Page:Life of Thomas Hardy - Brennecke.pdf/242

 coupled with, soldierly fatalism and soldierly melancholy, breathes through the lines of The Colonel's Soliloquy. The many splendid dramatic possibilities were not overlooked by any means; witness The Going of the Battery and Song of the Soldiers' Wives and Sweethearts, which make their readers live through the anguish of parting and the joy of meeting. The irony of events is here represented by the characteristic A Wife in London, in which the poor unfortunate receives on one day a cablegram announcing the death of her husband, and on the next a letter from him, full of rosy hopes and plans for the future.

To the realization of the essentially tragic quality of events as they affect individuals he added the disillusive conclusions about war that force themselves upon the unimpassioned thinker when the superficial excitement induced by the "herd instinct" has worn off. On Christmas-eve, in 1899, the poet wondered at the inconsistency of tacking "Anno Domini" to the years that were as yet unilluminated by that spirit of peace for which Christ died; and the souls of the slain, in another poem written at the same time, rushing homeward like the Pentecost-Wind, discover to their dismay that they are remembered for their homely and commonplace characteristics rather than for their words and deeds of military prowess. Hardy already longed for the time when saner, softer policies would prevail, and patriotism scorn to stand "bond-slave to realms, but circle earth and seas," in the universal brotherhood of man. How far was this spirit of lovingkindness removed from the imperialistic bluster of Kipling!—who, with all his genius, never once