In earliest years--why I know not-- I viewed it askance; Conditions of doubt, Conditions that slowly leaked out, May haply have bent me to stand and to show not Much zest for its dance. With symphonies soft and sweet colour It courted me then, Till evasions seemed wrong, Till evasions gave in to its song, And I warmed, till living aloofly loomed duller Than life among men. Anew I found nought to set eyes on, When, lifting its hand, It uncloaked a star, Uncloaked it from fog-damps afar, And showed its beams burning from pole to horizon As bright as a brand. And so, the rough highway forgetting, I pace hill and dale, Regarding the sky, Regarding the vision on high, And thus re-illumed have no humour for letting My pilgrimage fail. No one of course can judge of another's happiness; but it is difficult to imagine any man on earth who has had a happier life than Mr. Hardy. He has had his own genius for company all his days; he has been successful in literary art beyond the wildest dreams of his youth; his acute perception has made the beauty of nature a million times more beautiful to him than to most of the children of men; his eye is not dim, nor his natural force abated. He has that which should accompany old age--honour, love, obedience, troops of friends. The last poem in _Moments of Vision_ blesses rather than curses life. AFTERWARDS When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings, Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the people say "He was a man who used to notice such things"? If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid's soundless blink, The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, will a gazer think, "To him this must have been a familiar sight"? If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm, When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn, Will they say, "He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm, But he could do little for them; and now he is gone"? If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door, Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees, Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more, "He was one who had an eye for such mysteries"? And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom, And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings, Till they rise again, as they were a new bell's boom, "He hears it not now, but he used to notice such things"?