Thomas Hardy: "The Subalterns" and "Hap"

Who's in charge here?


The Subalterns

                                I
"Poor wanderer," said the leaden sky,
      "I fain would lighten thee,
But there are laws in force on high
       Which say it must not be."

                               II
--"I would not freeze thee, shorn one," cried
      The North, "knew I but how
To warm my breath, to slack my stride;
       But I am ruled as thou."

                               III
--"To-morrow I attack thee, wight,"
      Said Sickness.  "Yet I swear
I bear thy little ark no spite,
        But am bid enter there."

                               IV
--"Come hither, Son," I heard Death say:
       "I did not will a grave
Should end thy pilgrimage to-day,
         But I, too, am a slave!"

                                V
We smiled upon each other then,
       And life to me had less
Of that fell look it wore ere when
        They owned their passiveness.

-- Thomas Hardy --
from The Works of Thomas Hardy


I had to think of another, later poem by Hardy, "Hap"  in which he seems to express the same feeling but comes to a different conclusion as to the real situation.


======================================
                             Hap

If but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
The 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.


But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan...
These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.


From a previous blog post, I wrote the following:

Hardy begins by saying that he could bear his sufferings if they were caused by a vengeful god, similar, I suppose, to those frequently preached about on TV or in various pulpits. He could endure and even die more easily, strengthened by his anger over his unjust pains and miseries, especially if all was caused by something more powerful than he.

However, Hardy concludes otherwise--"But not so"--that there is no vengeful god behind it all, for what happens is the result of "Crass Casuality" and "dicing Time," that it all happens by chance. There is no grand design or a plan behind it all, for "These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown/Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain."

===================================================

In "Hap,"  an earlier poem,  he states that he would find it more endurable if he thought a more powerful being had caused those ills upon us, but he concludes 
that

"These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
  Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain."


In other words, pure chance determines that pain and happiness come randomly and not by a plan of some higher power.  Chance rules the universe.



In "The Subalterns," a later poem,  he discovers that, while all the things that bedevil our existence down here come at us not of their own wish,  they are commanded by something far more powerful than they are.  Death insists they are "slaves."  The narrator smiles when he hears this, for they are commanded by a higher power.  "Subalterns" are those who simply follow orders, therefore, there must be something issuing those orders.  Consequently, something must have a plan.
On the other hand, just to confuse the situation a bit, I will place Robert Frost's little poem, "Design" on the table for consideration.


                           Design

I found a dimpled spider, fat and white,
On a white heal-all, holding up a moth
Like a white piece of rigid satin cloth--
Assorted characters of death and blight
Mixed ready to begin the morning right,
Like the ingredients of a witches' broth--
A snow-drop spider, a flower like a froth,
And dead wings carried like a paper kite.

What had that flower to do with being white,
The wayside blue and innocent heal-all?
What brought the kindred spider to that height,
Then steered the white moth thither in the night?
What but design of darkness to appall?--
If design govern in a thing so small.

--  Robert Frost --


Does Robert Frost agree with Hardy, and, if so, with which Hardy?  Is Chance or Design in charge here?