by Thomas Hardy
Hear the wormwood-worded greeting
From each city, shore, and lea
Of thy victims:
”Conqueror, all hail to thee!”
“Yea: ‘All hail!’ we grimly shout thee
That wast author, fount, and head
Of these wounds, whoever proven
When our times are throughly read.
‘May thy loved be slighted, blighted,
And forsaken,’ be it said
By thy victims,
’And thy children beg their bread!’
“Nay: a richer malediction! -
Rather let this thing befall
In time’s hurling and unfurling
On the night when comes thy call;
That compassion dew thy pillow
And bedrench thy senses all
For thy victims,
Till death dark thee with his pall.”
August 1915.
BEFORE MARCHING AND AFTER (in Memoriam F. W. G.)
Orion swung southward aslant
Where the starved Egdon pine-trees had thinned,
The Pleiads aloft seemed to pant
With the heather that twitched in the wind;
But he looked on indifferent to sights such as these,
Unswayed by love, friendship, home joy or home sorrow,
And wondered to what he would march on the morrow.
The crazed household-clock with its whirr
Rang midnight within as he stood,
He heard the low sighing of her
Who had striven from his birth for his good;
But he still only asked the spring starlight, the breeze,
What great thing or small thing his history would borrow
From that Game with Death he would play on the morrow.
When the heath wore the robe of late summer,
And the fuchsia-bells, hot in the sun,
Hung red by the door, a quick comer
Brought tidings that marching was done
For him who had joined in that game overseas
Where Death stood to win, though his name was to borrow
A brightness therefrom not to fade on the morrow.
September 1915.
OFTEN WHEN WARRING
Often when warring for he wist not what,
An enemy-soldier, passing by one weak,
Has tendered water, wiped the burning cheek,
And cooled the lips so black and clammed and hot;
Then gone his way, and maybe quite forgot
The deed of grace amid the roar and reek;
Yet larger vision than loud arms bespeak
He there has reached, although he has known it not.
For natural mindsight, triumphing in the act
Over the throes of artificial rage,
Has thuswise muffled victory’s peal of pride,
Rended to ribands policy’s specious page
That deals but with evasion, code, and pact,
And war’s apology wholly stultified.
1915.
THEN AND NOW
When battles were fought
With a chivalrous sense of Should and Ought,
In spirit men said,
”End we quick or dead,
Honour is some reward!
Let us fight fair — for our own best or worst;
So, Gentlemen of the Guard,
Fire first!”
In the open they stood,
Man to man in his knightlihood:
They would not deign
To profit by a stain
On the honourable rules,
Knowing that practise perfidy no man durst
Who in the heroic schools
Was nurst.
But now, behold, what
Is warfare wherein honour is not!
Rama laments
Its dead innocents:
Herod breathes: “Sly slaughter
Shall rule! Let us, by modes once called accurst,
Overhead, under water,
Stab first.”
1915.
A CALL TO NATIONAL SERVICE
Up and be doing, all who have a hand
To lift, a back to bend. It must not be
In times like these that vaguely linger we
To air our vaunts and hopes; and leave our land
Untended as a wild of weeds and sand.
- Say, then, “I come!” and go, O women and men
Of palace, ploughshare, easel, counter, pen;
That scareless, scathless, England still may stand.
Would years but let me stir as once I stirred
At many a dawn to take the forward track,
And with a stride plunged on to enterprize,
I now would speed like yester wind that whirred
Through yielding pines; and serve with never a slack,
So loud for promptness all around outcries!
March 1917.
THE DEAD AND THE LIVING ONE
The dead woman lay in her first night’s grave,
And twilight fell from the clouds’ concave,
And those she had asked to forgive forgave.
The woman passing came to a pause
By the heaped white shapes of wreath and cross,
And looked upon where the other was.
And as she mused there thus spoke she:
“Never your countenance did I see,
But you’ve been a good good friend to me!”
Rose a plaintive voice from the sod below:
“O woman whose accents I do not know,
What is it that makes you approve me so?”
“O dead one, ere my soldier went,
I heard him saying, with warm intent,
To his friend, when won by your blandishment:
“‘I would change for that lass here and now!
And if I return I may break my vow
To my present Love, and contrive somehow
“‘To call my own this new-found pearl,
Whose eyes have the light, whose lips the curl,
I always have looked for in a girl!’
“ — And this is why that by ceasing to be -
Though never your countenance did I see -
You prove you a good good friend to me;
“And I pray each hour for your soul’s repose
In gratitude for your joining those
No lover will clasp when his campaigns close.”
Away she turned, when arose to her eye
A martial phantom of gory dye,
That said, with a thin and far-off sigh:
“O sweetheart, neither shall I clasp you,
For the foe this day has pierced me through,
And sent me to where she is. Adieu! -
“And forget not when the night-wind’s whine
Calls over this turf where her limbs recline,
That it travels on to lament by mine.”
There was a cry by the white-flowered mound,
There was a laugh from underground,
There was a deeper gloom around.
1915.
A NEW YEAR’S EVE IN WAR TIME
I
Phantasmal fears,
And the flap of the flame,
And the throb of the clock,
And a loosened slate,
And the blind night’s drone,
Which tiredly the spectral pines intone!
II
And the blood in my ears
Strumming always the same,
And the gable-cock
With its fitful grate,
And myself, alone.
III
The twelfth hour nears
Hand-hid, as in shame;
I undo the lock,
And listen, and wait
For the Young Unknown.
IV
In the dark there careers -
As if Death astride came
To numb all with his knock -
A hors
e at mad rate
Over rut and stone.
V
No figure appears,
No call of my name,
No sound but “Tic-toc”
Without check. Past the gate
It clatters — is gone.
VI
What rider it bears
There is none to proclaim;
And the Old Year has struck,
And, scarce animate,
The New makes moan.
VII
Maybe that “More Tears! -
More Famine and Flame -
More Severance and Shock!”
Is the order from Fate
That the Rider speeds on
To pale Europe; and tiredly the pines intone.
1915-1916.
I MET A MAN
I met a man when night was nigh,
Who said, with shining face and eye
Like Moses’ after Sinai:-
”I have seen the Moulder of Monarchies,
Realms, peoples, plains and hills,
Sitting upon the sunlit seas! -
And, as He sat, soliloquies
Fell from Him like an antiphonic breeze
That pricks the waves to thrills.
”Meseemed that of the maimed and dead
Mown down upon the globe, -
Their plenteous blooms of promise shed
Ere fruiting-time — His words were said,
Sitting against the western web of red
Wrapt in His crimson robe.
”And I could catch them now and then:
— ’Why let these gambling clans
Of human Cockers, pit liege men
From mart and city, dale and glen,
In death-mains, but to swell and swell again
Their swollen All-Empery plans,
”‘When a mere nod (if my malign
Compeer but passive keep)
Would mend that old mistake of mine
I made with Saul, and ever consign
All Lords of War whose sanctuaries enshrine
Liberticide, to sleep?
”‘With violence the lands are spread
Even as in Israel’s day,
And it repenteth me I bred
Chartered armipotents lust-led
To feuds . . . Yea, grieves my heart, as then I said,
To see their evil way!’
— ”The utterance grew, and flapped like flame,
And further speech I feared;
But no Celestial tongued acclaim,
And no huzzas from earthlings came,
And the heavens mutely masked as ‘twere in shame
Till daylight disappeared.”
Thus ended he as night rode high -
The man of shining face and eye,
Like Moses’ after Sinai.
1916.
I LOOKED UP FROM MY WRITING
I looked up from my writing,
And gave a start to see,
As if rapt in my inditing,
The moon’s full gaze on me.
Her meditative misty head
Was spectral in its air,
And I involuntarily said,
”What are you doing there?”
“Oh, I’ve been scanning pond and hole
And waterway hereabout
For the body of one with a sunken soul
Who has put his life-light out.
“Did you hear his frenzied tattle?
It was sorrow for his son
Who is slain in brutish battle,
Though he has injured none.
“And now I am curious to look
Into the blinkered mind
Of one who wants to write a book
In a world of such a kind.”
Her temper overwrought me,
And I edged to shun her view,
For I felt assured she thought me
One who should drown him too.
THE COMING OF THE END
How it came to an end!
The meeting afar from the crowd,
And the love-looks and laughters unpenned,
The parting when much was avowed,
How it came to an end!
It came to an end;
Yes, the outgazing over the stream,
With the sun on each serpentine bend,
Or, later, the luring moon-gleam;
It came to an end.
It came to an end,
The housebuilding, furnishing, planting,
As if there were ages to spend
In welcoming, feasting, and jaunting;
It came to an end.
It came to an end,
That journey of one day a week:
(“It always goes on,” said a friend,
“Just the same in bright weathers or bleak;”)
But it came to an end.
”HOW will come to an end
This orbit so smoothly begun,
Unless some convulsion attend?”
I often said. “What will be done
When it comes to an end?”
Well, it came to an end
Quite silently — stopped without jerk;
Better close no prevision could lend;
Working out as One planned it should work
Ere it came to an end.
AFTERWARDS
When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,
And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,
Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,
”He was a man who used to notice such things”?
If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid’s soundless blink,
The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight
Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,
”To him this must have been a familiar sight.”
If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,
When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,
One may say, “He strove that such innocent creatures should come to
no harm,
But he could do little for them; and now he is gone”?
If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the
door,
Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees,
Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,
”He was one who had an eye for such mysteries”?
And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom,
And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,
Till they rise again, as they were a new bell’s boom,
”He hears it not now, but used to notice such things”?
LATE LYRICS AND EARLIER WITH MANY OTHER VERSES
CONTENTS
WEATHERS
THE MAID OF KEINTON MANDEVILLE
SUMMER SCHEMES
EPEISODIA
FAINTHEART IN A RAILWAY TRAIN
AT MOONRISE AND ONWARDS
THE GARDEN SEAT
BARTHÉLÉMON AT VAUXHALL
I SOMETIMES THINK
JEZREEL
A JOG-TROT PAIR
THE CURTAINS NOW ARE DRAWN
ACCORDING TO THE MIGHTY WORKING
I WAS NOT HE
THE WEST-OF-WESSEX GIRL
WELCOME HOME
GOING AND STAYING
READ BY MOONLIGHT
AT A HOUSE IN HAMPSTEAD
A WOMAN’S FANCY
HER SONG
A WET AUGUST
THE DISSEMBLERS
TO A LADY PLAYING AND SINGING IN THE MORNING
A MAN WAS DRAWING NEAR TO ME
THE STRANGE HOUSE
AS ‘TWERE TO-NIGHT
THE CONTRETEMPS
A GENTLEMAN’S EPITAPH ON HIMSELF AND A LADY, WHO WERE BURIED TOGETHER
THE OLD GOWN
A NIGHT IN NOVEMBER
A DUETTIST TO HER PIANOFORTE
&nb
sp; WHERE THREE ROADS JOINED
AND THERE WAS A GREAT CALM
HAUNTING FINGERS
A PHANTASY IN A MUSEUM OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS
THE WOMAN I MET
IF IT’S EVER SPRING AGAIN
THE TWO HOUSES
ON STINSFORD HILL AT MIDNIGHT
THE FALLOW DEER AT THE LONELY HOUSE
THE SELFSAME SONG
THE WANDERER
A WIFE COMES BACK
A YOUNG MAN’S EXHORTATION
AT LULWORTH COVE A CENTURY BACK
A BYGONE OCCASION
TWO SERENADES
THE WEDDING MORNING
END OF THE YEAR 1912
THE CHIMES PLAY LIFE’S A BUMPER!
I WORKED NO WILE TO MEET YOU
AT THE RAILWAY STATION, UPWAY
SIDE BY SIDE
DREAM OF THE CITY SHOPWOMAN
A MAIDEN’S PLEDGE
THE CHILD AND THE SAGE
MISMET
AN AUTUMN RAIN-SCENE
MEDITATIONS ON A HOLIDAY
AN EXPERIENCE
THE BEAUTY
THE COLLECTOR CLEANS HIS PICTURE
THE WOOD FIRE
SAYING GOOD-BYE
ON THE TUNE CALLED THE OLD-HUNDRED-AND-FOURTH
THE OPPORTUNITY
EVELYN G. OF CHRISTMINSTER
THE RIFT
VOICES FROM THINGS GROWING IN A CHURCHYARD
ON THE WAY
SHE DID NOT TURN
GROWTH IN MAY
THE CHILDREN AND SIR NAMELESS
AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY
HER TEMPLE
A TWO-YEARS’ IDYLL
BY HENSTRIDGE CROSS AT THE YEAR’S END
PENANCE
I LOOK IN HER FACE
AFTER THE WAR
IF YOU HAD KNOWN
THE CHAPEL-ORGANIST
FETCHING HER
COULD I BUT WILL
SHE REVISITS ALONE THE CHURCH OF HER MARRIAGE