by Thomas Hardy
Up which, with feeble hope,
A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;
And we take him in.
A LIGHT SNOW-FALL AFTER FROST
On the flat road a man at last appears:
How much his whitening hairs
Owe to the settling snow’s mute anchorage,
And how much to a life’s rough pilgrimage,
One cannot certify.
The frost is on the wane,
And cobwebs hanging close outside the pane
Pose as festoons of thick white worsted there,
Of their pale presence no eye being aware
Till the rime made them plain.
A second man comes by;
His ruddy beard brings fire to the pallid scene:
His coat is faded green;
Hence seems it that his mien
Wears something of the dye
Of the berried holm-trees that he passes nigh.
The snow-feathers so gently swoop that though
But half an hour ago
The road was brown, and now is starkly white,
A watcher would have failed defining quite
When it transformed it so.
Near Surbiton.
WINTER NIGHT IN WOODLAND
(OLD TIME)
The bark of a fox rings, sonorous and long: —
Three barks, and then silentness; “wong, wong, wong!”
In quality horn-like, yet melancholy,
As from teachings of years; for an old one is he.
The hand of all men is against him, he knows; and yet, why?
That he knows not, — will never know, down to his death-halloo cry.
With clap-nets and lanterns off start the bird-baiters,
In trim to make raids on the roosts in the copse,
Where they beat the boughs artfully, while their awaiters
Grow heavy at home over divers warm drops.
The poachers, with swingels, and matches of brimstone, outcreep
To steal upon pheasants and drowse them a-perch and asleep.
Out there, on the verge, where a path wavers through,
Dark figures, filed singly, thrid quickly the view,
Yet heavily laden: land-carriers are they
In the hire of the smugglers from some nearest bay.
Each bears his two “tubs,” slung across, one in front, one behind,
To a further snug hiding, which none but themselves are to find.
And then, when the night has turned twelve the air brings
From dim distance, a rhythm of voices and strings:
‘Tis the quire, just afoot on their long yearly rounds,
To rouse by worn carols each house in their bounds;
Robert Penny, the Dewys, Mail, Voss, and the rest; till anon
Tired and thirsty, but cheerful, they home to their beds in the dawn.
ICE ON THE HIGHWAY
Seven buxom women abreast, and arm in arm,
Trudge down the hill, tip-toed,
And breathing warm;
They must perforce trudge thus, to keep upright
On the glassy ice-bound road,
And they must get to market whether or no,
Provisions running low
With the nearing Saturday night,
While the lumbering van wherein they mostly ride
Can nowise go:
Yet loud their laughter as they stagger and slide!
Yell’ham Hill.
MUSIC IN A SNOWY STREET
The weather is sharp,
But the girls are unmoved:
One wakes from a harp,
The next from a viol,
A strain that I loved
When life was no trial.
The tripletime beat
Bounds forth on the snow,
But the spry springing feet
Of a century ago,
And the arms that enlaced
As the couples embraced,
Are silent old bones
Under graying gravestones.
The snow-feathers sail
Across the harp-strings,
Whose throbbing threads wail
Like love-satiate things.
Each lyre’s grimy mien,
With its rout-raising tune,
Against the new white
Of the flake-laden noon,
Is incongruous to sight,
Hinting years they have seen
Of revel at night
Ere these damsels became
Possessed of their frame.
O bygone whirls, heys,
Crotchets, quavers, the same
That were danced in the days
Of grim Bonaparte’s fame,
Or even by the toes
Of the fair Antoinette, —
Yea, old notes like those
Here are living on yet! —
But of their fame and fashion
How little these know
Who strum without passion
For pence, in the snow!
THE FROZEN GREENHOUSE
(ST. JULIOT)
“There was a frost
Last night!” she said,
“And the stove was forgot
When we went to bed,
And the greenhouse plants
Are frozen dead!”
By the breakfast blaze
Blank-faced spoke she,
Her scared young look
Seeming to be
The very symbol
Of tragedy.
The frost is fiercer
Than then to-day,
As I pass the place
Of her once dismay,
But the greenhouse stands
Warm, tight, and gay,
While she who grieved
At the sad lot
Of her pretty plants —
Cold, iced, forgot —
Herself is colder,
And knows it not.
TWO LIPS
I kissed them in fancy as I came
Away in the morning glow:
I kissed them through the glass of her picture-frame:
She did not know.
I kissed them in love, in troth, in laughter,
When she knew all; long so!
That I should kiss them in a shroud thereafter
She did not know.
NO BUYERS
A STREET SCENE
A load of brushes and baskets and cradles and chairs
Labours along the street in the rain:
With it a man, a woman, a pony with whiteybrown hairs. —
The man foots in front of the horse with a shambling sway
At a slower tread than a funeral train,
While to a dirge-like tune he chants his wares,
Swinging a Turk’s-head brush (in a drum-major’s way
When the bandsmen march and play).
A yard from the back of the man is the whiteybrown pony’s nose:
He mirrors his master in every item of pace and pose:
He stops when the man stops, without being told,
And seems to be eased by a pause; too plainly he’s old,
Indeed, not strength enough shows
To steer the disjointed waggon straight,
Which wriggles left and right in a rambling line,
Deflected thus by its own warp and weight,
And pushing the pony with it in each incline.
The woman walks on the pavement verge,
Parallel to the man:
She wears an apron white and wide in span,
And carries a like Turk’s-head, but more in nursing-wise:
Now and then she joins in his dirge,
But as if her thoughts were on distant things.
The rain clams her apron till it clings. —
So, step by step, they move with their merchandize,
And nobody buys.
ONE WHO MARRIED ABOVE HIM
“‘Tis you, I think? Back from you
r week’s work, Steve?”
“It is I. Back from work this Christmas Eve.”
“But you seem off again? — in this night-rime?”
“I am off again, and thoroughly off this time.”
“What does that mean?”
“More than may first be seen. . . .
Half an hour ago I footed homeward here,
No wife found I, nor child, nor maid, indoors or near.
She has, as always, gone with them to her mother’s at the farm,
Where they fare better far than here, and, maybe, meet less harm.
She’s left no fire, no light, has cooked me nothing to eat,
Though she had fuel, and money to get some Christmas meat.
Christmas with them is grand, she knows, and brings good victual,
Other than how it is here, where it’s but lean and little.
But though not much, and rough,
If managed neat there’s enough.
She and hers are too highmade for me;
But she’s whimmed her once too often, she’ll see!
Farmer Bollen’s daughter should never have married a man that’s poor;
And I can stand it no longer; I’m leaving; you’ll see me no more, be sure.”
“But nonsense: you’ll be back again ere bedtime, and lighting a fire,
And sizzling your supper, and vexing not that her views of supper are higher.”
“Never for me.”
“Well, we shall see.”
The sceptical neighbour and Stephen then followed their fore-designed ways,
And their steps dimmed into white silence upon the slippery glaze;
And the trees went on with their spitting amid the icicled haze.
The evening whiled, and the wife with the babies came home,
But he was not there, nor all Christmas Day did he come.
Christmastide went, and likewise went the New Year,
But no husband’s footfall revived,
And month after month lapsed, graytime to green and to sere,
And other new years arrived,
And the children grew up: one husbanded and one wived. —
She wept and repented,
But Stephen never relented.
And there stands the house, and the sycamore-tree and all.
With its roots forming steps for the passers who care to call,
And there are the mullioned windows, and Ham-Hill door,
Through which Steve’s wife was brought out, but which Steve re-entered no more.
THE NEW TOY
She cannot leave it alone,
The new toy;
She pats it, smooths it, rights it, to show it’s her own,
As the other train-passengers muse on its temper and tone
Till she draws from it cries of annoy: —
She feigns to appear as if thinking it nothing so rare
Or worthy of pride, to achieve
This wonder a child, though with reason the rest of them there
May so be inclined to believe.
QUEEN CAROLINE TO HER GUESTS
Dear friends, stay!
Lamplit wafts of wit keep sorrow
In the purlieus of to-morrow:
Dear friends, stay!
Haste not away!
Even now may Time be weaving
Tricks of ravage, wrack, bereaving:
Haste not away!
Through the pane,
Lurking along the street, there may be
Heartwrings, keeping hid till day be,
Through the pane.
Check their reign:
Since while here we are the masters,
And can barricade dim disasters:
Check their reign!
Give no ear
To those ghosts withoutside mumming,
Mouthing, threatening, “We are coming!”
Give no ear!
Sheltered here
Care we not that next day bring us
Pains, perversions! No racks wring us
Sheltered here.
Homeward gone,
Sleep will slay this merrymaking;
No resuming it at waking,
Homeward gone.
After dawn
Something sad may be befalling;
Mood like ours there’s no recalling
After dawn!
Morrow-day
Present joy that moments strengthen
May be past our power to lengthen,
Morrow-day!
Dear friends, stay!
Lamplit wafts of wit keep sorrow
In the limbo of to-morrow:
Dear friends, stay!
PLENA TIMORIS
The lovers looked over the parapet-stone:
The moon in its southing directly blent
Its silver with their environment.
Her ear-rings twinkled; her teeth, too, shone
As, his arm around her, they laughed and leant.
A man came up to them; then one more.
“There’s a woman in the canal below,”
They said; climbed over; slid down; let go,
And a splashing was heard, till an arm upbore,
And a dripping body began to show.
“Drowned herself for love of a man,
Who at one time used to meet her here,
Until he grew tired. But she’d wait him near,
And hope, till hopeless despair began.
So much for love in this mortal sphere!”
The girl’s heart shuddered; it seemed as to freeze her
That here, at their tryst for so many a day,
Another woman’s tragedy lay.
Dim dreads of the future grew slowly to seize her,
And her arm dropt from his as they wandered away.
THE WEARY WALKER
A plain in front of me,
And there’s the road
Upon it. Wide country,
And, too, the road!
Past the first ridge another,
And still the road
Creeps on. Perhaps no other
Ridge for the road?
Ah! Past that ridge a third,
Which still the road
Has to climb furtherward —
The thin white road!
Sky seems to end its track;
But no. The road
Trails down the hill at the back.
Ever the road!
LAST LOVE-WORD
(SONG)
This is the last; the very, very last!
Anon, and all is dead and dumb,
Only a pale shroud over the past,
That cannot be
Of value small or vast,
Love, then to me!
I can say no more: I have even said too much.
I did not mean that this should come:
I did not know ‘twould swell to such —
Nor, perhaps, you —
When that first look and touch,
Love, doomed us two!
189*.
NOBODY COMES
Tree-leaves labour up and down,
And through them the fainting light
Succumbs to the crawl of night.
Outside in the road the telegraph wire
To the town from the darkening land
Intones to travellers like a spectral lyre
Swept by a spectral hand.
A car comes up, with lamps full-glare,
That flash upon a tree:
It has nothing to do with me,
And whangs along in a world of its own,
Leaving a blacker air;
And mute by the gate I stand again alone,
And nobody pulls up there.
October 9, 1924.
IN THE STREET
(SONG)
Only acquaintances
Seem do we,
Each of whom, meeting, says
Civilly
“Good morning.” — Yes: thus we appear to be!
But far, near, left and right,
Here or there,
By day or dingiest night,
Everywhere
I see you: one incomparably fair!
So do we wend our ways,
Beautiful girl,
Along our parallel days;
While unfurl
Our futures, and what there may whelm and whirl.
THE LAST LEAF
“The leaves throng thick above: —
Well, I’ll come back, dear Love,
When they all are down!”
She watched that August tree,
(None now scorned summer as she),
Till it broidered it brown.
And then October came blowing,
And the leaves showed signs they were going,
And she saw up through them.
O how she counted them then!
— November left her but ten,
And started to strew them.
“Ah, when they all are gone,
And the skeleton-time comes on,
Whom shall I see!”
— When the fifteenth spread its sky
That month, her upturned eye
Could count but three.
And at the close of the week
A flush flapped over her cheek:
The last one fell.
But — he did not come. And, at length,
Her hope of him lost all strength,
And it was as a knell. . . .
When he did come again,
Years later, a husband then,
Heavy somewhat,
With a smile she reminded him:
And he cried: “Ah, that vow of our whim! —
Which I forgot,
“As one does! — And was that the tree?
So it was! — Dear me, dear me: