ralph pite
Hardy congratulated George Gissing for attacking the bloodthirsty jingoism of such
poemsin a review of 4 November 1899.^18 His own rejoinder came via poems he
wrote in the course of that autumn and winter and published in newspapers and
periodicals: theDaily Chronicle,The Graphic,Literature,Westminster Gazette,The
Sphere,theCornhill.ThismediumofdisseminationwasadepartureforHardy,
certainly as a poet (only one of theWessex Poemshad been printed before it
appeared in the collection). His choice of outlet shows that he was making a decisive
attempt to speak to the nation (an endeavour continued by the mainstream features
ofPoems of the Past and the Presentwhen it appeared two years later). As he did so,
he began at once to voice reservations about the war and the poetry it had led to.
In the first of the poems, ‘Embarcation’, there are, among the soldiers setting
sail, ‘None dubious of the cause, none murmuring’; on the other hand, Hardy
points out that these battalions, which resemble Henry V’s army when he set out to
conquer France, will
argue in the selfsame bloody mode
Which this late age of thought, and pact, and code,
Still fails to mend.^19‘Departure’, a companion piece and (like Swinburne’s poems) another sonnet, is
more outspoken:
When shall the saner softer polities
Whereof we dream, have sway in each proud land
And patriotism, grown Godlike, scorn to stand
Bondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas?^20Hardy reserved ‘Departure’ for his next collection two years later; the poem he
published at the time made the more cautious remark, ‘Still fails to mend’, which can
be taken as more resigned than critical. Nonetheless, the contrast with Swinburne’s
tone is glaring, while the formal similarity and the moments of shared vocabulary
(‘scorn’, for instance) encourage comparison. Likewise, the emphasis in Hardy’s
poem on speech (‘argue’ in ‘Embarcation’, and ‘the seeming words that ask and
ask again’ of the soldiers in ‘Departure’) counters Swinburne’s repeated insistence
that the time for talking was over (his ‘loathing more intense than speaks disgust’
echoes his ‘Speech and song / Lack utterance now for loathing’ in ‘The Transvaal’).
All these aspects suggest a conscious riposte on Hardy’s part to the pro-war writing
he was surrounded by.
With the disagreement comes a shift of focus from the soldiers to those they
leave behind. ‘Embarcation’ ends with the ‘Wives, sisters, parents’ who wave and
smile, ‘As if they knew not that they weep the while’; ‘Departure’ watches the ships
(^18) Hardy to George Gissing, 5 Nov. 1899, inCollected Letters, ii:1893–1901, ed. Richard Little
Purdy and Michael Millgate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980), 235.
(^19) Hardy, ‘Embarcation’, inComplete Poems, 86. (^20) Hardy, ‘Departure’, ibid. 87.