by Thomas Hardy
SONG TO AN OLD BURDEN
The feet have left the wormholed flooring,
That danced to the ancient air,
The fiddler, all-ignoring,
Sleeps by the gray-grassed ‘cello player:
Shall I then foot around around around,
As once I footed there!
The voice is heard in the room no longer
That trilled, none sweetlier,
To gentle stops or stronger,
Where now the dust-draped cobwebs stir:
Shall I then sing again again again,
As once I sang with her!
The eyes that beamed out rapid brightness
Have longtime found their close,
The cheeks have wanned to whiteness
That used to sort with summer rose:
Shall I then joy anew anew anew,
As once I joyed in those!
O what’s to me this tedious Maying,
What’s to me this June?
O why should viols be playing
To catch and reel and rigadoon?
Shall I sing, dance around around around,
When phantoms call the tune!
WHY DO I?
Why do I go on doing these things?
Why not cease?
Is it that you are yet in this world of welterings
And unease,
And that, while so, mechanic repetitions please?
When shall I leave off doing these things? —
When I hear
You have dropped your dusty cloak and taken you wondrous wings
To another sphere,
Where no pain is: Then shall I hush this dinning gear.
WINTER WORDS IN VARIOUS MOODS AND METRES
CONTENTS
THE NEW DAWN’S BUSINESS
PROUD SONGSTERS
THOUGHTS AT MIDNIGHT
I AM THE ONE
THE PROPHETESS
A WISH FOR UNCONSCIOUSNESS
THE BAD EXAMPLE
TO LOUISA IN THE LANE
LOVE WATCHES A WINDOW
THE LOVE-LETTERS
AN UNKINDLY MAY
UNKEPT GOOD FRIDAYS
THE MOUND
LIDDELL AND SCOTT
CHRISTMASTIDE
RELUCTANT CONFESSION
EXPECTATION AND EXPERIENCE
ARISTODEMUS THE MESSENIAN
EVENING SHADOWS
THE THREE TALL MEN
THE LODGING-HOUSE FUCHSIAS
THE WHALER’S WIFE
THROWING A TREE
THE WAR-WIFE OF CATKNOLL
CONCERNING HIS OLD HOME
HER SECOND HUSBAND HEARS HER STORY
YULETIDE IN A YOUNGER WORLD
AFTER THE DEATH OF A FRIEND
THE SON’S PORTRAIT
LYING AWAKE
THE LADY IN THE FURS
CHILDHOOD AMONG THE FERNS
A COUNTENANCE
A POET’S THOUGHT
SILENCES
I WATCHED A BLACKBIRD
A NIGHTMARE, AND THE NEXT THING
TO A TREE IN LONDON
THE FELLED ELM AND SHE
HE DID NOT KNOW ME
SO VARIOUS
A SELF-GLAMOURER
THE DEAD BASTARD
THE CLASPED SKELETONS
IN THE MARQUEE
AFTER THE BURIAL
THE MONGREL
CONCERNING AGNES
HENLEY REGATTA
AN EVENING IN GALILEE
THE BROTHER
WE FIELD-WOMEN
A PRACTICAL WOMAN
SQUIRE HOOPER
A GENTLEMAN’S SECOND-HAND SUIT
WE SAY WE SHALL NOT MEET
SEEING THE MOON RISE
SONG TO AURORE
HE NEVER EXPECTED MUCH
STANDING BY THE MANTELPIECE
BOYS THEN AND NOW
THAT KISS IN THE DARK
A NECESSITARIAN’S EPITAPH
BURNING THE HOLLY
SUSPENSE
THE SECOND VISIT
OUR OLD FRIEND DUALISM
FAITHFUL WILSON
GALLANT’S SONG
A PHILOSOPHICAL FANTASY
A QUESTION OF MARRIAGE
THE LETTER’S TRIUMPH
A FORGOTTEN MINIATURE
WHISPERED AT THE CHURCH-OPENING
IN WEATHERBURY STOCKS
A PLACID MAN’S EPITAPH
THE NEW BOOTS
THE MUSING MAIDEN
LORNA THE SECOND
A DAUGHTER RETURNS
THE THIRD KISSING-GATE
DRINKING SONG
THE TARRYING BRIDEGROOM
THE DESTINED PAIR
A MUSICAL INCIDENT
JUNE LEAVES AND AUTUMN
NO BELL-RINGING
I LOOKED BACK
THE AGED NEWSPAPER SOLILOQUIZES
THE SINGLE WITNESS
HOW SHE WENT TO IRELAND
DEAD WESSEX THE DOG TO THE HOUSEHOLD
THE WOMAN WHO WENT EAST
NOT KNOWN
THE BOY’S DREAM
THE GAP IN THE WHITE
FAMILY PORTRAITS
THE CATCHING BALLET OF THE WEDDING CLOTHES
A WINSOME WOMAN
THE BALLAD OF LOVE’S SKELETON
A PRIVATE MAN ON PUBLIC MEN
CHRISTMAS IN THE ELGIN ROOM
WE ARE GETTING TO THE END
HE RESOLVES TO SAY NO MORE
THE NEW DAWN’S BUSINESS
What are you doing outside my walls,
O Dawn of another day?
I have not called you over the edge
Of the heathy ledge,
So why do you come this way,
With your furtive footstep without sound here,
And your face so deedily gray?
“I show a light for killing the man
Who lives not far from you,
And for bringing to birth the lady’s child,
Nigh domiciled,
And for earthing a corpse or two,
And for several other such odd jobs round here
That Time to-day must do.
“But you he leaves alone (although,
As you have often said,
You are always ready to pay the debt
You don’t forget
You owe for board and bed):
The truth is, when men willing are found here
He takes those loth instead.”
PROUD SONGSTERS
The thrushes sing as the sun is going,
And the finches whistle in ones and pairs,
And as it gets dark loud nightingales
In bushes
Pipe, as they can when April wears,
As if all Time were theirs.
These are brand-new birds of twelve-months’ growing,
Which a year ago, or less than twain,
No finches were, nor nightingales,
Nor thrushes,
But only particles of grain,
And earth, and air, and rain.
THOUGHTS AT MIDNIGHT
Mankind, you dismay me
When shadows waylay me! —
Not by your splendours
Do you affray me,
Not as pretenders
To demonic keenness,
Not by your meanness,
Nor your ill-teachings,
Nor your false preachings,
Nor your banalities
And immoralities,
Nor by your daring
Nor sinister bearing;
But by your madnesses
Capping cool badnesses,
Acting like puppets
Under Time’s buffets;
In superstitions
And ambitions
Moved by no wisdom,
Far-sight, or system,
Led by sheer senselessness
And presciencelessness
Into unreason
And hideous self-treason. . . .
God, look he on you,
Have mercy upon you!
Part written 25th May 1906.
I AM THE ONE
I am the one whom ringdoves see
Through chinks in boughs
When they do not rouse
In sudden dread,
But stay on cooing, as if they said:
“Oh; it’s only he.”
I am the passer when up-eared hares,
Stirred as they eat
The new-sprung wheat,
Their munch resume
As if they thought: “He is one for whom
Nobody cares.”
Wet-eyed mourners glance at me
As in train they pass
Along the grass
To a hollowed spot,
And think: “No matter; he quizzes not
Our misery.”
I hear above: “We stars must lend
No fierce regard
To his gaze, so hard
Bent on us thus, —
Must scathe him not. He is one with us
Beginning and end.”
THE PROPHETESS
1
“Now shall I sing
That pretty thing
‘The Mocking-Bird’?” — And sing it straight did she.
I had no cause
To think it was
A Mocking-bird in truth that sang to me.
2
Not even the glance
She threw askance
Foretold to me, nor did the tune or rhyme,
That the words bore
A meaning more
Than that they were a ditty of the time.
3
But after years
Of hopes and fears,
And all they bring, and all they take away,
I found I had heard
The Mocking-bird
In person singing there to me that day.
A WISH FOR UNCONSCIOUSNESS
If I could but abide
As a tablet on a wall,
Or a hillock daisy-pied,
Or a picture in a hall,
And as nothing else at all,
I should feel no doleful achings,
I should hear no judgment-call,
Have no evil dreams or wakings,
No uncouth or grisly care;
In a word, no cross to bear.
THE BAD EXAMPLE
Fie, Aphrodite, shamming you are no mother,
And your maternal markings trying to smother,
As you were maiden, now you love another! . . .
If one like you need such pretence to noose him,
Indulgence in too early fires beware you,
All girls yet virgin, and have constant care you
Become not staled by use as she has, ere you
Meet your most-loved; lest, tumbled, you should lose him
Partly from Meleager.
TO LOUISA IN THE LANE
Meet me again as at that time
In the hollow of the lane;
I will not pass as in my prime
I passed at each day’s wane.
— Ah, I remember!
To do it you will have to see
Anew this sorry scene wherein you have ceased to be!
But I will welcome your aspen form
As you gaze wondering round
And say with spectral frail alarm,
“Why am I still here found?
— Ah, I remember!
It is through him with blitheful brow
Who did not love me then, but loves and draws me now!”
And I shall answer: “Sweet of eyes,
Carry me with you, Dear,
To where you donned this spirit-guise;
It’s better there than here!”
— Till I remember
Such is a deed you cannot do:
Wait must I, till with flung-off flesh I follow you.
LOVE WATCHES A WINDOW
“Here in the window beaming across
Is he — the lineaments like him so! —
The saint whose name I do not know,
With the holy robe and the cheek aglow.
Here will I kneel as if worshipping God
When all the time I am worshipping you,
Whose Love I was —
You that with me will nevermore tread anew
The paradise-paths we trod!”
She came to that prominent pew each day,
And sat there. Zealously she came
And watched her Love — looking just the same
From the rubied eastern tracery-frame —
The man who had quite forsaken her
And followed another, it was thought. —
Be’t as it may,
Thinner, more thin, was the lady’s figure wrought
By some ache, year on year.
Well, now she’s dead, and dead is he
From whom her heart once drew delight,
Whose face glowed daily, lover-bright,
High in the glass before her sight.
And still the face is seen as clear
In the rubied eastern window-gleam
As formerly;
But not seen now is a passioned woman’s dream
Glowing beside it there.
THE LOVE-LETTERS
(IN MEMORIAM H. R.)
I met him quite by accident
In a bye-path that he’d frequent.
And, as he neared, the sunset glow
Warmed up the smile of pleasantry
Upon his too thin face, while he
Held a square packet up to me,
Of what, I did not know.
“Well,” said he then; “they are my old letters.
Perhaps she — rather felt them fetters. . . .
You see, I am in a slow decline,
And she’s broken off with me. Quite right
To send them back, and true foresight;
I’d got too fond of her! To-night
I burn them — stuff of mine!”
He laughed in the sun — an ache in his laughter —
And went. I heard of his death soon after.
AN UNKINDLY MAY
A shepherd stands by a gate in a white smock-frock:
He holds the gate ajar, intently counting his flock.
The sour spring wind is blurting boisterous-wise,
And bears on it dirty clouds across the skies;
Plantation timbers creak like rusty cranes,
And pigeons and rooks, dishevelled by late rains,
Are like gaunt vultures, sodden and unkempt,
And song-birds do not end what they attempt:
The buds have tried to open, but quite failing
Have pinched themselves together in their quailing.
The sun frowns whitely in eye-trying flaps
Through passing cloud-holes, mimicking audible taps.
“Nature, you’re not commendable to-day!”
I think. “Better to-morrow!” she seems to say.
That shepherd still stands in that white smock-frock,
Unnoting all things save the counting his flock.
UNKEPT GOOD FRIDAYS
There are many more Good Fridays
Than this, if we but knew
The names, and could relate them,
Of men whom rulers slew
For their goodwill, and date them
As runs the twelvemonth through.
These nameless Christs’ Good Fridays,
Whose virtues wrought their end,
Bore days of bonds and burning,
With no man to their friend,
Of mockeries, and spurning;
Yet they are all unpenned.
When they had their Good Fridays
Of bloody sweat and strain
Oblivion hides. We quote not
Their dying words of pain,
Their sepulchres we note not,
Unwitting where they have lain.
No annual Good Fridays
Gained they from cross and cord,
From being sawn asunder,
Disfigured and abhorred,
Smitten and trampled under:
Such dates no hands have scored.
Let be. Let lack Good Fridays
These Christs of unwrit names;
The world was not even worthy
To taunt their hopes and aims,
As little of earth, earthy,
As his mankind proclaims.
Good Friday, 1927.
THE MOUND
For a moment pause: —
Just here it was;
And through the thin thorn hedge, by the rays of the moon,
I can see the tree in the field, and beside it the mound —
Now sheeted with snow — whereon we sat that June
When it was green and round,
And she crazed my mind by what she coolly told —
The history of her undoing,
(As I saw it), but she called “comradeship,”
That bred in her no rueing:
And saying she’d not be bound
For life to one man, young, ripe-yeared, or old,
Left me — an innocent simpleton to her viewing;
For, though my accompt of years outscored her own,
Hers had more hotly flown. . . .
We never met again by this green mound,
To press as once so often lip on lip,
And palter, and pause: —
Yes; here it was!
LIDDELL AND SCOTT
ON THE COMPLETION OF THEIR LEXICON
(Written after the death of Liddell in 1898. Scott had died some ten years earlier.)
“Well, though it seems
Beyond our dreams,”
Said Liddell to Scott,
“We’ve really got
To the very end,
All inked and penned
Blotless and fair
Without turning a hair,
This sultry summer day, A.D.
Eighteen hundred and forty-three.
“I’ve often, I own,
Belched many a moan
At undertaking it,
And dreamt forsaking it.
— Yes, on to Pi,
When the end loomed nigh,
And friends said: ‘You’ve as good as done,’