Than life among men.

Anew I found nought to set eyes on,
When, lifting its hand,
It uncloaked a star,
Uncloaked it from fog-damps afar,
And showed its beams burning from pole to horizon
As bright as a brand.

And so, the rough highway forgetting,
I pace hill and dale,
Regarding the sky,
Regarding the vision on high,
And thus re-illumed have no humour for letting
My pilgrimage fail.

No one of course can judge of another's happiness; but it is difficult
to imagine any man on earth who has had a happier life than Mr. Hardy.
He has had his own genius for company all his days; he has been
successful in literary art beyond the wildest dreams of his youth; his
acute perception has made the beauty of nature a million times more
beautiful to him than to most of the children of men; his eye is not
dim, nor his natural force abated. He has that which should accompany
old age--honour, love, obedience, troops of friends.

The last poem in _Moments of Vision_ blesses rather than curses
life.

AFTERWARDS