[Hardy-l] Hardy and the Lunar Eclipse

[Bill Morgan]

Dear Hardy-l Readers,

	If you step outside tonight to see the predicted total eclipse of
the moon, you might want to take Hardy's early sonnet, "At a Lunar Eclipse,"
along with you as a kind of commentary on the event: 

	At a Lunar Eclipse

Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea,
Now steals along upon the Moon's meek shine
In even monochrome and curving line
Of imperturbable serenity.  

How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry
With the torn troubled form I know as thine,
That profile, placid as a brow divine,
With continents of moil and misery?

And can immense mortality but throw
So small a shade, and Heaven's high human scheme
Be hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies?

Is such the stellar gauge of earthly show,
Nation at war with nation, brains that teem,
Heroes, and women fairer than the skies?

				            186_

	Bailey (The Poetry of Thomas Hardy: A Handbook and Commentary
[Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1970], p. 142) suggests that the eclipse Hardy
witnessed and responded to occurred almost 148 years ago on July 18, 1860.

Cheers,

Bill Morgan