Hap Response

From the title we know that the poem will be about one’s fate or one’s luck as this is the definition of hap. In the first stanza we learn that our conclusion about the poem’s content is correct. Hardy is trying to make sense of why bad things always happen to him. He says that he would understand if there was some god who obtained happiness from his discontent. At the very beginning of the second stanza we are alerted of a shift by the word “Then”. In this stanza Hardy says that if this was the case he would bear through it, and eventually die. But his unhappiness had a cause, something much more powerful than he and there is nothing he could do about it, but it wasn’t just mere chance. The third paragraph also starts with a shift; “But not so”. This shows that the other two stanza’s are not true. He then continues to talk about why bad things continuously happen to him and his lifelong pilgrimage has turned to pain. The poem is written a sonnet with two quatrains and then a sestet with the rhyming scheme ABAB, CDCD, EFEFFE. The rhyming scheme has significance in the meaning of the poem as well as the last two lines are opposite the rest of the poem’s rhyme scheme. This suggests that his pilgrimage is abnormal and excessively painful compared to others.