Critical Post: "Hap" Meaning

In Hardy’s poem, “Hap,” I think that the meaning is mostly centered on the speaker’s frustration with “god” and perhaps religion in general.  He is saying, “Why give me any happiness at all if it’s just going to be eclipsed by sadness?”  I think he is saying that it would be better to have absolute sadness forever, because at least then he could never know any different, and the sadness wouldn’t seem so heartbreaking compared to those rare joys.  I think Hardy wishes that he could believe “god” was responsible for everything that happens, but he has a hard time justifying that to himself, since it’s difficult for him to believe that any being could be so cruel as to repeatedly destroy his joys.

I think this is a really relatable poem, because a lot of people have a period where they wrestle with their upbringing and their belief in “god”.  It’s a common struggle for people to feel slighted by their deity and to fall out of faith.  Because it is very hard to accept that a single being could be responsible for such joys and still such overwhelming sorrows.

This poem, in my opinion, is similar to Hardy’s poem “I Look into My Glass” because they both discuss anger at an outside force, or maybe just a sort of frustration.  “I Look into My Glass” deals with a frustration at aging, at time passing and at the futility of life.  It is a similar sort of pessimism to “Hap,” I think, which deals with anger and frustration at god and at fate.