Page:Life of Thomas Hardy - Brennecke.pdf/153



Love is here considered as an objective force rather than a subjective emotion—as a universal phenomenon subject to certain universal laws rather than as an individual passion. The stanza is in striking harmony with one of Schopenhauer's fundamental ideas, that of the absolute subordination of the individual to the species, and with his conception of love as the mysterious working of the Immanent Will bent upon the preservation of the race. This viewpoint has little in common with the romantic or so-called "poetic" notions prevalent at the time. The young poet is colder because he sees himself no longer as isolated from the forces which drive on the external world, but as a real part of them. Likewise, in the two concluding stanzas, the usual sentimental vows of eternal fidelity give place to the logical but more disagreeable conclusions of "heartless" disillusion: