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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE LACKING SENSE by THOMAS HARDY

Poet Analysis

First Line: O TIME, WHENCE COMES THE MOTHER'S MOODY LOOK AMID HER LABOURS
Last Line: FOR THOU ART OF HER CLAY.'
SCENE. - A sad-coloured landscape, Waddon Vale

I

'O TIME, whence comes the Mother's moody look amid her labours,
As of one who all unwittingly has wounded where she loves?
Why weaves she not her world-webs to according lutes and tabors,
With nevermore this too remorseful air upon her face,
As of angel fallen from grace?'

II

- 'Her look is but her story: construe not its symbols keenlv:
In her wonderworks yea surely has she wounded where she loves.
The sense of ills misdealt for blisses blanks the mien most queenly,
Self-smitings kill self-joys; and everywhere beneath the sun
Such deeds her hands have done.'

III

- 'And how explains thy Ancient Mind her crimes upon her creatures,
These fallings from her fair beginnings, woundings where she loves,
Into her would-be perfect motions, modes, effects, and features
Admitting cramps, black humours, wan decay, and baleful blights,
Distress into delights?'

IV

- 'Ah! knowest thou not her secret yet, her vainly veiled deficience,
Whence it comes that all unwittingly she wounds the lives she loves?
That sightless are those orbs of hers? - which bar to her omniscience
Brings those fearful unfulfilments, that red ravage
through her zones
Whereat all creation groans.

V

'She whispers it in each pathetic strenuous slow endeavour,
When in mothering she unwittingly sets wounds on what she loves;
Yet her primal doom pursues her, faultful, fatal is she ever;
Though so deft and nigh to vision is her facile finger-touch
That the seers marvel much.

VI

'Deal, then, her groping skill no scorn, no note of malediction;
Not long on thee will press the hand that hurts the lives it loves;
And while she plods dead-reckoning on, in darkness of affliction,
Assist her where thy creaturely dependence can or may,
For thou art of her clay.'



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