by Thomas Hardy
Well: why does your face not shine like the face of Moses?”
“ - I found no moving thing there save the light
And shadow flung on the wall by the outside roses.”
” - Go yet once more, pray. Look on a seat.”
“ - I go . . . O Sage, it’s only a man that sits there
With eyes on the sun. Mute, - average head to feet.”
“ - No more?” - “No more. Just one the place befits there,
”As the rays reach in through the open door,
And he looks at his hand, and the sun glows through his fingers,
While he’s thinking thoughts whose tenour is no more
To me than the swaying rose-tree shade that lingers.”
No more. And years drew on and on
Till no sun came, dank fogs the house enfolding;
And she saw inside, when the form in the flesh had gone,
As a vision what she had missed when the real beholding.
THE OLD WORKMAN
“Why are you so bent down before your time,
Old mason? Many have not left their prime
So far behind at your age, and can still
Stand full upright at will.”
He pointed to the mansion-front hard by,
And to the stones of the quoin against the sky;
“Those upper blocks,” he said, “that there you see,
It was that ruined me.”
There stood in the air up to the parapet
Crowning the corner height, the stones as set
By him - ashlar whereon the gales might drum
For centuries to come.
“I carried them up,” he said, “by a ladder there;
The last was as big a load as I could bear;
But on I heaved; and something in my back
Moved, as ‘twere with a crack.
“So I got crookt. I never lost that sprain;
And those who live there, walled from wind and rain
By freestone that I lifted, do not know
That my life’s ache came so.
“They don’t know me, or even know my name,
But good I think it, somehow, all the same
To have kept ‘em safe from harm, and right and tight,
Though it has broke me quite.
“Yes; that I fixed it firm up there I am proud,
Facing the hail and snow and sun and cloud,
And to stand storms for ages, beating round
When I lie underground.”
THE SAILOR’S MOTHER
”O whence do you come,
Figure in the night-fog that chills me numb?”
“I come to you across from my house up there,
And I don’t mind the brine-mist clinging to me
That blows from the quay,
For I heard him in my chamber, and thought you unaware.”
”But what did you hear,
That brought you blindly knocking in this middle-watch so drear?”
“My sailor son’s voice as ‘twere calling at your door,
And I don’t mind my bare feet clammy on the stones,
And the blight to my bones,
For he only knows of this house I lived in before.”
”Nobody’s nigh,
Woman like a skeleton, with socket-sunk eye.”
“Ah - nobody’s nigh! And my life is drearisome,
And this is the old home we loved in many a day
Before he went away;
And the salt fog mops me. And nobody’s come!”
From “To Please his Wife.”
OUTSIDE THE CASEMENT
(A REMINISCENCE OF THE WAR)
We sat in the room
And praised her whom
We saw in the portico-shade outside:
She could not hear
What was said of her,
But smiled, for its purport we did not hide.
Then in was brought
That message, fraught
With evil fortune for her out there,
Whom we loved that day
More than any could say,
And would fain have fenced from a waft of care.
And the question pressed
Like lead on each breast,
Should we cloak the tidings, or call her and tell?
It was too intense
A choice for our sense,
As we pondered and watched her we loved so well.
Yea, spirit failed us
At what assailed us;
How long, while seeing what soon must come,
Should we counterfeit
No knowledge of it,
And stay the stroke that would blanch and numb?
And thus, before
For evermore
Joy left her, we practised to beguile
Her innocence when
She now and again
Looked in, and smiled us another smile.
THE PASSER-BY
(L. H. RECALLS HER ROMANCE)
He used to pass, well-trimmed and brushed,
My window every day,
And when I smiled on him he blushed,
That youth, quite as a girl might; aye,
In the shyest way.
Thus often did he pass hereby,
That youth of bounding gait,
Until the one who blushed was I,
And he became, as here I sate,
My joy, my fate.
And now he passes by no more,
That youth I loved too true!
I grieve should he, as here of yore,
Pass elsewhere, seated in his view,
Some maiden new!
If such should be, alas for her!
He’ll make her feel him dear,
Become her daily comforter,
Then tire him of her beauteous gear,
And disappear!
I WAS THE MIDMOST
I was the midmost of my world
When first I frisked me free,
For though within its circuit gleamed
But a small company,
And I was immature, they seemed
To bend their looks on me.
She was the midmost of my world
When I went further forth,
And hence it was that, whether I turned
To south, east, west, or north,
Beams of an all-day Polestar burned
From that new axe of earth.
Where now is midmost in my world?
I trace it not at all:
No midmost shows it here, or there,
When wistful voices call
“We are fain! We are fain!” from everywhere
On Earth’s bewildering ball!
A SOUND IN THE NIGHT
(WOODSFORD CASTLE: 17-)
“What do I catch upon the night-wind, husband? -
What is it sounds in this house so eerily?
It seems to be a woman’s voice: each little while I hear it,
And it much troubles me!”
“‘Tis but the eaves dripping down upon the plinth-slopes:
Letting fancies worry thee! - sure ‘tis a foolish thing,
When we were on’y coupled half-an-hour before the noontide,
And now it’s but evening.”
“Yet seems it still a woman’s voice outside the castle, husband,
And ‘tis cold to-night, and rain beats, and this is a lonely place.
Didst thou fathom much of womankind in travel or adventure
Ere ever thou sawest my face?”
“It may be a tree, bride, that rubs his arms acrosswise,
If it is not the eaves-drip upon the lower slopes,
Or the river at the bend, where it whirls about the hatches
Like a creature that sighs and mopes.”
“Yet it still seems to me like the crying of a woman,
And it saddens me much that so piteous a sound
On this my bridal night when I would g
et agone from sorrow
Should so ghost-like wander round!”
“To satisfy thee, Love, I will strike the flint-and-steel, then,
And set the rush-candle up, and undo the door,
And take the new horn-lantern that we bought upon our journey,
And throw the light over the moor.”
He struck a light, and breeched and booted in the further chamber,
And lit the new horn-lantern and went from her sight,
And vanished down the turret; and she heard him pass the postern,
And go out into the night.
She listened as she lay, till she heard his step returning,
And his voice as he unclothed him: “‘Twas nothing, as I said,
But the nor’-west wind a-blowing from the moor ath’art the river,
And the tree that taps the gurgoyle-head.”
“Nay, husband, you perplex me; for if the noise I heard here,
Awaking me from sleep so, were but as you avow,
The rain-fall, and the wind, and the tree-bough, and the river,
Why is it silent now?
“And why is thy hand and thy clasping arm so shaking,
And thy sleeve and tags of hair so muddy and so wet,
And why feel I thy heart a-thumping every time thou kissest me,
And thy breath as if hard to get?”
He lay there in silence for a while, still quickly breathing,
Then started up and walked about the room resentfully:
“O woman, witch, whom I, in sooth, against my will have wedded,
Why castedst thou thy spells on me?
“There was one I loved once: the cry you heard was her cry:
She came to me to-night, and her plight was passing sore,
As no woman . . . Yea, and it was e’en the cry you heard, wife,
But she will cry no more!
“And now I can’t abide thee: this place, it hath a curse on’t,
This farmstead once a castle: I’ll get me straight away!”
He dressed this time in darkness, unspeaking, as she listened,
And went ere the dawn turned day.
They found a woman’s body at a spot called Rocky Shallow,
Where the Froom stream curves amid the moorland, washed aground,
And they searched about for him, the yeoman, who had darkly known her,
But he could not be found.
And the bride left for good-and-all the farmstead once a castle,
And in a county far away lives, mourns, and sleeps alone,
And thinks in windy weather that she hears a woman crying,
And sometimes an infant’s moan.
ON A DISCOVERED CURL OF HAIR
When your soft welcomings were said,
This curl was waving on your head,
And when we walked where breakers dinned
It sported in the sun and wind,
And when I had won your words of grace
It brushed and clung about my face.
Then, to abate the misery
Of absentness, you gave it me.
Where are its fellows now? Ah, they
For brightest brown have donned a gray,
And gone into a caverned ark,
Ever unopened, always dark!
Yet this one curl, untouched of time,
Beams with live brown as in its prime,
So that it seems I even could now
Restore it to the living brow
By bearing down the western road
Till I had reached your old abode.
February 1913.
AN OLD LIKENESS
(RECALLING R. T.)
Who would have thought
That, not having missed her
Talks, tears, laughter
In absence, or sought
To recall for so long
Her gamut of song;
Or ever to waft her
Signal of aught
That she, fancy-fanned,
Would well understand,
I should have kissed her
Picture when scanned
Yawning years after!
Yet, seeing her poor
Dim-outlined form
Chancewise at night-time,
Some old allure
Came on me, warm,
Fresh, pleadful, pure,
As in that bright time
At a far season
Of love and unreason,
And took me by storm
Here in this blight-time!
And thus it arose
That, yawning years after
Our early flows
Of wit and laughter,
And framing of rhymes
At idle times,
At sight of her painting,
Though she lies cold
In churchyard mould,
I took its feinting
As real, and kissed it,
As if I had wist it
Herself of old.
HER APOTHEOSIS
“Secretum meum mihi”
(FADED WOMAN’S SONG)
There was a spell of leisure,
No record vouches when;
With honours, praises, pleasure
To womankind from men.
But no such lures bewitched me,
No hand was stretched to raise,
No gracious gifts enriched me,
No voices sang my praise.
Yet an iris at that season
Amid the accustomed slight
From denseness, dull unreason,
Ringed me with living light.
SACRED TO THE MEMORY
(MARY H.)
That “Sacred to the Memory”
Is clearly carven there I own,
And all may think that on the stone
The words have been inscribed by me
In bare conventionality.
They know not and will never know
That my full script is not confined
To that stone space, but stands deep lined
Upon the landscape high and low
Wherein she made such worthy show.
TO A WELL-NAMED DWELLING
Glad old house of lichened stonework,
What I owed you in my lone work,
Noon and night!
Whensoever faint or ailing,
Letting go my grasp and failing,
You lent light.
How by that fair title came you?
Did some forward eye so name you
Knowing that one,
Sauntering down his century blindly,
Would remark your sound, so kindly,
And be won?
Smile in sunlight, sleep in moonlight,
Bask in April, May, and June-light,
Zephyr-fanned;
Let your chambers show no sorrow,
Blanching day, or stuporing morrow,
While they stand.
THE WHIPPER-IN
My father was the whipper-in, -
Is still - if I’m not misled?
And now I see, where the hedge is thin,
A little spot of red;
Surely it is my father
Going to the kennel-shed!
“I cursed and fought my father - aye,
And sailed to a foreign land;
And feeling sorry, I’m back, to stay,
Please God, as his helping hand.
Surely it is my father
Near where the kennels stand?”
“ - True. Whipper-in he used to be
For twenty years or more;
And you did go away to sea
As youths have done before.
Yes, oddly enough that red there
Is the very coat he wore.
“But he - he’s dead; was thrown somehow,
And gave his back a crick,
And though that is his coat, ‘tis now
The scarecrow of a rick;
You’ll see when you get nearer -
’Tis spread out on a stick.
“You see, when all had settled down
Your mother’s things were sold,
And she went back to her own town,
And the coat, ate out with mould,
Is now used by the farmer
For scaring, as ‘tis old.”
A MILITARY APPOINTMENT
(SCHERZANDO)
“So back you have come from the town, Nan, dear!
And have you seen him there, or near -
That soldier of mine -
Who long since promised to meet me here?”
“ - O yes, Nell: from the town I come,
And have seen your lover on sick-leave home -
That soldier of yours -
Who swore to meet you, or Strike-him-dumb;
“But has kept himself of late away;
Yet, - in short, he’s coming, I heard him say -
That lover of yours -
To this very spot on this very day.”
“ - Then I’ll wait, I’ll wait, through wet or dry!
I’ll give him a goblet brimming high -
This lover of mine -
And not of complaint one word or sigh!”
“ - Nell, him I have chanced so much to see,
That - he has grown the lover of me! -
That lover of yours -
And it’s here our meeting is planned to be.”
THE MILESTONE BY THE RABBIT-BURROW
(ON YELL’HAM HILL)
In my loamy nook
As I dig my hole
I observe men look
At a stone, and sigh
As they pass it by
To some far goal.