by Thomas Hardy
We on our urgent way, -
Four of us; fair She, dark She, fair He, I, are there,
But one — elsewhere.
Autumn moulds the hard fruit mellow,
And forward still we press
Through moors, briar-meshed plantations, clay-pits yellow,
As in the spring hours — yes,
Three of us: fair He, fair She, I, as heretofore,
But — fallen one more.
The leaf drops: earthworms draw it in
At night-time noiselessly,
The fingers of birch and beech are skeleton-thin,
And yet on the beat are we, -
Two of us; fair She, I. But no more left to go
The track we know.
Icicles tag the church-aisle leads,
The flag-rope gibbers hoarse,
The home-bound foot-folk wrap their snow-flaked heads,
Yet I still stalk the course, -
One of us . . . Dark and fair He, dark and fair She, gone:
The rest — anon.
THE WIND’S PROPHECY
I travel on by barren farms,
And gulls glint out like silver flecks
Against a cloud that speaks of wrecks,
And bellies down with black alarms.
I say: “Thus from my lady’s arms
I go; those arms I love the best!”
The wind replies from dip and rise,
“Nay; toward her arms thou journeyest.”
A distant verge morosely gray
Appears, while clots of flying foam
Break from its muddy monochrome,
And a light blinks up far away.
I sigh: “My eyes now as all day
Behold her ebon loops of hair!”
Like bursting bonds the wind responds,
“Nay, wait for tresses flashing fair!”
From tides the lofty coastlands screen
Come smitings like the slam of doors,
Or hammerings on hollow floors,
As the swell cleaves through caves unseen.
Say I: “Though broad this wild terrene,
Her city home is matched of none!”
From the hoarse skies the wind replies:
“Thou shouldst have said her sea-bord one.”
The all-prevailing clouds exclude
The one quick timorous transient star;
The waves outside where breakers are
Huzza like a mad multitude.
“Where the sun ups it, mist-imbued,”
I cry, “there reigns the star for me!”
The wind outshrieks from points and peaks:
“Here, westward, where it downs, mean ye!”
Yonder the headland, vulturine,
Snores like old Skrymer in his sleep,
And every chasm and every steep
Blackens as wakes each pharos-shine.
“I roam, but one is safely mine,”
I say. “God grant she stay my own!”
Low laughs the wind as if it grinned:
“Thy Love is one thou’st not yet known.”
Rewritten from an old copy.
DURING WIND AND RAIN
They sing their dearest songs -
He, she, all of them — yea,
Treble and tenor and bass,
And one to play;
With the candles mooning each face . . .
Ah, no; the years O!
How the sick leaves reel down in throngs!
They clear the creeping moss -
Elders and juniors — aye,
Making the pathways neat
And the garden gay;
And they build a shady seat . . .
Ah, no; the years, the years;
See, the white storm-birds wing across!
They are blithely breakfasting all -
Men and maidens — yea,
Under the summer tree,
With a glimpse of the bay,
While pet fowl come to the knee . . .
Ah, no; the years O!
And the rotten rose is ript from the wall.
They change to a high new house,
He, she, all of them — aye,
Clocks and carpets and chairs
On the lawn all day,
And brightest things that are theirs . . .
Ah, no; the years, the years;
Down their carved names the rain-drop ploughs.
HE PREFERS HER EARTHLY
This after-sunset is a sight for seeing,
Cliff-heads of craggy cloud surrounding it.
— And dwell you in that glory-show?
You may; for there are strange strange things in being,
Stranger than I know.
Yet if that chasm of splendour claim your presence
Which glows between the ash cloud and the dun,
How changed must be your mortal mould!
Changed to a firmament-riding earthless essence
From what you were of old:
All too unlike the fond and fragile creature
Then known to me . . . Well, shall I say it plain?
I would not have you thus and there,
But still would grieve on, missing you, still feature
You as the one you were.
THE DOLLS
“Whenever you dress me dolls, mammy,
Why do you dress them so,
And make them gallant soldiers,
When never a one I know;
And not as gentle ladies
With frills and frocks and curls,
As people dress the dollies
Of other little girls?”
Ah — why did she not answer:-
”Because your mammy’s heed
Is always gallant soldiers,
As well may be, indeed.
One of them was your daddy,
His name I must not tell;
He’s not the dad who lives here,
But one I love too well.”
MOLLY GONE
No more summer for Molly and me;
There is snow on the tree,
And the blackbirds plump large as the rooks are, almost,
And the water is hard
Where they used to dip bills at the dawn ere her figure was lost
To these coasts, now my prison close-barred.
No more planting by Molly and me
Where the beds used to be
Of sweet-william; no training the clambering rose
By the framework of fir
Now bowering the pathway, whereon it swings gaily and blows
As if calling commendment from her.
No more jauntings by Molly and me
To the town by the sea,
Or along over Whitesheet to Wynyard’s green Gap,
Catching Montacute Crest
To the right against Sedgmoor, and Corton-Hill’s far-distant cap,
And Pilsdon and Lewsdon to west.
No more singing by Molly to me
In the evenings when she
Was in mood and in voice, and the candles were lit,
And past the porch-quoin
The rays would spring out on the laurels; and dumbledores hit
On the pane, as if wishing to join.
Where, then, is Molly, who’s no more with me?
— As I stand on this lea,
Thinking thus, there’s a many-flamed star in the air,
That tosses a sign
That her glance is regarding its face from her home, so that there
Her eyes may have meetings with mine.
A BACKWARD SPRING
The trees are afraid to put forth buds,
And there is timidity in the grass;
The plots lie gray where gouged by spuds,
And whether next week will pass
Free of sly sour winds is the fret of each bush
Of barberry waiting to bloom.
Yet the snowdrop’s face betrays no gloom,
And the primrose
pants in its heedless push,
Though the myrtle asks if it’s worth the fight
This year with frost and rime
To venture one more time
On delicate leaves and buttons of white
From the selfsame bough as at last year’s prime,
And never to ruminate on or remember
What happened to it in mid-December.
April 1917.
LOOKING ACROSS
I
It is dark in the sky,
And silence is where
Our laughs rang high;
And recall do I
That One is out there.
II
The dawn is not nigh,
And the trees are bare,
And the waterways sigh
That a year has drawn by,
And Two are out there.
III
The wind drops to die
Like the phantom of Care
Too frail for a cry,
And heart brings to eye
That Three are out there.
IV
This Life runs dry
That once ran rare
And rosy in dye,
And fleet the days fly,
And Four are out there.
V
Tired, tired am I
Of this earthly air,
And my wraith asks: Why,
Since these calm lie,
Are not Five out there?
December 1915.
AT A SEASIDE TOWN IN 1869
(Young Lover’s Reverie)
I went and stood outside myself,
Spelled the dark sky
And ship-lights nigh,
And grumbling winds that passed thereby.
Then next inside myself I looked,
And there, above
All, shone my Love,
That nothing matched the image of.
Beyond myself again I ranged;
And saw the free
Life by the sea,
And folk indifferent to me.
O ‘twas a charm to draw within
Thereafter, where
But she was; care
For one thing only, her hid there!
But so it chanced, without myself
I had to look,
And then I took
More heed of what I had long forsook:
The boats, the sands, the esplanade,
The laughing crowd;
Light-hearted, loud
Greetings from some not ill-endowed;
The evening sunlit cliffs, the talk,
Hailings and halts,
The keen sea-salts,
The band, the Morgenblatter Waltz.
Still, when at night I drew inside
Forward she came,
Sad, but the same
As when I first had known her name.
Then rose a time when, as by force,
Outwardly wooed
By contacts crude,
Her image in abeyance stood . . .
At last I said: This outside life
Shall not endure;
I’ll seek the pure
Thought-world, and bask in her allure.
Myself again I crept within,
Scanned with keen care
The temple where
She’d shone, but could not find her there.
I sought and sought. But O her soul
Has not since thrown
Upon my own
One beam! Yea, she is gone, is gone.
From an old note.
THE GLIMPSE
She sped through the door
And, following in haste,
And stirred to the core,
I entered hot-faced;
But I could not find her,
No sign was behind her.
“Where is she?” I said:
- “Who?” they asked that sat there;
“Not a soul’s come in sight.”
- “A maid with red hair.”
- “Ah.” They paled. “She is dead.
People see her at night,
But you are the first
On whom she has burst
In the keen common light.”
It was ages ago,
When I was quite strong:
I have waited since, — O,
I have waited so long!
- Yea, I set me to own
The house, where now lone
I dwell in void rooms
Booming hollow as tombs!
But I never come near her,
Though nightly I hear her.
And my cheek has grown thin
And my hair has grown gray
With this waiting therein;
But she still keeps away!
THE PEDESTRIAN AN INCIDENT OF 1883
“Sir, will you let me give you a ride?
Nox Venit, and the heath is wide.”
- My phaeton-lantern shone on one
Young, fair, even fresh,
But burdened with flesh:
A leathern satchel at his side,
His breathings short, his coat undone.
‘Twas as if his corpulent figure slopped
With the shake of his walking when he stopped,
And, though the night’s pinch grew acute,
He wore but a thin
Wind-thridded suit,
Yet well-shaped shoes for walking in,
Artistic beaver, cane gold-topped.
“Alas, my friend,” he said with a smile,
“I am daily bound to foot ten mile -
Wet, dry, or dark — before I rest.
Six months to live
My doctors give
Me as my prospect here, at best,
Unless I vamp my sturdiest!”
His voice was that of a man refined,
A man, one well could feel, of mind,
Quite winning in its musical ease;
But in mould maligned
By some disease;
And I asked again. But he shook his head;
Then, as if more were due, he said:-
“A student was I — of Schopenhauer,
Kant, Hegel, — and the fountained bower
Of the Muses, too, knew my regard:
But ah — I fear me
The grave gapes near me! . . .
Would I could this gross sheath discard,
And rise an ethereal shape, unmarred!”
How I remember him! — his short breath,
His aspect, marked for early death,
As he dropped into the night for ever;
One caught in his prime
Of high endeavour;
From all philosophies soon to sever
Through an unconscienced trick of Time!
WHO’S IN THE NEXT ROOM?
”Who’s in the next room? — who?
I seemed to see
Somebody in the dawning passing through,
Unknown to me.”
“Nay: you saw nought. He passed invisibly.”
”Who’s in the next room? — who?
I seem to hear
Somebody muttering firm in a language new
That chills the ear.”
“No: you catch not his tongue who has entered there.”
”Who’s in the next room? — who?
I seem to feel
His breath like a clammy draught, as if it drew
From the Polar Wheel.”
“No: none who breathes at all does the door conceal.”
”Who’s in the next room? — who?
A figure wan
With a message to one in there of something due?
Shall I know him anon?”
“Yea he; and he brought such; and you’ll know him anon.”
AT A COUNTRY FAIR
At a bygone Western country fair
I saw a giant led by a dwarf
With a red string like a long thin scarf;
How much he was the stronger th
ere
The giant seemed unaware.
And then I saw that the giant was blind,
And the dwarf a shrewd-eyed little thing;
The giant, mild, timid, obeyed the string
As if he had no independent mind,
Or will of any kind.
Wherever the dwarf decided to go
At his heels the other trotted meekly,
(Perhaps — I know not — reproaching weakly)
Like one Fate bade that it must be so,
Whether he wished or no.
Various sights in various climes
I have seen, and more I may see yet,
But that sight never shall I forget,
And have thought it the sorriest of pantomimes,
If once, a hundred times!
THE MEMORIAL BRASS: 186-
”Why do you weep there, O sweet lady,
Why do you weep before that brass? -
(I’m a mere student sketching the mediaeval)
Is some late death lined there, alas? -
Your father’s? . . . Well, all pay the debt that paid he!”
”Young man, O must I tell! — My husband’s! And under
His name I set mine, and my DEATH! -
Its date left vacant till my heirs should fill it,
Stating me faithful till my last breath.”
- “Madam, that you are a widow wakes my wonder!”
”O wait! For last month I — remarried!
And now I fear ‘twas a deed amiss.
We’ve just come home. And I am sick and saddened
At what the new one will say to this;
And will he think — think that I should have tarried?
”I may add, surely, — with no wish to harm him -
That he’s a temper — yes, I fear!
And when he comes to church next Sunday morning,
And sees that written . . . O dear, O dear!
- “Madam, I swear your beauty will disarm him!”