Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)

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Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) Page 742

by Thomas Hardy


  II

  - It was as though a garland of red roses

  Had fallen about the hood of some smug nun

  When irresponsibly dropped as from the sun,

  In fulth of numbers freaked with musical closes,

  Upon Victoria’s formal middle time

  His leaves of rhythm and rhyme.

  III

  O that far morning of a summer day

  When, down a terraced street whose pavements lay

  Glassing the sunshine into my bent eyes,

  I walked and read with a quick glad surprise

  New words, in classic guise, -

  IV

  The passionate pages of his earlier years,

  Fraught with hot sighs, sad laughters, kisses, tears;

  Fresh-fluted notes, yet from a minstrel who

  Blew them not naively, but as one who knew

  Full well why thus he blew.

  V

  I still can hear the brabble and the roar

  At those thy tunes, O still one, now passed through

  That fitful fire of tongues then entered new!

  Their power is spent like spindrift on this shore;

  Thine swells yet more and more.

  VI

  - His singing-mistress verily was no other

  Than she the Lesbian, she the music-mother

  Of all the tribe that feel in melodies;

  Who leapt, love-anguished, from the Leucadian steep

  Into the rambling world-encircling deep

  Which hides her where none sees.

  VII

  And one can hold in thought that nightly here

  His phantom may draw down to the water’s brim,

  And hers come up to meet it, as a dim

  Lone shine upon the heaving hydrosphere,

  And mariners wonder as they traverse near,

  Unknowing of her and him.

  VIII

  One dreams him sighing to her spectral form:

  “O teacher, where lies hid thy burning line;

  Where are those songs, O poetess divine

  Whose very arts are love incarnadine?”

  And her smile back: “Disciple true and warm,

  Sufficient now are thine.” . . .

  IX

  So here, beneath the waking constellations,

  Where the waves peal their everlasting strains,

  And their dull subterrene reverberations

  Shake him when storms make mountains of their plains -

  Him once their peer in sad improvisations,

  And deft as wind to cleave their frothy manes -

  I leave him, while the daylight gleam declines

  Upon the capes and chines.

  BONCHURCH, 1910.

  A PLAINT TO MAN

  When you slowly emerged from the den of Time,

  And gained percipience as you grew,

  And fleshed you fair out of shapeless slime,

  Wherefore, O Man, did there come to you

  The unhappy need of creating me -

  A form like your own — for praying to?

  My virtue, power, utility,

  Within my maker must all abide,

  Since none in myself can ever be,

  One thin as a shape on a lantern-slide

  Shown forth in the dark upon some dim sheet,

  And by none but its showman vivified.

  “Such a forced device,” you may say, “is meet

  For easing a loaded heart at whiles:

  Man needs to conceive of a mercy-seat

  Somewhere above the gloomy aisles

  Of this wailful world, or he could not bear

  The irk no local hope beguiles.”

  - But since I was framed in your first despair

  The doing without me has had no play

  In the minds of men when shadows scare;

  And now that I dwindle day by day

  Beneath the deicide eyes of seers

  In a light that will not let me stay,

  And to-morrow the whole of me disappears,

  The truth should be told, and the fact be faced

  That had best been faced in earlier years:

  The fact of life with dependence placed

  On the human heart’s resource alone,

  In brotherhood bonded close and graced

  With loving-kindness fully blown,

  And visioned help unsought, unknown.

  1909-10.

  GOD’S FUNERAL

  I

  I saw a slowly-stepping train -

  Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar -

  Following in files across a twilit plain

  A strange and mystic form the foremost bore.

  II

  And by contagious throbs of thought

  Or latent knowledge that within me lay

  And had already stirred me, I was wrought

  To consciousness of sorrow even as they.

  III

  The fore-borne shape, to my blurred eyes,

  At first seemed man-like, and anon to change

  To an amorphous cloud of marvellous size,

  At times endowed with wings of glorious range.

  IV

  And this phantasmal variousness

  Ever possessed it as they drew along:

  Yet throughout all it symboled none the less

  Potency vast and loving-kindness strong.

  V

  Almost before I knew I bent

  Towards the moving columns without a word;

  They, growing in bulk and numbers as they went,

  Struck out sick thoughts that could be overheard:-

  VI

  ”O man-projected Figure, of late

  Imaged as we, thy knell who shall survive?

  Whence came it we were tempted to create

  One whom we can no longer keep alive?

  VII

  ”Framing him jealous, fierce, at first,

  We gave him justice as the ages rolled,

  Will to bless those by circumstance accurst,

  And longsuffering, and mercies manifold.

  VIII

  ”And, tricked by our own early dream

  And need of solace, we grew self-deceived,

  Our making soon our maker did we deem,

  And what we had imagined we believed.

  IX

  ”Till, in Time’s stayless stealthy swing,

  Uncompromising rude reality

  Mangled the Monarch of our fashioning,

  Who quavered, sank; and now has ceased to be.

  X

  ”So, toward our myth’s oblivion,

  Darkling, and languid-lipped, we creep and grope

  Sadlier than those who wept in Babylon,

  Whose Zion was a still abiding hope.

  XI

  ”How sweet it was in years far hied

  To start the wheels of day with trustful prayer,

  To lie down liegely at the eventide

  And feel a blest assurance he was there!

  XII

  ”And who or what shall fill his place?

  Whither will wanderers turn distracted eyes

  For some fixed star to stimulate their pace

  Towards the goal of their enterprise?” . . .

  XIII

  Some in the background then I saw,

  Sweet women, youths, men, all incredulous,

  Who chimed as one: “This figure is of straw,

  This requiem mockery! Still he lives to us!”

  XIV

  I could not prop their faith: and yet

  Many I had known: with all I sympathized;

  And though struck speechless, I did not forget

  That what was mourned for, I, too, once had prized.

  XV

  Still, how to bear such loss I deemed

  The insistent question for each animate mind,

  And gazing, to my growing sight there seemed

  A pale yet positive g
leam low down behind,

  XVI

  Whereof to lift the general night,

  A certain few who stood aloof had said,

  “See you upon the horizon that small light -

  Swelling somewhat?” Each mourner shook his head.

  XVII

  And they composed a crowd of whom

  Some were right good, and many nigh the best . . .

  Thus dazed and puzzled ‘twixt the gleam and gloom

  Mechanically I followed with the rest.

  1908-10.

  SPECTRES THAT GRIEVE

  “It is not death that harrows us,” they lipped,

  “The soundless cell is in itself relief,

  For life is an unfenced flower, benumbed and nipped

  At unawares, and at its best but brief.”

  The speakers, sundry phantoms of the gone,

  Had risen like filmy flames of phosphor dye,

  As if the palest of sheet lightnings shone

  From the sward near me, as from a nether sky.

  And much surprised was I that, spent and dead,

  They should not, like the many, be at rest,

  But stray as apparitions; hence I said,

  “Why, having slipped life, hark you back distressed?

  “We are among the few death sets not free,

  The hurt, misrepresented names, who come

  At each year’s brink, and cry to History

  To do them justice, or go past them dumb.

  “We are stript of rights; our shames lie unredressed,

  Our deeds in full anatomy are not shown,

  Our words in morsels merely are expressed

  On the scriptured page, our motives blurred, unknown.”

  Then all these shaken slighted visitants sped

  Into the vague, and left me musing there

  On fames that well might instance what they had said,

  Until the New-Year’s dawn strode up the air.

  AH, ARE YOU DIGGING ON MY GRAVE?

  “Ah, are you digging on my grave

  My loved one? — planting rue?”

  - “No: yesterday he went to wed

  One of the brightest wealth has bred.

  ‘It cannot hurt her now,’ he said,

  ’That I should not be true.’“

  “Then who is digging on my grave?

  My nearest dearest kin?”

  - “Ah, no; they sit and think, ‘What use!

  What good will planting flowers produce?

  No tendance of her mound can loose

  Her spirit from Death’s gin.’“

  “But some one digs upon my grave?

  My enemy? — prodding sly?”

  - “Nay: when she heard you had passed the Gate

  That shuts on all flesh soon or late,

  She thought you no more worth her hate,

  And cares not where you lie.”

  “Then, who is digging on my grave?

  Say — since I have not guessed!”

  - “O it is I, my mistress dear,

  Your little dog, who still lives near,

  And much I hope my movements here

  Have not disturbed your rest?”

  “Ah, yes! YOU dig upon my grave . . .

  Why flashed it not on me

  That one true heart was left behind!

  What feeling do we ever find

  To equal among human kind

  A dog’s fidelity!”

  “Mistress, I dug upon your grave

  To bury a bone, in case

  I should be hungry near this spot

  When passing on my daily trot.

  I am sorry, but I quite forgot

  It was your resting-place.”

  SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCES IN FIFTEEN GLIMPSES

  I — AT TEA

  The kettle descants in a cozy drone,

  And the young wife looks in her husband’s face,

  And then at her guest’s, and shows in her own

  Her sense that she fills an envied place;

  And the visiting lady is all abloom,

  And says there was never so sweet a room.

  And the happy young housewife does not know

  That the woman beside her was first his choice,

  Till the fates ordained it could not be so . . .

  Betraying nothing in look or voice

  The guest sits smiling and sips her tea,

  And he throws her a stray glance yearningly.

  II — IN CHURCH

  “And now to God the Father,” he ends,

  And his voice thrills up to the topmost tiles:

  Each listener chokes as he bows and bends,

  And emotion pervades the crowded aisles.

  Then the preacher glides to the vestry-door,

  And shuts it, and thinks he is seen no more.

  The door swings softly ajar meanwhile,

  And a pupil of his in the Bible class,

  Who adores him as one without gloss or guile,

  Sees her idol stand with a satisfied smile

  And re-enact at the vestry-glass

  Each pulpit gesture in deft dumb-show

  That had moved the congregation so.

  III — BY HER AUNT’S GRAVE

  “Sixpence a week,” says the girl to her lover,

  “Aunt used to bring me, for she could confide

  In me alone, she vowed. ‘Twas to cover

  The cost of her headstone when she died.

  And that was a year ago last June;

  I’ve not yet fixed it. But I must soon.”

  “And where is the money now, my dear?”

  “O, snug in my purse . . . Aunt was SO slow

  In saving it — eighty weeks, or near.” . . .

  “Let’s spend it,” he hints. “For she won’t know.

  There’s a dance to-night at the Load of Hay.”

  She passively nods. And they go that way.

  IV — IN THE ROOM OF THE BRIDE-ELECT

  “Would it had been the man of our wish!”

  Sighs her mother. To whom with vehemence she

  In the wedding-dress — the wife to be -

  “Then why were you so mollyish

  As not to insist on him for me!”

  The mother, amazed: “Why, dearest one,

  Because you pleaded for this or none!”

  “But Father and you should have stood out strong!

  Since then, to my cost, I have lived to find

  That you were right and that I was wrong;

  This man is a dolt to the one declined . . .

  Ah! — here he comes with his button-hole rose.

  Good God — I must marry him I suppose!”

  V — AT A WATERING-PLACE

  They sit and smoke on the esplanade,

  The man and his friend, and regard the bay

  Where the far chalk cliffs, to the left displayed,

  Smile sallowly in the decline of day.

  And saunterers pass with laugh and jest -

  A handsome couple among the rest.

  “That smart proud pair,” says the man to his friend,

  “Are to marry next week . . . How little he thinks

  That dozens of days and nights on end

  I have stroked her neck, unhooked the links

  Of her sleeve to get at her upper arm . . .

  Well, bliss is in ignorance: what’s the harm!”

  VI — IN THE CEMETERY

  “You see those mothers squabbling there?”

  Remarks the man of the cemetery.

  One says in tears, ‘‘Tis mine lies here!’

  Another, ‘Nay, mine, you Pharisee!’

  Another, ‘How dare you move my flowers

  And put your own on this grave of ours!’

  But all their children were laid therein

  At different times, like sprats in a tin.

  “And then the main drain had to cross,

  And we moved the lot some nights ago,

&nbs
p; And packed them away in the general foss

  With hundreds more. But their folks don’t know,

  And as well cry over a new-laid drain

  As anything else, to ease your pain!”

  VII — OUTSIDE THE WINDOW

  “My stick!” he says, and turns in the lane

  To the house just left, whence a vixen voice

  Comes out with the firelight through the pane,

  And he sees within that the girl of his choice

  Stands rating her mother with eyes aglare

  For something said while he was there.

  “At last I behold her soul undraped!”

  Thinks the man who had loved her more than himself;

  “My God — ’tis but narrowly I have escaped. -

  My precious porcelain proves it delf.”

  His face has reddened like one ashamed,

  And he steals off, leaving his stick unclaimed.

  VIII — IN THE STUDY

  He enters, and mute on the edge of a chair

  Sits a thin-faced lady, a stranger there,

  A type of decayed gentility;

  And by some small signs he well can guess

  That she comes to him almost breakfastless.

  “I have called — I hope I do not err -

  I am looking for a purchaser

  Of some score volumes of the works

  Of eminent divines I own, -

  Left by my father — though it irks

 

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