Refutation in verse

Thomas Hardy’s Hap is also an argument in verse, although it is not a syllogism but a simple modus ponens:

If but some vengeful god would call to me
   From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
   That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!”

Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
   Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
   Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain,
   And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
—Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
   And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan. . . .
   These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

Here the argument is negative—a refutation of a popular inference—but still a valid argument. If P (= God creates suffering) then Q (= the poet will endure it). But ~P (= God does not create suffering). Instead of stating the conclusion, however (therefore, ~Q [= suffering is not to be endured]), Hardy extends the argument by correcting ~P. The true P is “purblind Doomsters,” not God, are the source of suffering.

The correction of ~P gives Hardy four lines to write.

Update: In light of Brandon Watson’s friendly low-marking of my own logic, it strikes me that Hap takes the following logical form:

If P1 then Q
But ~P1
Rather, P2

Where P1 is “some vengeful god” and P2 is the “purblind Doomsters.”

The conclusion is different, though, in this different light. If the cause of suffering is accidence then the suffering itself is accidental: it could as readily have been bliss. It’s not that suffering is not to be endured. (Watson is right. That conclusion is invalid.) Rather, suffering can be endured by understanding that it is entirely a matter of chance.

An alternative modus ponens is implied, but not fully worked out.