Explain Thomas Hardy's "Hap."

The first 8 lines of the poem show that if there were some all powerful vengeful god who took defeating love as a victory and gave him ecstasy, then the reader would find contentment in that he was suffering a fate unmerited. He would find solace in the fact that there was nothing he could do. He would take pride in himself and die an honorable death, because he knows that it is an undeserving one.

The final 6 lines; however, take a turn. The words, “But not so,” let the reader know that what is stated in the first two stanzas is not what the subject in the poem believes to be true. The poet asks ‘why does joy end?’ and ‘why does hope wither?’ The author then tells us that, “Crass Casualty. . . And dicing Time,” are the deciders in the world. “Crass Casualty,” means insensible chance, and, “. . . dicing Time,” means that the poet believes things do not happen for a reason, and actions that occur in the world just run their course randomly as if they were controlled by the random chance of rolling a die.

The author says that these two elements, which are capitalized symbolizing that the poet wants them to be seen as powerful deities in the poem, are pit against people. The poet says, “Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain.” Sun and rain here symbolize natural happiness and optimism that can be found in the world. He infers that chance or what the world makes you a casualty of will get in the way of natural beautiful things, thus making them difficult to appreciate.  He says that, “. . . dicing Time,” inhibits the gladness that can be found in that sun and rain. The course of events that occur randomly throughout a person’s life will cause a person to take their eyes off of what could put happiness and optimism in their lives. Time wears a person out.

“These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown/ Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.” Hardy combines, “Time,” and, “Casualty,” the two ‘gods’ in the poem into a category. A doomster is a person who reads off a judges sentence to a prisoner, or predicts disaster in the future. They are the bearer of the bad news. This pessimistic view of his gods show us that he expects to be dealt  a bad hand in life and wallow in pity afterwards. Purblind means blind from birth. In conjunction with the adjectives, crass and dicing, this means the subject in the poem believes that his gods do not know or care about the outcome of their random actions. The subject in the poem states that the doomsters, casualty and time, have been as willing to throw happiness as pain into his life. The emphasis on the word, “pain,” as the last word of the poem lead us to believe the subject is not happy with his gods of time and casualty, but the rest of the poem indicates that he is aware that there is nothing that can be done when dealing with a god but to accept what they choose, whether that choice was made out of anger or by rolling the dice.