The Soil (. . . 1850)
point of view of the uncultured Dorset rustic and to associate with him on terms of the greatest familiarity. In this respect he and Hardy were kindred spirits. His best creative work, the Poems of Rural Life, appeared in 1879, and drew forth an enthusiastic review from Hardy in the New Quarterly Magazine for October of that year—it was the only review that Hardy ever wrote. When Barnes died in 1886, Hardy wrote the eloquent obituary article in the Athenænum. The following poetic tribute can also be discovered in Hardy's Moments of Vision. It is called The Last Signal (Oct. 11, 1886)—A Memory of William Barnes:
Silently I footed by an uphill road
That led from my abode to a spot yew-boughed;
Yellowly the sun sloped down to westward,
And dark was the east with cloud.
Then, below the shadow of that livid sad east,
Where the light was least, and a gate stood wide,
Flashed back the fire of the sun that was facing it,
Like a brief blaze on that side.
Looking hard and harder I knew what it meant—
The sudden shine sent from the livid east scene;
It meant the west mirrored by the coffin of my friend there,
Turning to the road from his green,
To take his last journey forth—he who in his prime
Trudged so many attune from that gate athwart the land!
Thus a farewell to me he signalled on his grave-way,
As with a wave of his hand.
(Winterborne-Came Path)
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