by Thomas Hardy
HER LOVE-BIRDS
When I looked up at my love-birds
That Sunday afternoon,
There was in their tiny tune
A dying fetch like broken words,
When I looked up at my love-birds
That Sunday afternoon.
When he, too, scanned the love-birds
On entering there that day,
’Twas as if he had nought to say
Of his long journey citywards,
When he, too, scanned the love-birds,
On entering there that day.
And billed and billed the love-birds,
As ‘twere in fond despair
At the stress of silence where
Had once been tones in tenor thirds,
And billed and billed the love-birds
As ‘twere in fond despair.
O, his speech that chilled the love-birds,
And smote like death on me,
As I learnt what was to be,
And knew my life was broke in sherds!
O, his speech that chilled the love-birds,
And smote like death on me!
PAYING CALLS
I went by footpath and by stile
Beyond where bustle ends,
Strayed here a mile and there a mile
And called upon some friends.
On certain ones I had not seen
For years past did I call,
And then on others who had been
The oldest friends of all.
It was the time of midsummer
When they had used to roam;
But now, though tempting was the air,
I found them all at home.
I spoke to one and other of them
By mound and stone and tree
Of things we had done ere days were dim,
But they spoke not to me.
THE UPPER BIRCH-LEAVES
Warm yellowy-green
In the blue serene,
How they skip and sway
On this autumn day!
They cannot know
What has happened below, -
That their boughs down there
Are already quite bare,
That their own will be
When a week has passed, -
For they jig as in glee
To this very last.
But no; there lies
At times in their tune
A note that cries
What at first I fear
I did not hear:
“O we remember
At each wind’s hollo -
Though life holds yet -
We go hence soon,
For ‘tis November;
- But that you follow
You may forget!”
IT NEVER LOOKS LIKE SUMMER
“It never looks like summer here
On Beeny by the sea.”
But though she saw its look as drear,
Summer it seemed to me.
It never looks like summer now
Whatever weather’s there;
But ah, it cannot anyhow,
On Beeny or elsewhere!
BOSCASTLE,
March 8, 1913.
EVERYTHING COMES
“The house is bleak and cold
Built so new for me!
All the winds upon the wold
Search it through for me;
No screening trees abound,
And the curious eyes around
Keep on view for me.”
“My Love, I am planting trees
As a screen for you
Both from winds, and eyes that tease
And peer in for you.
Only wait till they have grown,
No such bower will be known
As I mean for you.”
“Then I will bear it, Love,
And will wait,” she said.
- So, with years, there grew a grove.
”Skill how great!” she said.
“As you wished, Dear?” — ”Yes, I see!
But — I’m dying; and for me
’Tis too late,” she said.
THE MAN WITH A PAST
There was merry-making
When the first dart fell
As a heralding, -
Till grinned the fully bared thing,
And froze like a spell -
Like a spell.
Innocent was she,
Innocent was I,
Too simple we!
Before us we did not see,
Nearing, aught wry -
Aught wry!
I can tell it not now,
It was long ago;
And such things cow;
But that is why and how
Two lives were so -
Were so.
Yes, the years matured,
And the blows were three
That time ensured
On her, which she dumbly endured;
And one on me -
One on me.
HE FEARS HIS GOOD FORTUNE
There was a glorious time
At an epoch of my prime;
Mornings beryl-bespread,
And evenings golden-red;
Nothing gray:
And in my heart I said,
“However this chanced to be,
It is too full for me,
Too rare, too rapturous, rash,
Its spell must close with a crash
Some day!”
The radiance went on
Anon and yet anon,
And sweetness fell around
Like manna on the ground.
”I’ve no claim,”
Said I, “to be thus crowned:
I am not worthy this:-
Must it not go amiss? -
Well . . . let the end foreseen
Come duly! — I am serene.”
— And it came.
HE WONDERS ABOUT HIMSELF
No use hoping, or feeling vext,
Tugged by a force above or under
Like some fantocine, much I wonder
What I shall find me doing next!
Shall I be rushing where bright eyes be?
Shall I be suffering sorrows seven?
Shall I be watching the stars of heaven,
Thinking one of them looks like thee?
Part is mine of the general Will, Cannot my share in the sum of sources Bend a digit the poise of forces, And a fair desire fulfil?
Nov. 1893.
JUBILATE
“The very last time I ever was here,” he said,
“I saw much less of the quick than I saw of the dead.”
- He was a man I had met with somewhere before,
But how or when I now could recall no more.
“The hazy mazy moonlight at one in the morning
Spread out as a sea across the frozen snow,
Glazed to live sparkles like the great breastplate adorning
The priest of the Temple, with Urim and Thummim aglow.
“The yew-tree arms, glued hard to the stiff stark air,
Hung still in the village sky as theatre-scenes
When I came by the churchyard wall, and halted there
At a shut-in sound of fiddles and tambourines.
“And as I stood hearkening, dulcimers, haut-boys, and shawms,
And violoncellos, and a three-stringed double-bass,
Joined in, and were intermixed with a singing of psalms;
And I looked over at the dead men’s dwelling-place.
“Through the shine of the slippery snow I now could see,
As it were through a crystal roof, a great company
Of the dead minueting in stately step underground
To the tune of the instruments I had before heard sound.
“It was ‘Eden New,’ and dancing they sang in a chore,
‘We are out of it all! — yea, in Little-Ease cramped no more!’
And their shrouded figures pacing with
joy I could see
As you see the stage from the gallery. And they had no heed of me.
“And I lifted my head quite dazed from the churchyard wall
And I doubted not that it warned I should soon have my call.
But — ” . . . Then in the ashes he emptied the dregs of his cup,
And onward he went, and the darkness swallowed him up.
HE REVISITS HIS FIRST SCHOOL
I should not have shown in the flesh,
I ought to have gone as a ghost;
It was awkward, unseemly almost,
Standing solidly there as when fresh,
Pink, tiny, crisp-curled,
My pinions yet furled
From the winds of the world.
After waiting so many a year
To wait longer, and go as a sprite
From the tomb at the mid of some night
Was the right, radiant way to appear;
Not as one wanzing weak
From life’s roar and reek,
His rest still to seek:
Yea, beglimpsed through the quaint quarried glass
Of green moonlight, by me greener made,
When they’d cry, perhaps, “There sits his shade
In his olden haunt — just as he was
When in Walkingame he
Conned the grand Rule-of-Three
With the bent of a bee.”
But to show in the afternoon sun,
With an aspect of hollow-eyed care,
When none wished to see me come there,
Was a garish thing, better undone.
Yes; wrong was the way;
But yet, let me say,
I may right it — some day.
I THOUGHT, MY HEART
I thought, my Heart, that you had healed
Of those sore smartings of the past,
And that the summers had oversealed
All mark of them at last.
But closely scanning in the night
I saw them standing crimson-bright
Just as she made them:
Nothing could fade them;
Yea, I can swear
That there they were -
They still were there!
Then the Vision of her who cut them came,
And looking over my shoulder said,
“I am sure you deal me all the blame
For those sharp smarts and red;
But meet me, dearest, to-morrow night,
In the churchyard at the moon’s half-height,
And so strange a kiss
Shall be mine, I wis,
That you’ll cease to know
If the wounds you show
Be there or no!”
FRAGMENT
At last I entered a long dark gallery,
Catacomb-lined; and ranged at the side
Were the bodies of men from far and wide
Who, motion past, were nevertheless not dead.
“The sense of waiting here strikes strong;
Everyone’s waiting, waiting, it seems to me;
What are you waiting for so long? -
What is to happen?” I said.
“O we are waiting for one called God,” said they,
”(Though by some the Will, or Force, or Laws;
And, vaguely, by some, the Ultimate Cause;)
Waiting for him to see us before we are clay.
Yes; waiting, waiting, for God TO KNOW IT” . . .
”To know what?” questioned I.
“To know how things have been going on earth and below it:
It is clear he must know some day.”
I thereon asked them why.
“Since he made us humble pioneers
Of himself in consciousness of Life’s tears,
It needs no mighty prophecy
To tell that what he could mindlessly show
His creatures, he himself will know.
“By some still close-cowled mystery
We have reached feeling faster than he,
But he will overtake us anon,
If the world goes on.”
MIDNIGHT ON THE GREAT WESTERN
In the third-class seat sat the journeying boy,
And the roof-lamp’s oily flame
Played down on his listless form and face,
Bewrapt past knowing to what he was going,
Or whence he came.
In the band of his hat the journeying boy
Had a ticket stuck; and a string
Around his neck bore the key of his box,
That twinkled gleams of the lamp’s sad beams
Like a living thing.
What past can be yours, O journeying boy
Towards a world unknown,
Who calmly, as if incurious quite
On all at stake, can undertake
This plunge alone?
Knows your soul a sphere, O journeying boy,
Our rude realms far above,
Whence with spacious vision you mark and mete
This region of sin that you find you in,
But are not of?
HONEYMOON TIME AT AN INN
At the shiver of morning, a little before the false dawn,
The moon was at the window-square,
Deedily brooding in deformed decay -
The curve hewn off her cheek as by an adze;
At the shiver of morning a little before the false dawn
So the moon looked in there.
Her speechless eyeing reached across the chamber,
Where lay two souls opprest,
One a white lady sighing, “Why am I sad!”
To him who sighed back, “Sad, my Love, am I!”
And speechlessly the old moon conned the chamber,
And these two reft of rest.
While their large-pupilled vision swept the scene there,
Nought seeming imminent,
Something fell sheer, and crashed, and from the floor
Lay glittering at the pair with a shattered gaze,
While their large-pupilled vision swept the scene there,
And the many-eyed thing outleant.
With a start they saw that it was an old-time pier-glass
Which had stood on the mantel near,
Its silvering blemished, — yes, as if worn away
By the eyes of the countless dead who had smirked at it
Ere these two ever knew that old-time pier-glass
And its vague and vacant leer.
As he looked, his bride like a moth skimmed forth, and kneeling
Quick, with quivering sighs,
Gathered the pieces under the moon’s sly ray,
Unwitting as an automaton what she did;
Till he entreated, hasting to where she was kneeling,
Let it stay where it lies!”
“Long years of sorrow this means!” breathed the lady
As they retired. “Alas!”
And she lifted one pale hand across her eyes.
”Don’t trouble, Love; it’s nothing,” the bridegroom said.
“Long years of sorrow for us!” murmured the lady,
”Or ever this evil pass!”
And the Spirits Ironic laughed behind the wainscot,
And the Spirits of Pity sighed.
It’s good,” said the Spirits Ironic, “to tickle their minds
With a portent of their wedlock’s after-grinds.”
And the Spirits of Pity sighed behind the wainscot,
”It’s a portent we cannot abide!
“More, what shall happen to prove the truth of the portent?”
— ”Oh; in brief, they will fade till old,
And their loves grow numbed ere death, by the cark of care.”
- “But nought see we that asks for portents there? -
‘Tis the lot of all.” — ”Well, no less true is a portent
That it fits all mortal mould.”
THE ROBIN
When up aloft
I see in pools
The shining sky,
And a happy bird
Am I, am I!
When I descend
Towards their brink
I stand, and look,
And stoop, and drink,
And bathe my wings,
And chink and prink.
When winter frost
Makes earth as steel
I search and search
But find no meal,
And most unhappy
Then I feel.
But when it lasts,
And snows still fall,
I get to feel
No grief at all,
For I turn to a cold stiff
Feathery ball!
I ROSE AND WENT TO ROU’TOR TOWN
(She, alone)
I rose and went to Rou’tor Town
With gaiety and good heart,
And ardour for the start,
That morning ere the moon was down
That lit me off to Rou’tor Town
With gaiety and good heart.
When sojourn soon at Rou’tor Town
Wrote sorrows on my face,
I strove that none should trace
The pale and gray, once pink and brown,
When sojourn soon at Rou’tor Town
Wrote sorrows on my face.
The evil wrought at Rou’tor Town
On him I’d loved so true
I cannot tell anew:
But nought can quench, but nought can drown
The evil wrought at Rou’tor Town
On him I’d loved so true!
THE NETTLES
This, then, is the grave of my son,
Whose heart she won! And nettles grow
Upon his mound; and she lives just below.
How he upbraided me, and left,
And our lives were cleft, because I said
She was hard, unfeeling, caring but to wed.