by Thomas Hardy
To church with others. Service still being on,
He seeks “The Bells.”
“Yes: she’s quite thriving; very much so, they say.
I don’t believe in tales; ‘tis not my way!
I hold them stuff.
But — as you press me — certainly we know
He visits her once at least each week or so,
Fair weather or rough.
“And, after all, he’s quite a gentleman,
And lonely wives must friend them where they can.
She’ll tell you all,
No doubt, when prayers are done and she comes home.
I’m glad to hear your early taste to roam
Begins to pall.”
“I’ll stroll out and await her,” then said he.
Anon the congregation passed, and she
Passed with the rest,
Unconscious of the great surprise at hand
And bounding on, and smiling — fair and bland —
In her Sunday best.
Straight she was told. She fainted at the news,
But rallied, and was able to refuse
Help to her home.
There she sat waiting all day — with a look —
A look of joy, it seemed, if none mistook . . .
But he did not come.
Time flew: her husband kept him absent still,
And by slow slips the woman pined, until,
Grown thin, she died —
Of grief at loss of him, some would aver,
But how could that be? They anyway buried her
By her mother’s side.
And by the grave stood, at the funeral,
A tall man, elderly and grave withal;
Gossip grew grim:
He was the same one who had been seen before;
He paid, in cash, all owing; and no more
Was heard of him.
At the pulling down of her house, decayed and old,
Many years after, was the true tale told
By an ancient swain.
The tall man was the father of the wife.
He had beguiled her mother in maiden life,
And to cover her stain,
Induced to wive her one in his service bred,
Who brought her daughter up as his till wed.
— This the girl knew,
But hid it close, to save her mother’s name,
Even from her seaman spouse, and ruined her fame
With him, though true.
THROWING A TREE
NEW FOREST
The two executioners stalk along over the knolls,
Bearing two axes with heavy heads shining and wide,
And a long limp two-handled saw toothed for cutting great boles,
And so they approach the proud tree that bears the death-mark on its side.
Jackets doffed they swing axes and chop away just above ground,
And the chips fly about and lie white on the moss and fallen leaves;
Till a broad deep gash in the bark is hewn all the way round,
And one of them tries to hook upward a rope, which at last he achieves.
The saw then begins, till the top of the tall giant shivers:
The shivers are seen to grow greater each cut than before:
They edge out the saw, tug the rope; but the tree only quivers,
And kneeling and sawing again, they step back to try pulling once more.
Then, lastly, the living mast sways, further sways: with a shout
Job and Ike rush aside. Reached the end of its long staying powers
The tree crashes downward: it shakes all its neighbours throughout,
And two hundred years’ steady growth has been ended in less than two hours.
THE WAR-WIFE OF CATKNOLL
“What crowd is this in Catknoll Street,
Now I am just come home?
What crowd is this in my old street,
That flings me such a glance?
A stretcher — and corpse? A sobering sight
To greet me, when my heart is light
With thoughts of coming cheer to-night
Now I am back from France.”
“O ‘tis a woman, soldier-man,
Who seem to be new come:
O ‘tis a woman, soldier-man,
Found in the river here,
Whither she went and threw her in,
And now they are carrying her within:
She’s drowned herself for a sly sin
Against her husband dear.
“‘A said to me, who knew her well,
‘O why was I so weak!’
‘A said to me, who knew her well,
And have done all her life,
With a downcast face she said to me,
‘O why did I keep company
Wi’ them that practised gallantry,
When vowed a faithful wife!’
“‘O God, I’m driven mad!’ she said,
‘To hear he’s coming back;
I’m fairly driven mad!’ she said:
‘He’s been two years agone,
And now he’ll find me in this state,
And not forgive me. Had but fate
Kept back his coming three months late,
Nothing of it he’d known!’
“We did not think she meant so much,
And said: ‘He may forgive.’
O never we thought she meant so much
As to go doing this.
And now she must be crowned ! — so fair! —
Who drew men’s eyes so everywhere! —
And love-letters beyond compare
For coaxing to a kiss.
“She kept her true a year or more
Against the young men all;
Yes, kept her true a year or more,
And they were most to blame.
There was Will Peach who plays the flute,
And Waywell with the dandy suit,
And Nobb, and Knight. . . . But she’s been mute
As to the father’s name.”
Old English for “there must be a coroner’s inquest over her.”
CONCERNING HIS OLD HOME
Mood I
I wish to see it never —
That dismal place
With cracks in its floor —
I would forget it ever!
Mood II
To see it once, that sad
And memoried place —
Yes, just once more —
I should be faintly glad!
Mood III
To see it often again —
That friendly place
With its green low door —
I’m willing anywhen!
Mood IV
I’ll haunt it night and day —
That loveable place,
With its flowers’ rich store
That drives regret away!
HER SECOND HUSBAND HEARS HER STORY
“Still, Dear, it is incredible to me
That here, alone,
You should have sewed him up until he died,
And in this very bed. I do not see
How you could do it, seeing what might betide.”
“Well, he came home one midnight, liquored deep —
Worse than I’d known —
And lay down heavily, and soundly slept:
Then, desperate driven, I thought of it, to keep
Him from me when he woke. Being an adept
“With needle and thimble, as he snored, click-click
An hour I’d sewn,
Till, had he roused, he couldn’t have moved from bed,
So tightly laced in sheet and quilt and tick
He lay. And in the morning he was dead.
“Ere people came I drew the stitches out,
And thus ‘twas shown
To be a stroke.” — ”It’s a strange tale!” said he.
“And this same bed?” — ”Yes, here it came about.”
“Did you intend his death by your tight lacing?”
“O, that I cannot own.
I could not think of else that would avail
When he should wake up, and attempt embracing.” —
“Well, it’s a cool queer tale!”
YULETIDE IN A YOUNGER WORLD
We believed in highdays then,
And could glimpse at night
On Christmas Eve
Imminent oncomings of radiant revel —
Doings of delight: —
Now we have no such sight.
We had eyes for phantoms then,
And at bridge or stile
On Christmas Eve
Clear beheld those countless ones who had crossed it
Cross again in file: —
Such has ceased longwhile!
We liked divination then,
And, as they homeward wound
On Christmas Eve,
We could read men’s dreams within them spinning
Even as wheels spin round: —
Now we are blinker-bound.
We heard still small voices then,
And, in the dim serene
Of Christmas Eve,
Caught the fartime tones of fire-filled prophets
Long on earth unseen. . . .
— Can such ever have been?
AFTER THE DEATH OF A FRIEND
You died, and made but little of it! —
Why then should I, when called to doff it,
Drop, and renounce this worm-holed raiment,
Shrink edgewise off from its grey claimant?
Rather say, when I am Time-outrun,
As you did: Take me, and have done,
Inexorable, insatiate one!
THE SON’S PORTRAIT
I walked the streets of a market town,
And came to a lumber-shop,
Which I had known ere I met the frown
Of fate and fortune,
And habit led me to stop.
In burrowing mid this chattel and that,
High, low, or edgewise thrown,
I lit upon something lying flat —
A fly-flecked portrait,
Framed. ‘Twas my dead son’s own.
“That photo? . . . A lady — I know not whence —
Sold it me, Ma’am, one day,
With more. You can have it for eighteenpence:
The picture’s nothing;
It’s but for the frame you pay.”
He had given it her in their heyday shine,
When she wedded him, long her wooer:
And then he was sent to the front-trench-line,
And fell there fighting;
And she took a new bridegroom to her.
I bought the gift she had held so light,
And buried it — as ‘twere he. —
Well, well! Such things are trifling, quite,
But when one’s lonely
How cruel they can be!
LYING AWAKE
You, Morningtide Star, now are steady-eyed, over the east,
I know it as if I saw you;
You, Beeches, engrave on the sky your thin twigs, even the least;
Had I paper and pencil I’d draw you.
You, Meadow, are white with your counterpane cover of dew,
I see it as if I were there;
You, Churchyard, are lightening faint from the shade of the yew,
The names creeping out everywhere.
THE LADY IN THE FURS
“I’m a lofty lovely woman,”
Says the lady in the furs,
In the glance she throws around her
On the poorer dames and sirs:
“This robe, that cost three figures,
Yes, is mine,” her nod avers.
“True, my money did not buy it,
But my husband’s, from the trade;
And they, they only got it
From things feeble and afraid
By murdering them in ambush
With a cunning engine’s aid.
“True, my hands, too, did not shape it
To the pretty cut you see,
But the hands of midnight workers
Who are strangers quite to me:
It was fitted, too, by dressers
Ranged around me toilsomely.
“But I am a lovely lady,
Though sneerers say I shine
By robbing Nature’s children
Of apparel not mine,
And that I am but a broom-stick,
Like a scarecrow’s wooden spine.”
CHILDHOOD AMONG THE FERNS
I sat one sprinkling day upon the lea,
Where tall-stemmed ferns spread out luxuriantly,
And nothing but those tall ferns sheltered me.
The rain gained strength, and damped each lopping frond,
Ran down their stalks beside me and beyond,
And shaped slow-creeping rivulets as I conned,
With pride, my spray-roofed house. And though anon
Some drops pierced its green rafters, I sat on,
Making pretence I was not rained upon.
The sun then burst, and brought forth a sweet breath
From the limp ferns as they dried underneath:
I said: “I could live on here thus till death”;
And queried in the green rays as I sate:
“Why should I have to grow to man’s estate,
And this afar-noised World perambulate?”
A COUNTENANCE
Her laugh was not in the middle of her face quite,
As a gay laugh springs,
It was plain she was anxious about some things
I could not trace quite.
Her curls were like fir-cones — piled up, brown —
Or rather like tight-tied sheaves:
It seemed they could never be taken down. . . .
And her lips were too full, some might say:
I did not think so. Anyway,
The shadow her lower one would cast
Was green in hue whenever she passed
Bright sun on midsummer leaves.
Alas, I knew not much of her,
And lost all sight and touch of her!
If otherwise, should I have minded
The shy laugh not in the middle of her mouth quite,
And would my kisses have died of drouth quite
As love became unblinded?
1884.
A POET’S THOUGHT
It sprang up out of him in the dark,
And took on the lightness of a lark:
It went from his chamber along the city strand,
Lingered awhile, then leapt all over the land.
It came back maimed and mangled. And the poet
When he beheld his offspring did not know it:
Yea, verily, since its birth Time’s tongue had tossed to him
Such travesties that his old thought was lost to him.
SILENCES
There is the silence of a copse or croft
When the wind sinks dumb,
And of a belfry-loft
When the tenor after tolling stops its hum.
And there’s the silence of a lonely pond
Where a man was drowned,
Nor nigh nor yond
A newt, frog, toad, to make the merest sound.
But the rapt silence of an empty house
Where oneself was born,
Dwelt, held carouse
With friends, is of all silences most forlorn!
Past are remembered songs and music-strains
Once audible there:
Roof, rafters, panes
Look absent-thoughted, tranced, or locked in prayer.
It seems no power on earth can waken it
Or rouse its rooms,
Or its past permit
The present to stir a torpor like a tomb’s.
; I WATCHED A BLACKBIRD
I watched a blackbird on a budding sycamore
One Easter Day, when sap was stirring twigs to the core;
I saw his tongue, and crocus-coloured bill
Parting and closing as he turned his trill;
Then he flew down, seized on a stem of hay,
And upped to where his building scheme was under way,
As if so sure a nest were never shaped on spray.
A NIGHTMARE, AND THE NEXT THING
On this decline of Christmas Day
The empty street is fogged and blurred:
The house-fronts all seem backwise turned
As if the outer world were spurned:
Voices and songs within are heard,
Whence red rays gleam when fires are stirred,
Upon this nightmare Christmas Day.
The lamps, just lit, begin to outloom
Like dandelion-globes in the gloom;
The stonework, shop-signs, doors, look bald;
Curious crude details seem installed,
And show themselves in their degrees
As they were personalities
Never discerned when the street was bustling
With vehicles, and farmers hustling.
Three clammy casuals wend their way
To the Union House. I hear one say:
“Jimmy, this is a treat! Hay-hay!”
Six laughing mouths, six rows of teeth,
Six radiant pairs of eyes, beneath
Six yellow hats, looking out at the back
Of a waggonette on its slowed-down track
Up the steep street to some gay dance,
Suddenly interrupt my glance.
They do not see a gray nightmare
Astride the day, or anywhere.