Discovering Poetry: Thomas Hardy’s religion

‘A Drizzling Easter Morning’

And he is risen? Well, be it so. . . .

And still the pensive lands complain,
And dead men wait as long ago,
As if, much doubting, they would know
What they are ransomed from, before
They pass again their sheltering door.

I stand amid them in the rain,

While blusters vex the yew and vane;
And on the road the weary wain
Plods forward, laden heavily;
And toilers with their aches are fain
For endless rest—though risen is he.

Historically, most poems about Easter have been written by Christians. They are normally celebrations of faith. Thomas Hardy, however, was very self-consciously not a believer. But people’s need to understand the world in broadly religious terms is an enduring theme of his novels and poetry. They seem driven by an unshakable feeling that the world should make sense – that the good should live happily and the bad unhappily. That the universe obstinately refuses to organise itself like that becomes a source of constant bafflement and is the root of his tragic vision.