HARDY FORUM ARCHIVE H01104 12/24/01 "SEASONAL MESSAGES" 
=======================================================

Date: Mon, 24 Dec 2001 16:49:08 -0800
From: Betty Cortus <hardycor@owl.csusm.edu>
Subject: Hoping it might be so.
s:   

To those Hardy lovers who share my questionings, a poem for the season.
Wishing peace and Happiness to all of you.
Betty

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
"Now they are all on their knees,"
An elder said as we sat in a flock
By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there.
To doubt that they were kneeling then,

So fair a fancy few would weave
In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
"Come; see the oxen kneel

"In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
Our childhood used to know,"
I should go with him in the gloom,
Hoping it might be so.

==========

Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2001 14:49:40 -0800
From: Betty Cortus <hardycor@owl.csusm.edu>
Subject: New Year's Greetings
 

Here are the last two stanzas of the poem   "Zitten Out the Wold Year"  by
Hardy's good friend, Dorset dialect poet William Barnes.
Wishing you all health, peace, and prosperity for the New Year, and many
thanks for your participation in the Forum during 2001.
Betty Cortus

The wold clock's han' do softly steal
Up roun' the year's last hour so's.
Zoo let the han'-bells ring a peal,
Lik' them a-hung in tow'r so's.
Here, here be two voor Tom, an' two
Vor Fanny, an' a peair vor you;
We'll meake em swing,
An' meake em ring,
The merry new year in so's.

Tom, mind your time there; you be wrong.
Come, let your bells all sound, so's:
A little clwoser, Poll: ding, dong!
There, now 'tis right all round so's.
The clock's a-striken twelve, d'ye hear?
'Tis gone, 'tis gone!--
Goo on, goo on,
An' ring the new woone in, so's.

==========

From: "JULIAN WHIPPLE" <JWWHIPPLE1@mediaone.net>
Subject: Re: New Year's Greetings
Date: Mon, 31 Dec 2001 18:14:28 -0500
 

Dear Betty and John,

    Thanks so much!  I needed the lift.  All best wishes for 2002.  I look
forward to seeing you at the Conference.

Julian

==========

Date: Tue, 01 Jan 2002 09:46:23 -0500
From: Rosemarie Morgan <rosemarie.morgan@yale.edu>
Subject: Re: New Year's Greetings

To add to Betty's Happy-New-Year's airing of  Barnes' lines, and to celebrate 

"The merry new year in so's," 

here's what Hardy had from his good friend and admirer, Sir Edmund Gosse,
on New Year's Day, 1889. Gosse had written to thank Hardy for "A Tragedy of
Two Ambitions" -- "which he thought one of the most thrilling and most
complete stories Hardy had written."  "I am truly happy," Gosse continues,
" -- being an old faded leaf and disembowelled bloater and wet rag myself--
to find your genius ever so fresh and springing" (Life, 215).

Happy New Year -- "faded...bloaters" and all!

Rosemarie

==========