by Thomas Hardy
March 1870 — March 1913
I
O the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea,
And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free -
The woman whom I loved so, and who loyally loved me.
II
The pale mews plained below us, and the waves seemed far away
In a nether sky, engrossed in saying their ceaseless babbling say,
As we laughed light-heartedly aloft on that clear-sunned March day.
III
A little cloud then cloaked us, and there flew an irised rain,
And the Atlantic dyed its levels with a dull misfeatured stain,
And then the sun burst out again, and purples prinked the main.
IV
— Still in all its chasmal beauty bulks old Beeny to the sky,
And shall she and I not go there once again now March is nigh,
And the sweet things said in that March say anew there by and by?
V
What if still in chasmal beauty looms that wild weird western shore,
The woman now is — elsewhere — whom the ambling pony bore,
And nor knows nor cares for Beeny, and will see it nevermore.
AT CASTLE BOTEREL
As I drive to the junction of lane and highway,
And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette,
I look behind at the fading byway,
And see on its slope, now glistening wet,
Distinctly yet
Myself and a girlish form benighted
In dry March weather. We climb the road
Beside a chaise. We had just alighted
To ease the sturdy pony’s load
When he sighed and slowed.
What we did as we climbed, and what we talked of
Matters not much, nor to what it led, -
Something that life will not be balked of
Without rude reason till hope is dead,
And feeling fled.
It filled but a minute. But was there ever
A time of such quality, since or before,
In that hill’s story? To one mind never,
Though it has been climbed, foot-swift, foot-sore,
By thousands more.
Primaeval rocks form the road’s steep border,
And much have they faced there, first and last,
Of the transitory in Earth’s long order;
But what they record in colour and cast
Is — that we two passed.
And to me, though Time’s unflinching rigour,
In mindless rote, has ruled from sight
The substance now, one phantom figure
Remains on the slope, as when that night
Saw us alight.
I look and see it there, shrinking, shrinking,
I look back at it amid the rain
For the very last time; for my sand is sinking,
And I shall traverse old love’s domain
Never again.
March 1913.
PLACES
Nobody says: Ah, that is the place
Where chanced, in the hollow of years ago,
What none of the Three Towns cared to know —
The birth of a little girl of grace -
The sweetest the house saw, first or last;
Yet it was so
On that day long past.
Nobody thinks: There, there she lay
In a room by the Hoe, like the bud of a flower,
And listened, just after the bedtime hour,
To the stammering chimes that used to play
The quaint Old Hundred-and-Thirteenth tune
In Saint Andrew’s tower
Night, morn, and noon.
Nobody calls to mind that here
Upon Boterel Hill, where the carters skid,
With cheeks whose airy flush outbid
Fresh fruit in bloom, and free of fear,
She cantered down, as if she must fall
(Though she never did),
To the charm of all.
Nay: one there is to whom these things,
That nobody else’s mind calls back,
Have a savour that scenes in being lack,
And a presence more than the actual brings;
To whom to-day is beneaped and stale,
And its urgent clack
But a vapid tale.
PLYMOUTH, March 1913.
THE PHANTOM HORSEWOMAN
I
Queer are the ways of a man I know:
He comes and stands
In a careworn craze,
And looks at the sands
And the seaward haze,
With moveless hands
And face and gaze,
Then turns to go . . .
And what does he see when he gazes so?
II
They say he sees as an instant thing
More clear than to-day,
A sweet soft scene
That once was in play
By that briny green;
Yes, notes alway
Warm, real, and keen,
What his back years bring -
A phantom of his own figuring.
III
Of this vision of his they might say more:
Not only there
Does he see this sight,
But everywhere
In his brain — day, night,
As if on the air
It were drawn rose bright -
Yea, far from that shore
Does he carry this vision of heretofore:
IV
A ghost-girl-rider. And though, toil-tried,
He withers daily,
Time touches her not,
But she still rides gaily
In his rapt thought
On that shagged and shaly
Atlantic spot,
And as when first eyed
Draws rein and sings to the swing of the tide.
MISCELLANEOUS PIECES
THE WISTFUL LADY
‘Love, while you were away there came to me -
From whence I cannot tell -
A plaintive lady pale and passionless,
Who bent her eyes upon me critically,
And weighed me with a wearing wistfulness,
As if she knew me well.”
“I saw no lady of that wistful sort
As I came riding home.
Perhaps she was some dame the Fates constrain
By memories sadder than she can support,
Or by unhappy vacancy of brain,
To leave her roof and roam?”
“Ah, but she knew me. And before this time
I have seen her, lending ear
To my light outdoor words, and pondering each,
Her frail white finger swayed in pantomime,
As if she fain would close with me in speech,
And yet would not come near.
“And once I saw her beckoning with her hand
As I came into sight
At an upper window. And I at last went out;
But when I reached where she had seemed to stand,
And wandered up and down and searched about,
I found she had vanished quite.”
Then thought I how my dead Love used to say,
With a small smile, when she
Was waning wan, that she would hover round
And show herself after her passing day
To any newer Love I might have found,
But show her not to me.
THE WOMAN IN THE RYE
“Why do you stand in the dripping rye,
Cold-lipped, unconscious, wet to the knee,
When there are firesides near?” said I.
“I told him I wished him dead,” said she.
“Yea, cried it in my haste to one
Whom I had loved, whom I well loved still;
And die he did. And I hate the sun,
&
nbsp; And stand here lonely, aching, chill;
“Stand waiting, waiting under skies
That blow reproach, the while I see
The rooks sheer off to where he lies
Wrapt in a peace withheld from me.”
THE CHEVAL-GLASS
Why do you harbour that great cheval-glass
Filling up your narrow room?
You never preen or plume,
Or look in a week at your full-length figure -
Picture of bachelor gloom!
“Well, when I dwelt in ancient England,
Renting the valley farm,
Thoughtless of all heart-harm,
I used to gaze at the parson’s daughter,
A creature of nameless charm.
“Thither there came a lover and won her,
Carried her off from my view.
O it was then I knew
Misery of a cast undreamt of -
More than, indeed, my due!
“Then far rumours of her ill-usage
Came, like a chilling breath
When a man languisheth;
Followed by news that her mind lost balance,
And, in a space, of her death.
“Soon sank her father; and next was the auction -
Everything to be sold:
Mid things new and old
Stood this glass in her former chamber,
Long in her use, I was told.
“Well, I awaited the sale and bought it . . .
There by my bed it stands,
And as the dawn expands
Often I see her pale-faced form there
Brushing her hair’s bright bands.
“There, too, at pallid midnight moments
Quick she will come to my call,
Smile from the frame withal
Ponderingly, as she used to regard me
Passing her father’s wall.
“So that it was for its revelations
I brought it oversea,
And drag it about with me . . .
Anon I shall break it and bury its fragments
Where my grave is to be.”
THE RE-ENACTMENT
Between the folding sea-downs,
In the gloom
Of a wailful wintry nightfall,
When the boom
Of the ocean, like a hammering in a hollow tomb,
Throbbed up the copse-clothed valley
From the shore
To the chamber where I darkled,
Sunk and sore
With gray ponderings why my Loved one had not come before
To salute me in the dwelling
That of late
I had hired to waste a while in -
Vague of date,
Quaint, and remote — wherein I now expectant sate;
On the solitude, unsignalled,
Broke a man
Who, in air as if at home there,
Seemed to scan
Every fire-flecked nook of the apartment span by span.
A stranger’s and no lover’s
Eyes were these,
Eyes of a man who measures
What he sees
But vaguely, as if wrapt in filmy phantasies.
Yea, his bearing was so absent
As he stood,
It bespoke a chord so plaintive
In his mood,
That soon I judged he would not wrong my quietude.
”Ah — the supper is just ready,”
Then he said,
”And the years’-long binned Madeira
Flashes red!”
(There was no wine, no food, no supper-table spread.)
”You will forgive my coming,
Lady fair?
I see you as at that time
Rising there,
The self-same curious querying in your eyes and air.
”Yet no. How so? You wear not
The same gown,
Your locks show woful difference,
Are not brown:
What, is it not as when I hither came from town?
”And the place . . . But you seem other -
Can it be?
What’s this that Time is doing
Unto me?
YOU dwell here, unknown woman? . . . Whereabouts, then, is she?
”And the house — things are much shifted. -
Put them where
They stood on this night’s fellow;
Shift her chair:
Here was the couch: and the piano should be there.”
I indulged him, verily nerve-strained
Being alone,
And I moved the things as bidden,
One by one,
And feigned to push the old piano where he had shown.
”Aha — now I can see her!
Stand aside:
Don’t thrust her from the table
Where, meek-eyed,
She makes attempt with matron-manners to preside.
”She serves me: now she rises,
Goes to play . . .
But you obstruct her, fill her
With dismay,
And embarrassed, scared, she vanishes away!”
And, as ‘twere useless longer
To persist,
He sighed, and sought the entry
Ere I wist,
And retreated, disappearing soundless in the mist.
That here some mighty passion
Once had burned,
Which still the walls enghosted,
I discerned,
And that by its strong spell mine might be overturned.
I sat depressed; till, later,
My Love came;
But something in the chamber
Dimmed our flame, -
An emanation, making our due words fall tame,
As if the intenser drama
Shown me there
Of what the walls had witnessed
Filled the air,
And left no room for later passion anywhere.
So came it that our fervours
Did quite fail
Of future consummation -
Being made quail
By the weird witchery of the parlour’s hidden tale,
Which I, as years passed, faintly
Learnt to trace, -
One of sad love, born full-winged
In that place
Where the predestined sorrowers first stood face to face.
And as that month of winter
Circles round,
And the evening of the date-day
Grows embrowned,
I am conscious of those presences, and sit spellbound.
There, often — lone, forsaken -
Queries breed
Within me; whether a phantom
Had my heed
On that strange night, or was it some wrecked heart indeed?
HER SECRET
That love’s dull smart distressed my heart
He shrewdly learnt to see,
But that I was in love with a dead man
Never suspected he.
He searched for the trace of a pictured face,
He watched each missive come,
And a note that seemed like a love-line
Made him look frozen and glum.
He dogged my feet to the city street,
He followed me to the sea,
But not to the neighbouring churchyard
Did he dream of following me.
SHE CHARGED ME
She charged me with having said this and that
To another woman long years before,
In the very parlour where we sat, -
Sat on a night when the endless pour
Of rain on the roof and the road below
Bent the spring of the spirit more and more . . .
- So charged she me; and the Cupid’s bow
Of her mouth was hard, and her eyes, and her face,
And her white forefinger lifted slo
w.
Had she done it gently, or shown a trace
That not too curiously would she view
A folly passed ere her reign had place,
A kiss might have ended it. But I knew
From the fall of each word, and the pause between,
That the curtain would drop upon us two
Ere long, in our play of slave and queen.
THE NEWCOMER’S WIFE
He paused on the sill of a door ajar
That screened a lively liquor-bar,
For the name had reached him through the door
Of her he had married the week before.
“We called her the Hack of the Parade;
But she was discreet in the games she played;
If slightly worn, she’s pretty yet,
And gossips, after all, forget.
“And he knows nothing of her past;
I am glad the girl’s in luck at last;
Such ones, though stale to native eyes,
Newcomers snatch at as a prize.”
“Yes, being a stranger he sees her blent
Of all that’s fresh and innocent,
Nor dreams how many a love-campaign
She had enjoyed before his reign!”
That night there was the splash of a fall
Over the slimy harbour-wall:
They searched, and at the deepest place
Found him with crabs upon his face.
A CONVERSATION AT DAWN
He lay awake, with a harassed air,
And she, in her cloud of loose lank hair,
Seemed trouble-tried
As the dawn drew in on their faces there.
The chamber looked far over the sea
From a white hotel on a white-stoned quay,