Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)

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Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) Page 790

by Thomas Hardy


  And trots along the eastern road

  Where elms stand double-lined.

  She clacks the first dim kissing-gate

  Beneath the storm-strained trees,

  And passes to the second mead

  That fringes Mellstock Leaze.

  She swings the second kissing-gate

  Next the gray garden-wall,

  And sees the third mead stretching down

  Towards the waterfall.

  And now the third-placed kissing-gate

  Her silent shadow nears,

  And touches with; when suddenly

  Her person disappears.

  What chanced by that third kissing-gate

  When the hushed mead grew dun?

  Lo — two dark figures clasped and closed

  As if they were but one.

  DRINKING SONG

  Once on a time when thought began

  Lived Thales: he

  Was said to see

  Vast truths that mortals seldom can;

  It seems without

  A moment’s doubt

  That everything was made for man.

  Chorus.

  Fill full your cups: feel no distress

  That thoughts so great should now be less!

  Earth mid the sky stood firm and flat,

  He held, till came

  A sage by name

  Copernicus, and righted that.

  We trod, he told,

  A globe that rolled

  Around a sun it warmed it at.

  Chorus.

  Fill full your cups: feel no distress;

  ‘Tis only one great thought the less!

  But still we held, as Time flew by

  And wit increased,

  Ours was, at least,

  The only world whose rank was high:

  Till rumours flew

  From folk who knew

  Of globes galore about the sky.

  Chorus.

  Fill full your cups: fell no distress;

  ‘Tis only one great thought the less!

  And that this earth, our one estate,

  Was no prime ball,

  The best of all,

  But common, mean; indeed, tenth-rate:

  And men, so proud,

  A feeble crowd,

  Unworthy any special fate.

  Chorus.

  Fill full your cups: feel no distress;

  ‘Tis only one great thought the less!

  Then rose one Hume, who could not see,

  If earth were such,

  Required were much

  To prove no miracles could be:

  “Better believe

  The eyes deceive

  Than that God’s clockwork jolts,” said he.

  Chorus.

  Fill full your cups: feel no distress;

  ‘Tis only one great thought the less!

  Next this strange message Darwin brings,

  (Though saying his say

  In a quiet way);

  We all are one with creeping things;

  And apes and men

  Blood-brethren,

  And likewise reptile forms with stings.

  Chorus.

  Fill full your cups: feel no distress;

  ‘Tis only one great thought the less!

  And when this philosoph had done

  Came Doctor Cheyne:

  Speaking plain he

  Proved no virgin bore a son.

  “Such tale, indeed,

  Helps not our creed,”

  He said. “A tale long known to none.”

  Chorus.

  Fill full your cups: feel no distress;

  ‘Tis only one great thought the less!

  And now comes Einstein with a notion —

  Not yet quite clear

  To many here —

  That’s there’s no time, no space, no motion,

  Nor rathe nor late,

  Nor square nor straight,

  But just a sort of bending-ocean.

  Chorus.

  Fill full your cups: feel no distress;

  ‘Tis only one great thought the less!

  So here we are, in piteous case:

  Like butterflies

  Of many dyes

  Upon an Alpine glacier’s face:

  To fly and cower

  In some warm bower

  Our chief concern in such a place.

  Chorus.

  Fill full your cups: feel no distress

  At all our great thoughts shrinking less:

  We’ll do a good deed nevertheless!

  THE TARRYING BRIDEGROOM

  Wildly bound the bells this morning

  For the glad solemnity;

  People are adorning

  Chancel and canopy;

  But amid the peal a warning

  Under-echo calls to me.

  Where the lane divides the pasture

  Long I watch each bend and stone,

  Why not now as last year,

  When he sought me — lone?

  Come, O come, and see, and cast here

  Light and love on one your own!

  How it used to draw him to me,

  When I piped a pretty tune;

  Yes, when first he knew me

  In my pink shalloon:

  Little I guessed ‘twould so undo me

  Lacking him this summer noon!

  THE DESTINED PAIR

  Two beings were drifting

  Each one to the other:

  No moment’s veil-lifting

  Or hint from another

  Led either to weet

  That the tracks of their feet

  Were arcs that would meet.

  One moved in a city,

  And one in a village,

  Where many a ditty

  He tongued when at tillage

  On dreams of a dim

  Figure fancy would limn

  That was viewless to him.

  Would Fate have been kinder

  To keep night between them? —

  Had he failed to find her

  And time never seen them

  Unite; so that, caught

  In no burning love-thought,

  She had faded unsought?

  A MUSICAL INCIDENT

  When I see the room it hurts me

  As with a pricking blade,

  Those women being the memoried reason why my cheer deserts me. —

  ‘Twas thus. One of them played

  To please her friend, not knowing

  That friend was speedily growing,

  Behind the player’s chair,

  Somnolent, unaware

  Of any music there.

  I saw it, and it distressed me,

  For I had begun to think

  I loved the drowsy listener, when this arose to test me

  And tug me from love’s brink.

  “Beautiful!” said she, waking

  As the music ceased. “Heart-aching!”

  Though never a note she’d heard

  To judge of as averred —

  Save that of the very last word.

  All would have faded in me,

  But that the sleeper brought

  News a week thence that her friend was dead. It stirred within me

  Sense of injustice wrought

  That dead player’s poor intent —

  So heartily, kindly meant —

  As blandly added the sigher:

  “How glad I am I was nigh her,

  To hear her last tune!” — ”Liar!”

  I lipped. — This gave love pause,

  And killed it, such as it was.

  JUNE LEAVES AND AUTUMN

  I

  Lush summer lit the trees to green;

  But in the ditch hard by

  Lay dying boughs some hand unseen

  Had lopped when first with festal mien

  They matched their mates on high.

  It seemed a melancholy fate

  That leaves but broug
ht to birth so late

  Should rust there, red and numb,

  In quickened fall, while all their race

  Still joyed aloft in pride of place

  With store of days to come.

  II

  At autumn-end I fared that way,

  And traced those boughs fore-hewn

  Whose leaves, awaiting their decay

  In slowly browning shades, still lay

  Where they had lain in June

  And now, no less embrowned and curst

  Than if they had fallen with the first,

  Nor known a morning more,

  Lay there alongside, dun and sere,

  Those that at my last wandering here

  Had length of days in store.

  November 19, 1898.

  NO BELL-RINGING

  A BALLAD OF DURNOVER

  The little boy legged on through the dark,

  To hear the New-Year’s ringing:

  The three-mile road was empty, stark,

  No sound or echo bringing.

  When he got to the tall church tower

  Standing upon the hill,

  Although it was hard on the midnight hour

  The place was, as elsewhere, still;

  Except that the flag-staff rope, betossed

  By blasts from the nor’-east,

  Like a dead man’s bones on a gibbet-post

  Tugged as to be released.

  “Why is there no ringing to-night?”

  Said the boy to a moveless one

  On a tombstone where the moon struck white;

  But he got answer none.

  “No ringing in of New Year’s Day.”

  He mused as he dragged back home;

  And wondered till his head was gray

  Why the bells that night were dumb.

  And often thought of the snowy shape

  That sat on the moonlit stone,

  Nor spoke nor moved, and in mien and drape

  Seemed like a sprite thereon.

  And then he met one left of the band

  That had treble-bobbed when young,

  And said: “I never could understand

  Why, that night, no bells rung.”

  “True. There’d not happened such a thing

  For half a century; aye,

  And never I’ve told why they did not ring

  From that time till to-day. . . .

  “Through the week in bliss at The Hit or Miss

  We had drunk — not a penny left;

  What then we did — well, now ‘tis hid, —

  But better we’d stooped to theft!

  “Yet, since none other remains who can,

  And few more years are mine,

  I may tell you,” said the cramped old man.

  “We — swilled the Sacrament-wine.

  “Then each set-to with the strength of two,

  Every man to his bell;

  But something was wrong we found ere long

  Though what, we could not tell.

  “We pulled till the sweat-drops fell around,

  As we’d never pulled before,

  An hour by the clock, but not one sound

  Came down through the bell-loft floor.

  “On the morrow all folk of the same thing spoke,

  They had stood at the midnight time

  On their doorsteps near with a listening ear,

  But there reached them never a chime.

  “We then could read the dye of our deed,

  And we knew we were accurst;

  But we broke to none the thing we had done,

  And since then never durst.”

  An old tavern now demolished. The full legend over the door ran, “Hit or Miss: Luck’s All!”

  I LOOKED BACK

  I looked back as I left the house,

  And, past the chimneys and neighbour tree,

  The moon upsidled through the boughs: —

  I thought: “I shall a last time see

  This picture; when will that time be?”

  I paused amid the laugh-loud feast,

  And selfward said: “I am sitting where,

  Some night, when ancient songs have ceased,

  ‘Now is the last time I shall share

  Such cheer,’” will be the thought I bear.

  An eye-sweep back at a look-out corner

  Upon a hill, as forenight wore,

  Stirred me to think: “Ought I to warn her

  That, though I come here times three-score,

  One day ‘twill be I come no more?”

  Anon I reasoned there had been,

  Ere quite forsaken was each spot,

  Bygones whereon I’d lastly seen

  That house, that feast, that maid forgot;

  But when? — Ah, I remembered not!

  THE AGED NEWSPAPER SOLILOQUIZES

  Yes; yes; I am old. In me appears

  The history of a hundred years;

  Empires’, kings’, captives’, births and deaths,

  Strange faiths, and fleeting shibboleths.

  — Tragedy, comedy, throngs my page

  Beyond all mummed on any stage:

  Cold hearts beat hot, hot hearts beat cold,

  And I beat on. Yes; yes; I am old.

  CHRISTMAS: 1 “Peace upon earth!” was said. We sing it,

  And pay a million priests to bring it.

  After two thousand years of mass

  We’ve got as far as poison-gas.

  1924.

  THE SINGLE WITNESS

  “Did no one else, then, see them, man,

  Lying among the whin?

  Did no one else, behold them at all

  Commit this shameless sin,

  But you, in the hollow of the down

  No traveller’s eye takes in?”

  “Nobody else, my noble lord,

  Saw them together there —

  Your young son’s tutor and she. I made

  A short cut from the fair,

  And lit on them. I’ve said no word

  About it anywhere.”

  “Good. . . . Now, you see my father’s sword,

  Hanging up in your view;

  No hand has swung it since he came

  Home after Waterloo.

  I’ll show it you. . . . There is the sword:

  And this is what I’ll do.”

  He ran the other through the breast,

  Ere he could plead or cry.

  “It is a dire necessity,

  But — since no one was nigh

  Save you and they, my historied name

  Must not be smirched thereby.”

  HOW SHE WENT TO IRELAND

  Dora’s gone to Ireland

  Through the sleet and snow:

  Promptly she has gone there

  In a ship, although

  Why she’s gone to Ireland

  Dora does not know.

  That was where, yea, Ireland,

  Dora wished to be:

  When she felt, in lone times,

  Shoots of misery,

  Often there, in Ireland,

  Dora wished to be.

  Hence she’s gone to Ireland,

  Since she meant to go,

  Through the drift and darkness

  Onward labouring, though

  That she’s gone to Ireland

  Dora does not know.

  DEAD WESSEX THE DOG TO THE HOUSEHOLD

  Do you think of me at all,

  Wistful ones?

  Do you think of me at all

  As if nigh?

  Do you think of me at all

  At the creep of evenfall,

  Or when the sky-birds call

  As they fly?

  Do you look for me at times,

  Wistful ones?

  Do you look for me at times

  Strained and still?

  Do you look for me at times,

  When the hour for walking chimes,

  On that grassy path that climbs


  Up the hill?

  You may hear a jump or trot,

  Wistful ones,

  You may hear a jump or trot —

  Mine, as ‘twere —

  You may hear a jump or trot

  On the stair or path or plot;

  But I shall cause it not,

  Be not there.

  Should you call as when I knew you,

  Wistful ones,

  Should you call as when I knew you,

  Shared your home;

  Should you call as when I knew you,

  I shall not turn to view you,

  I shall not listen to you,

  Shall not come.

  THE WOMAN WHO WENT EAST

  “Where is that woman of the west,

  Good Sir, once friends with me,

  In rays of her own rareness drest,

  And fired by sunset from the sea?

  Yes, she — once friends with me.”

  “ — She went to sojourn in the east,

  O stranger Dame, one day;

  Her own west land she reckoned least

  Of all lands, with its weird old way,

  So left it, Dame, one day:

  “Doubtless they prized her marvellous mould

  At its right worth elsewhere,

  Yea, Dame, and kept her shrined in gold,

  So speaking, as one past compare;

  Aye, prized her worth elsewhere!”

  — ”Must, must I then a story tell,

  Old native, here to you,

  Of peradventures that befel

  Her eastward — shape it as ‘twere new,

  Old native, here to you?

  “O unforgotten day long back,

  When, wilful, east she sped

  From you with her new Love. Alack,

  Her lips would still be ripe and red

 

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