Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)
Page 723
That did Life hang on choosing — Yea or Nay -
They had not scorned it with such penalty,
And nothingness implored of Destiny?
And yet behind the horizon smile serene
The down, the cornland, and the stretching green -
Space — the child’s heaven: scenes which at least ensure
Some palliative for ill they cannot cure.
Dear friends — now moved by this poor show of ours
To make your own long joy in buds and bowers
For one brief while the joy of infant eyes,
Changing their urban murk to paradise -
You have our thanks! — may your reward include
More than our thanks, far more: their gratitude.
I LOOK INTO MY GLASS
I look into my glass,
And view my wasting skin,
And say, “Would God it came to pass
My heart had shrunk as thin!”
For then, I, undistrest
By hearts grown cold to me,
Could lonely wait my endless rest
With equanimity.
But Time, to make me grieve;
Part steals, lets part abide;
And shakes this fragile frame at eve
With throbbings of noontide.
POEMS OF THE PAST AND THE PRESENT
CONTENTS
V.R. 1819-1901 A REVERIE
EMBARCATION
DEPARTURE
THE COLONEL’S SOLILOQUY
THE GOING OF THE BATTERY
AT THE WAR OFFICE, LONDON
A CHRISTMAS GHOST-STORY
THE DEAD DRUMMER
A WIFE IN LONDON
THE SOULS OF THE SLAIN
SONG OF THE SOLDIERS’ WIVES
THE SICK GOD
GENOA AND THE MEDITERRANEAN
SHELLEY’S SKYLARK
IN THE OLD THEATRE, FIESOLE
ROME: ON THE PALATINE
ROME: BUILDING A NEW STREET IN THE ANCIENT QUARTER
ROME THE VATICAN — SALA DELLE MUSE (1887)
ROME AT THE PYRAMID OF CESTIUS
LAUSANNE
ZERMATT
THE BRIDGE OF LODI
ON AN INVITATION TO THE UNITED STATES
THE MOTHER MOURNS
I SAID TO LOVE
A COMMONPLACE DAY
AT A LUNAR ECLIPSE
THE LACKING SENSE
TO LIFE
DOOM AND SHE
THE PROBLEM
THE SUBALTERNS
THE SLEEP-WORKER
THE BULLFINCHES
GOD-FORGOTTEN
THE BEDRIDDEN PEASANT TO AN UNKNOWING GOD
BY THE EARTH’S CORPSE
MUTE OPINION
TO AN UNBORN PAUPER CHILD
TO FLOWERS FROM ITALY IN WINTER
ON A FINE MORNING
TO LIZBIE BROWNE
SONG OF HOPE
THE WELL-BELOVED
HER REPROACH
THE INCONSISTENT
A BROKEN APPOINTMENT
BETWEEN US NOW
HOW GREAT MY GRIEF (TRIOLET)
I NEED NOT GO
THE COQUETTE, AND AFTER (TRIOLETS)
A SPOT
LONG PLIGHTED
THE WIDOW
AT A HASTY WEDDING (TRIOLET)
THE DREAM-FOLLOWER
HIS IMMORTALITY
THE TO-BE-FORGOTTEN
WIVES IN THE SERE
THE SUPERSEDED
AN AUGUST MIDNIGHT
THE CAGED THRUSH FREED AND HOME AGAIN (VILLANELLE)
BIRDS AT WINTER NIGHTFALL (TRIOLET)
THE PUZZLED GAME-BIRDS (TRIOLET)
WINTER IN DURNOVER FIELD
THE LAST CHRYSANTHEMUM
THE DARKLING THRUSH
THE COMET AT YALBURY OR YELL’HAM
MAD JUDY
A WASTED ILLNESS
A MAN (IN MEMORY OF H. OF M.)
THE DAME OF ATHELHALL
THE SEASONS OF HER YEAR
THE MILKMAID
THE LEVELLED CHURCHYARD
THE RUINED MAID
THE RESPECTABLE BURGHER ON “THE HIGHER CRITICISM”
ARCHITECTURAL MASKS
THE TENANT-FOR-LIFE
THE KING’S EXPERIMENT
THE TREE AN OLD MAN’S STORY
HER LATE HUSBAND (KING’S-HINTOCK, 182-.)
THE SELF-UNSEEING
THE CHURCH-BUILDER
THE LOST PYX A MEDIAEVAL LEGEND
TESS’S LAMENT
THE SUPPLANTER A TALE
SAPPHIC FRAGMENT
AFTER SCHILLER
SONG FROM HEINE
FROM VICTOR HUGO
CARDINAL BEMBO’S EPITAPH ON RAPHAEL
I HAVE LIVED WITH SHADES
MEMORY AND I
GREEK TITLE
V.R. 1819-1901 A REVERIE
Moments the mightiest pass uncalendared,
And when the Absolute
In backward Time outgave the deedful word
Whereby all life is stirred:
“Let one be born and throned whose mould shall constitute
The norm of every royal-reckoned attribute,”
No mortal knew or heard.
But in due days the purposed Life outshone -
Serene, sagacious, free;
— Her waxing seasons bloomed with deeds well done,
And the world’s heart was won . . .
Yet may the deed of hers most bright in eyes to be
Lie hid from ours — as in the All-One’s thought lay she -
Till ripening years have run.
SUNDAY NIGHT, 27th January 1901.
EMBARCATION
(Southampton Docks: October, 1899)
Here, where Vespasian’s legions struck the sands,
And Cerdic with his Saxons entered in,
And Henry’s army leapt afloat to win
Convincing triumphs over neighbour lands,
Vaster battalions press for further strands,
To argue in the self-same bloody mode
Which this late age of thought, and pact, and code,
Still fails to mend. — Now deckward tramp the bands,
Yellow as autumn leaves, alive as spring;
And as each host draws out upon the sea
Beyond which lies the tragical To-be,
None dubious of the cause, none murmuring,
Wives, sisters, parents, wave white hands and smile,
As if they knew not that they weep the while.
DEPARTURE
(Southampton Docks: October, 1899)
While the far farewell music thins and fails,
And the broad bottoms rip the bearing brine -
All smalling slowly to the gray sea line -
And each significant red smoke-shaft pales,
Keen sense of severance everywhere prevails,
Which shapes the late long tramp of mounting men
To seeming words that ask and ask again:
“How long, O striving Teutons, Slavs, and Gaels
Must your wroth reasonings trade on lives like these,
That are as puppets in a playing hand? -
When shall the saner softer polities
Whereof we dream, have play in each proud land,
And patriotism, grown Godlike, scorn to stand
Bondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas?”
THE COLONEL’S SOLILOQUY
(Southampton Docks: October, 1899)
“The quay recedes. Hurrah! Ahead we go! . . .
It’s true I’ve been accustomed now to home,
And joints get rusty, and one’s limbs may grow
More fit to rest than roam.
“But I can stand as yet fair stress and strain;
There’s not a little steel beneath the rust;
My years mount somewhat, but here’s to’t again!
And if I fall, I must.
“God knows that for myself I’ve scanty care;
Past scrimmages have proved as much to all;
In Eastern lands and South I’ve had my share
Both of the blade and ball.
“And where those villains ripped me in the flitch
With their old iron in my early time,
I’m apt at change of wind to feel a twitch,
Or at a change of clime.
“And what my mirror shows me in the morning
Has more of blotch and wrinkle than of bloom;
My eyes, too, heretofore all glasses scorning,
Have just a touch of rheum . . .
“Now sounds ‘The Girl I’ve left behind me,’ — Ah,
The years, the ardours, wakened by that tune!
Time was when, with the crowd’s farewell ‘Hurrah!’
’Twould lift me to the moon.
“But now it’s late to leave behind me one
Who if, poor soul, her man goes underground,
Will not recover as she might have done
In days when hopes abound.
“She’s waving from the wharfside, palely grieving,
As down we draw . . . Her tears make little show,
Yet now she suffers more than at my leaving
Some twenty years ago.
“I pray those left at home will care for her!
I shall come back; I have before; though when
The Girl you leave behind you is a grandmother,
Things may not be as then.”
THE GOING OF THE BATTERY
WIVES’ LAMENT
(November 2, 1899)
I
O it was sad enough, weak enough, mad enough -
Light in their loving as soldiers can be -
First to risk choosing them, leave alone losing them
Now, in far battle, beyond the South Sea! . . .
II
- Rain came down drenchingly; but we unblenchingly
Trudged on beside them through mirk and through mire,
They stepping steadily — only too readily! -
Scarce as if stepping brought parting-time nigher.
III
Great guns were gleaming there, living things seeming there,
Cloaked in their tar-cloths, upmouthed to the night;
Wheels wet and yellow from axle to felloe,
Throats blank of sound, but prophetic to sight.
IV
Gas-glimmers drearily, blearily, eerily
Lit our pale faces outstretched for one kiss,
While we stood prest to them, with a last quest to them
Not to court perils that honour could miss.
V
Sharp were those sighs of ours, blinded these eyes of ours,
When at last moved away under the arch
All we loved. Aid for them each woman prayed for them,
Treading back slowly the track of their march.
VI
Someone said: “Nevermore will they come: evermore
Are they now lost to us.” O it was wrong!
Though may be hard their ways, some Hand will guard their ways,
Bear them through safely, in brief time or long.
VII
- Yet, voices haunting us, daunting us, taunting us,
Hint in the night-time when life beats are low
Other and graver things . . . Hold we to braver things,
Wait we, in trust, what Time’s fulness shall show.
AT THE WAR OFFICE, LONDON
(Affixing the Lists of Killed and Wounded: December, 1899)
I
Last year I called this world of gain-givings
The darkest thinkable, and questioned sadly
If my own land could heave its pulse less gladly,
So charged it seemed with circumstance whence springs
The tragedy of things.
II
Yet at that censured time no heart was rent
Or feature blanched of parent, wife, or daughter
By hourly blazoned sheets of listed slaughter;
Death waited Nature’s wont; Peace smiled unshent
From Ind to Occident.
A CHRISTMAS GHOST-STORY
South of the Line, inland from far Durban,
A mouldering soldier lies — your countryman.
Awry and doubled up are his gray bones,
And on the breeze his puzzled phantom moans
Nightly to clear Canopus: “I would know
By whom and when the All-Earth-gladdening Law
Of Peace, brought in by that Man Crucified,
Was ruled to be inept, and set aside?
And what of logic or of truth appears
In tacking ‘Anno Domini’ to the years?
Near twenty-hundred livened thus have hied,
But tarries yet the Cause for which He died.”
Christmas-eve, 1899.
THE DEAD DRUMMER
I
They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined — just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around;
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.
II
Young Hodge the Drummer never knew -
Fresh from his Wessex home -
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.
III
Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge for ever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow up a Southern tree.
And strange-eyed constellations reign
His stars eternally.
A WIFE IN LONDON
(December, 1899)
I — THE TRAGEDY
She sits in the tawny vapour
That the City lanes have uprolled,
Behind whose webby fold on fold
Like a waning taper
The street-lamp glimmers cold.
A messenger’s knock cracks smartly,
Flashed news is in her hand
Of meaning it dazes to understand
Though shaped so shortly:
He — has fallen — in the far South Land . . .
II — THE IRONY
‘Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker,
The postman nears and goes:
A letter is brought whose lines disclose
By the firelight flicker
His hand, whom the worm now knows:
Fresh — firm — penned in highest feather -
Page-full of his hoped return,
And of home-planned jaunts by brake and burn
In the summer weather,
And of new love that they would learn.
THE SOULS OF THE SLAIN
I
The thick lids of Night closed upon me
Alone at the Bill
Of the Isle by the Race -
Many-caverned, bald, wrinkled of face -
And with darkness and silence the spirit was on me
To brood and be still.
II
No wind fanned the flats of the ocean,
Or promontory sides,
Or the ooze by the strand,
Or the bent-bearded slope of the land,
Whose base took its rest amid everlong motion
Of criss-crossing tides.
III
Soon from out of the Southward seemed nearing
A whirr, as of wings
Waved by mighty-vanned flies,
Or by night-moths of measureless size,
And in softness and smoothness well-nigh beyond hearing
Of corporal things.
IV
And they bore to the bluff, and alighted -
A dim-discerned train
Of sprites without mould,
Frameless souls none might touch or might hold -
On the ledge by the turr
eted lantern, farsighted
By men of the main.
V
And I heard them say “Home!” and I knew them
For souls of the felled
On the earth’s nether bord
Under Capricorn, whither they’d warred,
And I neared in my awe, and gave heedfulness to them
With breathings inheld.
VI
Then, it seemed, there approached from the northward
A senior soul-flame
Of the like filmy hue:
And he met them and spake: “Is it you,
O my men?” Said they, “Aye! We bear homeward and hearthward
To list to our fame!”
VII
”I’ve flown there before you,” he said then:
”Your households are well;
But — your kin linger less
On your glory arid war-mightiness
Than on dearer things.” — ”Dearer?” cried these from the dead then,
”Of what do they tell?”
VIII
”Some mothers muse sadly, and murmur
Your doings as boys -
Recall the quaint ways
Of your babyhood’s innocent days.
Some pray that, ere dying, your faith had grown firmer,
And higher your joys.
IX
”A father broods: ‘Would I had set him
To some humble trade,
And so slacked his high fire,
And his passionate martial desire;
Had told him no stories to woo him and whet him
To this due crusade!”
X
”And, General, how hold out our sweethearts,
Sworn loyal as doves?”
— ”Many mourn; many think