The Soil (. . . 1850)
And shuts it, and thinks he is seen no more.
And a pupil of his in the Bible class
Who adores him as one without gloss or guile,
Sees her idol stand with a satisfied smile
And re-enact at the vestry glass
Each pulpit gesture in deft dumb-show
That had moved the congregation so.
And from first to last the poet exercised no patience with the theology taught by the wearers of holy orders. In his enthusiasm for the countryman Hardy has often been compared with Wordsworth, but that his understanding of the native heart and mind was infinitely superior to that of the great optimistic nature-poet has been shown rather conclusively by the great esteem and friendliness that the farm and working people of his own district have always felt for him. According to "John O'London," he "sees a peasant culture from his own art, and the Wessex villagers greet him as their Prospero, whose staff must one day be broken and buried, but whose book will never be drowned." It will be remembered that the country folk of the Lake district literally ran before the approach of Wordsworth (meditative, benevolent, wordy and moral sage that he was), who, for all his sympathy, seems to have lacked a real understanding of the man of the soil. His philosophy of the rustic heart was one drawn largely out of books and easy-chair meditation rather than from the actual experience with material contact with his clouted subjects. Hardy's sym-
[59]
