SOURCE: Dauner, Louise. “Thomas Hardy, Yet and Again.” Modern Age 42, no. 4 (fall 2000): 358-71.

In the following essay, Dauner discusses Hardy's poetry, with emphasis on the poet's capacity for lyrical expression of universal emotions.

Five minutes before he died, Thomas Hardy posed his last question to the universe. “What is this?” He had been asking it for most of his 88 years. It epitomizes his lifelong intellectual and spiritual efforts to understand “Life with the sad seared face.”¹ The question, with its many variations, like a revolving mirror trained on the human predicament, is treated in his many prose works (14 novels, numerous short stories, essays, and sketches), in his over 800 short lyrics, and in the massive three-part verse drama, The Dynasts. The “answers” that Hardy worked out did not make him happy. Indeed, his naturalism, with its bleak philosophy, exposed him to negative, often harsh criticism until nearly the end...