The Life of Thomas Hardy
chance, so often stressed by Hardy, was never developed by his forerunner.
Barnes's Wife A-Lost is a simple and touching lament, with an expression of the Christian's simple faith at the end. Angels by the Door has a slight touch of that fatalism which Hardy has always been ready to recognize as instinctive to the countryman's heart. Angels and days—Hardy's Chance and Time—bring good and evil in turn, says the poet, but there is no bitterness, but comfort rather, in the reflection:
Or even end—my Mearianne.
The very tragic theme of the seduced and forsaken woman is handled in The Weepen Lady. Common enough in Hardy, this motif is unusual in Barnes, who presents the poor unfortunate as cast out by her father; but, ever faithful to her child, her spirit will not forsake her old home. The conclusion is not Hardyan:
Be they that can but live in love,
An' vind a pleace o' rest above
Unlik' the weepen leady.
Another interesting and unusual lyric is The Love-Child, an expression of commiseration with the sad lot of an illegitimate child—again a fairly frequent theme with Hardy, but a very rare outburst for Barnes. He has perhaps given it even a more outspokenly passionate treatment than it might have received at Hardy's hands, especially in the glowing apostrophes of the final stanza:
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