an aged dame for the pleasures of her youth how she steals forth from the bed of her good man to foot it gaily at the inn and how on her return at morn she dies from over-exertion; “Her Death and After” where the lover of a dead woman sacrifices her fair fame for the sake of rescuing her child from the cruelties of a stepmother; and “The Burghers,” a tale of guilty lovers, and a husband’s unique conduct. In these, as in other poems of the kind, one can not but feel that Hardy would have put the matter so much better in prose; which, indeed, is what in some cases he has done. Some of the contemplative verse has a quaintness of expression which suggests the sonnets of Shakespeare; the lines are frequently lame, but every now and then there is a really virile phrase. In true old English style are some of the lyrics, of which “The Stranger’s Song” is perhaps the most successful: O! my trade, it is the rarest one, Simple shepherds all— My trade is a sight to see; For my customers I tie, and take ’em up on high, And waft ’em to a far countree! My tools are but common ones, Simple shepherds all— My tools are no sight to see; A little hempen string, and a post whereon to swing, Are implements enough for me! To-morrow is my working day, Simple shepherds all— For the farmer’s sheep is slain, and the lad who did it ta’en, And on his soul may God ha’ mercy! That love proves itself at best a pathetic compromise is plainly gleaned from the pages of the poems. There is sounded no joyous though momentary content in heart-possession: nothing there we find but a record of youth, its dreams darkened and blighted by the false promises of time; bitter retrospect of age beholding a heavy philosophy scrawling on all fair things of life and faith the epitaph of fragility and decay. The earth-bound character of the poet’s thought is well illustrated in the following lines: If but some vengeful god would call to me From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing, Know that thy sorrow is my ecstacy, That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!” Then would I bear, and clench myself and die, Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited; Half-eased, too, that a Powerfuller than I Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.