Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)

by Thomas Hardy

  When we were young — they cannot be -

  These shapes that now bereave and bleed us?

  They are not those who used to feed us, -

  For would they not fair terms concede us?

  - If hearts can house such treachery

  They are not those who used to feed us

  When we were young — they cannot be!

  WINTER IN DURNOVER FIELD

  SCENE. — A wide stretch of fallow ground recently sown with wheat, and frozen to iron hardness. Three large birds walking about thereon, and wistfully eyeing the surface. Wind keen from north-east: sky a dull grey.

  (TRIOLET)

  Rook. — Throughout the field I find no grain;

  The cruel frost encrusts the cornland!

  Starling. — Aye: patient pecking now is vain

  Throughout the field, I find . . .

  Rook. — No grain!

  Pigeon. — Nor will be, comrade, till it rain,

  Or genial thawings loose the lorn land

  Throughout the field.

  Rook. — I find no grain:

  The cruel frost encrusts the cornland!

  THE LAST CHRYSANTHEMUM

  Why should this flower delay so long

  To show its tremulous plumes?

  Now is the time of plaintive robin-song,

  When flowers are in their tombs.

  Through the slow summer, when the sun

  Called to each frond and whorl

  That all he could for flowers was being done,

  Why did it not uncurl?

  It must have felt that fervid call

  Although it took no heed,

  Waking but now, when leaves like corpses fall,

  And saps all retrocede.

  Too late its beauty, lonely thing,

  The season’s shine is spent,

  Nothing remains for it but shivering

  In tempests turbulent.

  Had it a reason for delay,

  Dreaming in witlessness

  That for a bloom so delicately gay

  Winter would stay its stress?

  - I talk as if the thing were born

  With sense to work its mind;

  Yet it is but one mask of many worn

  By the Great Face behind.

  THE DARKLING THRUSH

  I leant upon a coppice gate

  When Frost was spectre-gray,

  And Winter’s dregs made desolate

  The weakening eye of day.

  The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

  Like strings from broken lyres,

  And all mankind that haunted nigh

  Had sought their household fires.

  The land’s sharp features seemed to be

  The Century’s corpse outleant,

  His crypt the cloudy canopy,

  The wind his death-lament.

  The ancient pulse of germ and birth

  Was shrunken hard and dry,

  And every spirit upon earth

  Seemed fervourless as I.

  At once a voice outburst among

  The bleak twigs overhead

  In a full-hearted evensong

  Of joy illimited;

  An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

  In blast-beruffled plume,

  Had chosen thus to fling his soul

  Upon the growing gloom.

  So little cause for carollings

  Of such ecstatic sound

  Was written on terrestrial things

  Afar or nigh around,

  That I could think there trembled through

  His happy good-night air

  Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

  And I was unaware.

  December 1900.

  THE COMET AT YALBURY OR YELL’HAM

  I

  It bends far over Yell’ham Plain,

  And we, from Yell’ham Height,

  Stand and regard its fiery train,

  So soon to swim from sight.

  II

  It will return long years hence, when

  As now its strange swift shine

  Will fall on Yell’ham; but not then

  On that sweet form of thine.

  MAD JUDY

  When the hamlet hailed a birth

  Judy used to cry:

  When she heard our christening mirth

  She would kneel and sigh.

  She was crazed, we knew, and we

  Humoured her infirmity.

  When the daughters and the sons

  Gathered them to wed,

  And we like-intending ones

  Danced till dawn was red,

  She would rock and mutter, “More

  Comers to this stony shore!”

  When old Headsman Death laid hands

  On a babe or twain,

  She would feast, and by her brands

  Sing her songs again.

  What she liked we let her do,

  Judy was insane, we knew.

  A WASTED ILLNESS

  Through vaults of pain,

  Enribbed and wrought with groins of ghastliness,

  I passed, and garish spectres moved my brain

  To dire distress.

  And hammerings,

  And quakes, and shoots, and stifling hotness, blent

  With webby waxing things and waning things

  As on I went.

  ”Where lies the end

  To this foul way?” I asked with weakening breath.

  Thereon ahead I saw a door extend -

  The door to death.

  It loomed more clear:

  “At last!” I cried. “The all-delivering door!”

  And then, I knew not how, it grew less near

  Than theretofore.

  And back slid I

  Along the galleries by which I came,

  And tediously the day returned, and sky,

  And life — the same.

  And all was well:

  Old circumstance resumed its former show,

  And on my head the dews of comfort fell

  As ere my woe.

  I roam anew,

  Scarce conscious of my late distress . . . And yet

  Those backward steps through pain I cannot view

  Without regret.

  For that dire train

  Of waxing shapes and waning, passed before,

  And those grim aisles, must be traversed again

  To reach that door.

  A MAN (IN MEMORY OF H. OF M.)

  I

  In Casterbridge there stood a noble pile,

  Wrought with pilaster, bay, and balustrade

  In tactful times when shrewd Eliza swayed. -

  On burgher, squire, and clown

  It smiled the long street down for near a mile

  II

  But evil days beset that domicile;

  The stately beauties of its roof and wall

  Passed into sordid hands. Condemned to fall

  Were cornice, quoin, and cove,

  And all that art had wove in antique style.

  III

  Among the hired dismantlers entered there

  One till the moment of his task untold.

  When charged therewith he gazed, and answered bold:

  ”Be needy I or no,

  I will not help lay low a house so fair!

  IV

  “Hunger is hard. But since the terms be such -

  No wage, or labour stained with the disgrace

  Of wrecking what our age cannot replace

  To save its tasteless soul -

  I’ll do without your dole. Life is not much!

  V

  Dismissed with sneers he backed his tools and went,

  And wandered workless; for it seemed unwise

  To close with one who dared to criticize

  And carp on points of taste:

  To work where they were placed rude men were meant.

  VI

  Years whiled. He aged, sank, sickened, and wa
s not:

  And it was said, “A man intractable

  And curst is gone.” None sighed to hear his knell,

  None sought his churchyard-place;

  His name, his rugged face, were soon forgot.

  VII

  The stones of that fair hall lie far and wide,

  And but a few recall its ancient mould;

  Yet when I pass the spot I long to hold

  As truth what fancy saith:

  “His protest lives where deathless things abide!”

  THE DAME OF ATHELHALL

  I

  “Soul! Shall I see thy face,” she said,

  ”In one brief hour?

  And away with thee from a loveless bed

  To a far-off sun, to a vine-wrapt bower,

  And be thine own unseparated,

  And challenge the world’s white glower?

  II

  She quickened her feet, and met him where

  They had predesigned:

  And they clasped, and mounted, and cleft the air

  Upon whirling wheels; till the will to bind

  Her life with his made the moments there

  Efface the years behind.

  III

  Miles slid, and the sight of the port upgrew

  As they sped on;

  When slipping its bond the bracelet flew

  From her fondled arm. Replaced anon,

  Its cameo of the abjured one drew

  Her musings thereupon.

  IV

  The gaud with his image once had been

  A gift from him:

  And so it was that its carving keen

  Refurbished memories wearing dim,

  Which set in her soul a throe of teen,

  And a tear on her lashes’ brim.

  V

  “I may not go!” she at length upspake,

  ”Thoughts call me back -

  I would still lose all for your dear, dear sake;

  My heart is thine, friend! But my track

  I home to Athelhall must take

  To hinder household wrack!”

  VI

  He appealed. But they parted, weak and wan:

  And he left the shore;

  His ship diminished, was low, was gone;

  And she heard in the waves as the daytide wore,

  And read in the leer of the sun that shone,

  That they parted for evermore.

  VII

  She homed as she came, at the dip of eve

  On Athel Coomb

  Regaining the Hall she had sworn to leave . . .

  The house was soundless as a tomb,

  And she entered her chamber, there to grieve

  Lone, kneeling, in the gloom.

  VIII

  From the lawn without rose her husband’s voice

  To one his friend:

  “Another her Love, another my choice,

  Her going is good. Our conditions mend;

  In a change of mates we shall both rejoice;

  I hoped that it thus might end!

  IX

  “A quick divorce; she will make him hers,

  And I wed mine.

  So Time rights all things in long, long years -

  Or rather she, by her bold design!

  I admire a woman no balk deters:

  She has blessed my life, in fine.

  X

  “I shall build new rooms for my new true bride,

  Let the bygone be:

  By now, no doubt, she has crossed the tide

  With the man to her mind. Far happier she

  In some warm vineland by his side

  Than ever she was with me.”

  THE SEASONS OF HER YEAR

  I

  Winter is white on turf and tree,

  And birds are fled;

  But summer songsters pipe to me,

  And petals spread,

  For what I dreamt of secretly

  His lips have said!

  II

  O ‘tis a fine May morn, they say,

  And blooms have blown;

  But wild and wintry is my day,

  My birds make moan;

  For he who vowed leaves me to pay

  Alone — alone!

  THE MILKMAID

  Under a daisied bank

  There stands a rich red ruminating cow,

  And hard against her flank

  A cotton-hooded milkmaid bends her brow.

  The flowery river-ooze

  Upheaves and falls; the milk purrs in the pail;

  Few pilgrims but would choose

  The peace of such a life in such a vale.

  The maid breathes words — to vent,

  It seems, her sense of Nature’s scenery,

  Of whose life, sentiment,

  And essence, very part itself is she.

  She bends a glance of pain,

  And, at a moment, lets escape a tear;

  Is it that passing train,

  Whose alien whirr offends her country ear? -

  Nay! Phyllis does not dwell

  On visual and familiar things like these;

  What moves her is the spell

  Of inner themes and inner poetries:

  Could but by Sunday morn

  Her gay new gown come, meads might dry to dun,

  Trains shriek till ears were torn,

  If Fred would not prefer that Other One.

  THE LEVELLED CHURCHYARD

  “O passenger, pray list and catch

  Our sighs and piteous groans,

  Half stifled in this jumbled patch

  Of wrenched memorial stones!

  “We late-lamented, resting here,

  Are mixed to human jam,

  And each to each exclaims in fear,

  ’I know not which I am!’

  “The wicked people have annexed

  The verses on the good;

  A roaring drunkard sports the text

  Teetotal Tommy should!

  “Where we are huddled none can trace,

  And if our names remain,

  They pave some path or p-ing place

  Where we have never lain!

  “There’s not a modest maiden elf

  But dreads the final Trumpet,

  Lest half of her should rise herself,

  And half some local strumpet!

  “From restorations of Thy fane,

  From smoothings of Thy sward,

  From zealous Churchmen’s pick and plane

  Deliver us O Lord! Amen!”

  1882.

  THE RUINED MAID

  “O ‘Melia, my dear, this does everything crown!

  Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town?

  And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?” -

  “O didn’t you know I’d been ruined?” said she.

  - “You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks,

  Tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks;

  And now you’ve gay bracelets and bright feathers three!” -

  “Yes: that’s how we dress when we’re ruined,” said she.

  - “At home in the barton you said ‘thee’ and ‘thou,’

  And ‘thik oon,’ and ‘theas oon,’ and ‘t’other’; but now

  Your talking quite fits ‘ee for high compa-ny!” -

  “Some polish is gained with one’s ruin,” said she.

  - “Your hands were like paws then, your face blue and bleak,

  But now I’m bewitched by your delicate cheek,

  And your little gloves fit as on any la-dy!” -

  “We never do work when we’re ruined,” said she.

  - “You used to call home-life a hag-ridden dream,

  And you’d sigh, and you’d sock; but at present you seem

  To know not of megrims or melancho-ly!” -

  “True. There’s an advantage in ruin,” said she.

  - “I wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown,

  And a delicate
face, and could strut about Town!” -

  “My dear — a raw country girl, such as you be,

  Isn’t equal to that. You ain’t ruined,” said she.

  WESTBOURNE PARK VILLAS, 1866

  THE RESPECTABLE BURGHER ON “THE HIGHER CRITICISM”

  Since Reverend Doctors now declare

  That clerks and people must prepare

  To doubt if Adam ever were;

  To hold the flood a local scare;

  To argue, though the stolid stare,

  That everything had happened ere

  The prophets to its happening sware;

  That David was no giant-slayer,

  Nor one to call a God-obeyer

  In certain details we could spare,

  But rather was a debonair

  Shrewd bandit, skilled as banjo-player:

  That Solomon sang the fleshly Fair,

  And gave the Church no thought whate’er;

  That Esther with her royal wear,

  And Mordecai, the son of Jair,

  And Joshua’s triumphs, Job’s despair,

  And Balaam’s ass’s bitter blare;

  Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace-flare,

  And Daniel and the den affair,

  And other stories rich and rare,

  Were writ to make old doctrine wear

  Something of a romantic air:

  That the Nain widow’s only heir,

  And Lazarus with cadaverous glare

  (As done in oils by Piombo’s care)

  Did not return from Sheol’s lair:

  That Jael set a fiendish snare,

  That Pontius Pilate acted square,