Hap

by Thomas Hardy

Poem

Genres: Poetry, Classics, British Literature

Unknown Binding

First published January 1, 1866

About the author

Thomas Hardy, OM, was an English author of the naturalist movement, although in several poems he displays elements of the previous romantic and enlightenment periods of literature, such as his fascination with the supernatural. He regarded himself primarily as a poet and composed novels mainly for financial gain.

The bulk of his work, set mainly in the semi-fictional land of Wessex, delineates characters struggling against their passions and circumstances. Hardy's poetry, first published in his 50s, has come to be as well regarded as his novels, especially after The Movement of the 1950s and 1960s.

The term cliffhanger is considered to have originated with Thomas Hardy's serial novel A Pair of Blue Eyes in 1873. In the novel, Hardy chose to leave one of his protagonists, Knight, literally hanging off a cliff staring into the stony eyes of a trilobite embedded in the rock that has been dead for millions of years. This became the archetypal — and literal — cliff-hanger of Victorian prose.

Excerpted from Wikipedia.

Reviews

[John Yelverton · Rating 1 out of 5]

Perhaps some research should be done into whether or not Thomas Hardy was the first goth poet, because this one is certainly bleak enough to be, and sounds like the trope repeated by their ilk in coffee shops around the country.

[Sue · Rating 1 out of 5]

Thomas knows that suffering is not because God enjoys seeing him suffer, but by chance (hap). The language is difficult to understand, especially in the last verse.

[Preetam Chatterjee · Rating 5 out of 5]

The unconstructiveness, gloom and cynicism in this petite poem is not as profound or as completely established as it later became in Hardy's novels. Here Hardy does not resolutely announce that the gods above are antagonistic to human beings and are continuously handling human beings as figurines or as knick-knacks. But even here Hardy does envisage the likelihood of there being some malevolent or antagonistic god feeding his mischievousness by causing human beings to suffer or at least by drawing gratification from the display of human desolation which that god may not himself have caused.

Yet here the poet does not unswervingly attribute human misery to the malice of any god or any President of the Immortals.

Here the poet holds Casualty and Time responsible for human sorrow. And, as Casualty and Time are dim-sighted or partially unsighted, human beings suffer troubles and calamities just by chance. If chance goes in a man's favour, his life can become happy.

The word "hap" means happening or, to be more exact, a chance-happening.

The poet here says that he would bear the disasters of his life without being peevish or complaining if some god were to tell him that his adversities are a source of liking to that god and, further, that his discontent in love gives much consummation to that god.

In that case the poet would toughen himself against his bad luck because of a realization that they had been pre-ordained by some great power in this universe. But he hears no such voice from any god and, therefore, regards his hardships as simply a matter of chance.

However, he cannot help thinking that, if misfortunes could befall him just by chance, then good fortune could also have befalien him by chance.

Hap is one of Hardy's earliest poems. It was written in 1866 when Hardy had just started his literary career. It was much later in his life that Hardy became a novelist; and it was as a novelist that he became really famous.

But he had begun his literary life with verse, and Hap is an example of his earliest trials with poetry. It is stimulating to find that even in the earliest phase of his life Hardy was a naysayer.

He shows himself as a cynic not only in the novels which he later wrote but even in his earliest poetical writings.

[Max Allen · Rating 3 out of 5]

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,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!”

Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in 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.

[Phil Syphe · Rating 2 out of 5]

I tend to read poetry if I get behind on my Goodreads Reading Challenge, otherwise I avoid it.

I opted for this one because I'm a fan of Thomas Hardy's prose works.

Can't say I'm a fan of this Hardy poem, though. I like that it's short (my concentration drifts with long poems), but the content neither moves nor impresses me.

[Emily · Rating 4 out of 5]

This poem showcases Hardy's struggle with believing in a God.

"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,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!'"

[عهود المخيني · Rating 3 out of 5]

Actually, Hardy repeats himself literally in each work of him!
The rate goes for the way he translates himself in poetry.

[Tiffany · Rating 2 out of 5]

I dont know... it was alright.