In 1868 on the other hand Swinburne - an Englishman of the finest type as is at once evident from his photograph - said specifically of the Prophetic Books "We shall not again pause to rebut the familiar cry, to the effect that he was mad and not accountable for the uttermost madness of error. It must be enough to reply here that he was by no means mad, in any sense that would authorize us in rejecting his own judgment of his own aims and powers on a plea which would be held insufficient in another man's case. Let all readers and all critics get rid of that notion for good - clear their minds of it utterly and with all haste; let them know and remember, having once been told it, that in these strangest of all written books there is purpose as well as power, meaning as well as mystery. Doubtless, nothing quite like them was ever pitched out headlong into the world as they were. The confusion, the clamour, the jar of words that half suffice and thoughts that half exist - all these and other more absolutely offensive qualities - audacity, monotony, bombast, obscure play of licence and tortuous growth of fancy - cannot quench or even wholly conceal the living purport and the imperishable beauty which are here latent."

We haven't had any Hardy for a little while so ...


In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'

Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.

Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass
Yet this will go onward the same
Though Dynasties pass.

Yonder a maid and her wight
Come whispering by:
War's annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die.

And, not quite Hardy but close-ish, here's something in Dorset dialect from the nineteenth century. It tells a heartbreaking story beautifully, if you have the patience to work out what's being said (it's admirably clear once you've tuned in to the dialect):


The turnèn stile, a-painted white,
do sheen by day an’ show by night.
Vor always there, as we did goo
to church, thik stile did let us drough,
wi’ spreadèn arms that wheeled to guide
us each in turn to t’other zide.
An’ vu’st ov all the train he took
my wife, wi’ winsome gait an’ look:
An’ then zent on my little maid,
a-skippèn onward, overjay’d
to reach ageän the pleäce o’ pride,
her comely mother’s left han’ zide.

An’ then, a-wheelèn roun’, he took
on me, ’ithin his third white nook.
An’ in the fourth, a sheäken wild,
he zent us on our giddy child.
But eesterday he guided slow
my downcast Jenny, vull o’ woe,
an’ then my little maid in black,
a-walkèn softly on her track.
An’ after he’d a-turned ageän
to let me goo along the leäne,
he had noo little bwoy to vill
his last white eärms, an’ they stood still.

From The Turnen Stile
William Barnes (1801-1886)

Barnes poem is very difficult for me. It is frustrating. I am trying to understand it.
At first I could not understand anything. Then I understood a few lines and I did not make any progress on the meaning.

It is about white door in church? The door let them go to the other side. I don't get it with the train. But I think his family died.
Can you tell me if I am close to the meaning.

Thank you don Basilio. I like to read more Wordsworth and Pope.

Barnes is using many words I don't  know. I was looking in the dictionary to find out some of the words. May be it is very sad poem. For some reason I think it is very sad. I have an image of a church where one is brought for baptism and then for the last mass through turning door.

It looks like he is standing in front of a church.

Thank you t-i-n. I don't know Barnes's biography. May be this poem is autobiographical.

I will look at poem again tomorrow.

This morning Barnes poem did not present much trouble. I read it and it was clear and beautiful.

Now we are back to our time with Don Paterson (born 1963).
I understand that he is grateful to the higher will that for bringing us here and sustaining us. May be poetry should not be completely understood, but sort of guessed.

Thank you George for the poem. It is one thing to just read it, and the other is to imagine deep and strong Scot's way of saying it.

That is on the High Street in Dorchester, and as I say when my father used to drive us from Devon up to Southampton in those days before the Dorchester by-pass we drove straight though Dorchester past the statue.  Dorchester High Street is a dead straight road which in those days was also the main West-East road.  I think Hardy is buried in a village just East of Dorchester.