Hap
By Thomas Hardy
If but some vengeful god would call
to me
From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou
suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love's loss is my hate's
profiting!”
Then would I bear it, clench
myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire
unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller
than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I
shed.
But not so. How
arrives it joy lies slain,
And why unblooms the best hope ever
sown?
—Crass Casualty obstructs the sun
and rain,
And dicing Time for gladness casts
a moan. . . .
These purblind Doomsters had as
readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as
pain.
This was one of the first poems I read in college, and one line was booming throughout my mind this morning: "dicing Time for gladness casts a moan." As I struggled trying to accomplish my most basic and necessary tasks for the day, anything that could go wrong did go wrong, and I couldn't help wondering everytime if Nature was really neutral, couldn't it just as easily turned up as heads as tails? Then I think, how do you know this wasn't the better outcome? What if this was the Mercy?
“Sometimes,” he said, “life does seem to be unfair. Do you know the story of Elijah and the Rabbi Jachanan?”
“No,” said the Wart.
He sat down resignedly upon the most comfortable part of the floor, perceiving that he was in for something like the parable of the looking-glass.
“This rabbi,” said Merlin, “went on a journey with the prophet Elijah. They walked all day, and at nightfall they came to the humble cottage of a poor man, whose only treasure was a cow. The poor man ran out of his cottage, and his wife ran too, to welcome the strangers for the night and to offer them all the simple hospitality which they were able to give in straitened circumstances. Elijah and the Rabbi were entertained with plenty of the cow’s milk, sustained by home-made bread and butter, and they were put to sleep in the bed while their kindly hosts lay down before the kitchen fire. But in the morning the poor man’s cow was dead.”
“Go on.”
“They walked all the next day, and came that evening to the house of a very wealthy merchant, whose hospitality they craved. The merchant was cold and proud and rich, and all that he would do for the prophet and his companion was to lodge them in a cowshed and feed them on bread and butter. In the morning, however, Elijah thanked him very much for what he had done, and sent for a mason to repair one of his walls, which happened to be falling down, in return for his kindness.
“The Rabbi Jachanan, unable to keep silence any longer, begged the holy man to explain the meaning of his dealings with human beings.
“‘In regard to the poor man who received us so hospitably,’ replied the prophet, ‘it was decreed that his wife was to die that night, but in reward for his goodness God took the cow instead of the wife. I repaired the wall of the rich miser because a chest of gold was concealed near the place, and if the miser had repaired the wall himself he would have discovered the treasure. Say not therefore to the Lord: What doest Thou? But say in thy heart: Must not the Lord of all the earth do right?’”
- The Sword in the Stone, T. H. White
As a sidenote, Mike and I called a little clique that formed in the class the Purblind Doomsters, who always seemed to object to anything for no reason at all.
