Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)

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Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) Page 752

by Thomas Hardy


  Where is she now, O;

  Climbing the brow, O,

  Of hills I see?

  Yes, she is nearing,

  Nearing, nearing,

  Weather unfearing

  To come to me.

  Near is she now, O,

  Now, and now, O;

  Milk the rich cow, O,

  Forward the tea;

  Shake the down bed for her,

  Linen sheets spread for her,

  Drape round the head for her

  Coming to me.

  Lalage’s coming,

  She’s nearer now, O,

  End anyhow, O,

  To-day’s husbandry!

  Would a gilt chair were mine,

  Slippers of vair were mine,

  Brushes for hair were mine

  Of ivory!

  What will she think, O,

  She who’s so comely,

  Viewing how homely

  A sort are we!

  Nothing resplendent,

  No prompt attendant,

  Not one dependent

  Pertaining to me!

  Lalage’s coming;

  Where is she now, O?

  Fain I’d avow, O,

  Full honestly

  Nought here’s enough for her,

  All is too rough for her,

  Even my love for her

  Poor in degree.

  She’s nearer now, O,

  Still nearer now, O,

  She ‘tis, I vow, O,

  Passing the lea.

  Rush down to meet her there,

  Call out and greet her there,

  Never a sweeter there

  Crossed to me!

  Lalage’s come; aye,

  Come is she now, O! . . .

  Does Heaven allow, O,

  A meeting to be?

  Yes, she is here now,

  Here now, here now,

  Nothing to fear now,

  Here’s Lalage!

  BEFORE KNOWLEDGE

  When I walked roseless tracks and wide,

  Ere dawned your date for meeting me,

  O why did you not cry Halloo

  Across the stretch between, and say:

  “We move, while years as yet divide,

  On closing lines which — though it be

  You know me not nor I know you -

  Will intersect and join some day!”

  Then well I had borne

  Each scraping thorn;

  But the winters froze,

  And grew no rose;

  No bridge bestrode

  The gap at all;

  No shape you showed,

  And I heard no call!

  THE BLINDED BIRD

  So zestfully canst thou sing?

  And all this indignity,

  With God’s consent, on thee!

  Blinded ere yet a-wing

  By the red-hot needle thou,

  I stand and wonder how

  So zestfully thou canst sing!

  Resenting not such wrong,

  Thy grievous pain forgot,

  Eternal dark thy lot,

  Groping thy whole life long;

  After that stab of fire;

  Enjailed in pitiless wire;

  Resenting not such wrong!

  Who hath charity? This bird.

  Who suffereth long and is kind,

  Is not provoked, though blind

  And alive ensepulchred?

  Who hopeth, endureth all things?

  Who thinketh no evil, but sings?

  Who is divine? This bird.

  THE WIND BLEW WORDS

  The wind blew words along the skies,

  And these it blew to me

  Through the wide dusk: “Lift up your eyes,

  Behold this troubled tree,

  Complaining as it sways and plies;

  It is a limb of thee.

  “Yea, too, the creatures sheltering round -

  Dumb figures, wild and tame,

  Yea, too, thy fellows who abound -

  Either of speech the same

  Or far and strange — black, dwarfed, and browned,

  They are stuff of thy own frame.”

  I moved on in a surging awe

  Of inarticulateness

  At the pathetic Me I saw

  In all his huge distress,

  Making self-slaughter of the law

  To kill, break, or suppress.

  THE FADED FACE

  How was this I did not see

  Such a look as here was shown

  Ere its womanhood had blown

  Past its first felicity? -

  That I did not know you young,

  Faded Face,

  Know you young!

  Why did Time so ill bestead

  That I heard no voice of yours

  Hail from out the curved contours

  Of those lips when rosy red;

  Weeted not the songs they sung,

  Faded Face,

  Songs they sung!

  By these blanchings, blooms of old,

  And the relics of your voice -

  Leavings rare of rich and choice

  From your early tone and mould -

  Let me mourn, — aye, sorrow-wrung,

  Faded Face,

  Sorrow-wrung!

  THE RIDDLE

  I

  Stretching eyes west

  Over the sea,

  Wind foul or fair,

  Always stood she

  Prospect-impressed;

  Solely out there

  Did her gaze rest,

  Never elsewhere

  Seemed charm to be.

  II

  Always eyes east

  Ponders she now -

  As in devotion -

  Hills of blank brow

  Where no waves plough.

  Never the least

  Room for emotion

  Drawn from the ocean

  Does she allow.

  THE DUEL

  ”I am here to time, you see;

  The glade is well-screened — eh? — against alarm;

  Fit place to vindicate by my arm

  The honour of my spotless wife,

  Who scorns your libel upon her life

  In boasting intimacy!

  ”‘All hush-offerings you’ll spurn,

  My husband. Two must come; one only go,’

  She said. ‘That he’ll be you I know;

  To faith like ours Heaven will be just,

  And I shall abide in fullest trust

  Your speedy glad return.’“

  ”Good. Here am also I;

  And we’ll proceed without more waste of words

  To warm your cockpit. Of the swords

  Take you your choice. I shall thereby

  Feel that on me no blame can lie,

  Whatever Fate accords.”

  So stripped they there, and fought,

  And the swords clicked and scraped, and the onsets sped;

  Till the husband fell; and his shirt was red

  With streams from his heart’s hot cistern. Nought

  Could save him now; and the other, wrought

  Maybe to pity, said:

  ”Why did you urge on this?

  Your wife assured you; and ‘t had better been

  That you had let things pass, serene

  In confidence of long-tried bliss,

  Holding there could be nought amiss

  In what my words might mean.”

  Then, seeing nor ruth nor rage

  Could move his foeman more — now Death’s deaf thrall -

  He wiped his steel, and, with a call

  Like turtledove to dove, swift broke

  Into the copse, where under an oak

  His horse cropt, held by a page.

  ”All’s over, Sweet,” he cried

  To the wife, thus guised; for the young page was she.

  ”‘Tis as we hoped and said ‘t would be.

  He never guessed . . . We mount and rid
e

  To where our love can reign uneyed.

  He’s clay, and we are free.”

  AT MAYFAIR LODGINGS

  How could I be aware,

  The opposite window eyeing

  As I lay listless there,

  That through its blinds was dying

  One I had rated rare

  Before I had set me sighing

  For another more fair?

  Had the house-front been glass,

  My vision unobscuring,

  Could aught have come to pass

  More happiness-insuring

  To her, loved as a lass

  When spouseless, all-alluring?

  I reckon not, alas!

  So, the square window stood,

  Steadily night-long shining

  In my close neighbourhood,

  Who looked forth undivining

  That soon would go for good

  One there in pain reclining,

  Unpardoned, unadieu’d.

  Silently screened from view

  Her tragedy was ending

  That need not have come due

  Had she been less unbending.

  How near, near were we two

  At that last vital rending, -

  And neither of us knew!

  TO MY FATHER’S VIOLIN

  Does he want you down there

  In the Nether Glooms where

  The hours may be a dragging load upon him,

  As he hears the axle grind

  Round and round

  Of the great world, in the blind

  Still profound

  Of the night-time? He might liven at the sound

  Of your string, revealing you had not forgone him.

  In the gallery west the nave,

  But a few yards from his grave,

  Did you, tucked beneath his chin, to his bowing

  Guide the homely harmony

  Of the quire

  Who for long years strenuously -

  Son and sire -

  Caught the strains that at his fingering low or higher

  From your four thin threads and eff-holes came outflowing.

  And, too, what merry tunes

  He would bow at nights or noons

  That chanced to find him bent to lute a measure,

  When he made you speak his heart

  As in dream,

  Without book or music-chart,

  On some theme

  Elusive as a jack-o’-lanthorn’s gleam,

  And the psalm of duty shelved for trill of pleasure.

  Well, you can not, alas,

  The barrier overpass

  That screens him in those Mournful Meads hereunder,

  Where no fiddling can be heard

  In the glades

  Of silentness, no bird

  Thrills the shades;

  Where no viol is touched for songs or serenades,

  No bowing wakes a congregation’s wonder.

  He must do without you now,

  Stir you no more anyhow

  To yearning concords taught you in your glory;

  While, your strings a tangled wreck,

  Once smart drawn,

  Ten worm-wounds in your neck,

  Purflings wan

  With dust-hoar, here alone I sadly con

  Your present dumbness, shape your olden story.

  1916.

  THE STATUE OF LIBERTY

  This statue of Liberty, busy man,

  Here erect in the city square,

  I have watched while your scrubbings, this early morning,

  Strangely wistful,

  And half tristful,

  Have turned her from foul to fair;

  With your bucket of water, and mop, and brush,

  Bringing her out of the grime

  That has smeared her during the smokes of winter

  With such glumness

  In her dumbness,

  And aged her before her time.

  You have washed her down with motherly care -

  Head, shoulders, arm, and foot,

  To the very hem of the robes that drape her -

  All expertly

  And alertly,

  Till a long stream, black with soot,

  Flows over the pavement to the road,

  And her shape looms pure as snow:

  I read you are hired by the City guardians -

  May be yearly,

  Or once merely -

  To treat the statues so?

  ”Oh, I’m not hired by the Councilmen

  To cleanse the statues here.

  I do this one as a self-willed duty,

  Not as paid to,

  Or at all made to,

  But because the doing is dear.”

  Ah, then I hail you brother and friend!

  Liberty’s knight divine.

  What you have done would have been my doing,

  Yea, most verily,

  Well, and thoroughly,

  Had but your courage been mine!

  ”Oh I care not for Liberty’s mould,

  Liberty charms not me;

  What’s Freedom but an idler’s vision,

  Vain, pernicious,

  Often vicious,

  Of things that cannot be!

  ”Memory it is that brings me to this -

  Of a daughter — my one sweet own.

  She grew a famous carver’s model,

  One of the fairest

  And of the rarest:-

  She sat for the figure as shown.

  ”But alas, she died in this distant place

  Before I was warned to betake

  Myself to her side! . . . And in love of my darling,

  In love of the fame of her,

  And the good name of her,

  I do this for her sake.”

  Answer I gave not. Of that form

  The carver was I at his side;

  His child, my model, held so saintly,

  Grand in feature,

  Gross in nature,

  In the dens of vice had died.

  THE BACKGROUND AND THE FIGURE

  (Lover’s Ditty)

  I think of the slope where the rabbits fed,

  Of the periwinks’ rockwork lair,

  Of the fuchsias ringing their bells of red -

  And the something else seen there.

  Between the blooms where the sod basked bright,

  By the bobbing fuchsia trees,

  Was another and yet more eyesome sight -

  The sight that richened these.

  I shall seek those beauties in the spring,

  When the days are fit and fair,

  But only as foils to the one more thing

  That also will flower there!

  THE CHANGE

  Out of the past there rises a week -

  Who shall read the years O! -

  Out of the past there rises a week

  Enringed with a purple zone.

  Out of the past there rises a week

  When thoughts were strung too thick to speak,

  And the magic of its lineaments remains with me alone.

  In that week there was heard a singing -

  Who shall spell the years, the years! -

  In that week there was heard a singing,

  And the white owl wondered why.

  In that week, yea, a voice was ringing,

  And forth from the casement were candles flinging

  Radiance that fell on the deodar and lit up the path thereby.

  Could that song have a mocking note? -

  Who shall unroll the years O! -

  Could that song have a mocking note

  To the white owl’s sense as it fell?

  Could that song have a mocking note

  As it trilled out warm from the singer’s throat,

  And who was the mocker and who the mocked when two felt all was well?

  In a tedious trampling crowd yet later -

  Who shall bare the years, the years!
-

  In a tedious trampling crowd yet later,

  When silvery singings were dumb;

  In a crowd uncaring what time might fate her,

  Mid murks of night I stood to await her,

  And the twanging of iron wheels gave out the signal that she was

  come.

  She said with a travel-tired smile -

  Who shall lift the years O! -

  She said with a travel-tired smile,

  Half scared by scene so strange;

  She said, outworn by mile on mile,

  The blurred lamps wanning her face the while,

  “O Love, I am here; I am with you!” . . . Ah, that there should have

  come a change!

  O the doom by someone spoken -

  Who shall unseal the years, the years! -

  O the doom that gave no token,

  When nothing of bale saw we:

  O the doom by someone spoken,

  O the heart by someone broken,

  The heart whose sweet reverberances are all time leaves to me.

  Jan.-Feb. 1913.

  SITTING ON THE BRIDGE

  (Echo of an old song)

  Sitting on the bridge

  Past the barracks, town and ridge,

  At once the spirit seized us

  To sing a song that pleased us -

  As “The Fifth” were much in rumour;

  It was “Whilst I’m in the humour,

  Take me, Paddy, will you now?”

  And a lancer soon drew nigh,

  And his Royal Irish eye

  Said, “Willing, faith, am I,

  O, to take you anyhow, dears,

  To take you anyhow.”

  But, lo! — dad walking by,

  Cried, “What, you lightheels! Fie!

  Is this the way you roam

  And mock the sunset gleam?”

  And he marched us straightway home,

  Though we said, “We are only, daddy,

  Singing, ‘Will you take me, Paddy?’“

  — Well, we never saw from then

  If we sang there anywhen,

  The soldier dear again,

  Except at night in dream-time,

  Except at night in dream.

 

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