Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)
Page 790
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