by Thomas Hardy
But, compelled to heed, I again looked furtive-wise
Till the flame had eaten her breasts, and mouth, and hair.
“Thank God, she is out of it now!” I said at last,
In a great relief of heart when the thing was done
That had set my soul aghast,
And nothing was left of the picture unsheathed from the past
But the ashen ghost of the card it had figured on.
She was a woman long hid amid packs of years,
She might have been living or dead; she was lost to my sight,
And the deed that had nigh drawn tears
Was done in a casual clearance of life’s arrears;
But I felt as if I had put her to death that night! . . .
* * *
- Well; she knew nothing thereof did she survive,
And suffered nothing if numbered among the dead;
Yet — yet — if on earth alive
Did she feel a smart, and with vague strange anguish strive?
If in heaven, did she smile at me sadly and shake her head?
ON A HEATH
I could hear a gown-skirt rustling
Before I could see her shape,
Rustling through the heather
That wove the common’s drape,
On that evening of dark weather
When I hearkened, lips agape.
And the town-shine in the distance
Did but baffle here the sight,
And then a voice flew forward:
Dear, is’t you? I fear the night!”
And the herons flapped to norward
In the firs upon my right.
There was another looming
Whose life we did not see;
There was one stilly blooming
Full nigh to where walked we;
There was a shade entombing
All that was bright of me.
AN ANNIVERSARY
It was at the very date to which we have come,
In the month of the matching name,
When, at a like minute, the sun had upswum,
Its couch-time at night being the same.
And the same path stretched here that people now follow,
And the same stile crossed their way,
And beyond the same green hillock and hollow
The same horizon lay;
And the same man pilgrims now hereby who pilgrimed here that day.
Let so much be said of the date-day’s sameness;
But the tree that neighbours the track,
And stoops like a pedlar afflicted with lameness,
Knew of no sogged wound or windcrack.
And the joints of that wall were not enshrouded
With mosses of many tones,
And the garth up afar was not overcrowded
With a multitude of white stones,
And the man’s eyes then were not so sunk that you saw the socket-
bones.
KINGSTON-MAURWARD EWELEASE.
BY THE RUNIC STONE
(Two who became a story)
By the Runic Stone
They sat, where the grass sloped down,
And chattered, he white-hatted, she in brown,
Pink-faced, breeze-blown.
Rapt there alone
In the transport of talking so
In such a place, there was nothing to let them know
What hours had flown.
And the die thrown
By them heedlessly there, the dent
It was to cut in their encompassment,
Were, too, unknown.
It might have strown
Their zest with qualms to see,
As in a glass, Time toss their history
From zone to zone!
THE PINK FROCK
“O my pretty pink frock,
I sha’n’t be able to wear it!
Why is he dying just now?
I hardly can bear it!
“He might have contrived to live on;
But they say there’s no hope whatever:
And must I shut myself up,
And go out never?
“O my pretty pink frock,
Puff-sleeved and accordion-pleated!
He might have passed in July,
And not so cheated!”
TRANSFORMATIONS
Portion of this yew
Is a man my grandsire knew,
Bosomed here at its foot:
This branch may be his wife,
A ruddy human life
Now turned to a green shoot.
These grasses must be made
Of her who often prayed,
Last century, for repose;
And the fair girl long ago
Whom I often tried to know
May be entering this rose.
So, they are not underground,
But as nerves and veins abound
In the growths of upper air,
And they feel the sun and rain,
And the energy again
That made them what they were!
IN HER PRECINCTS
Her house looked cold from the foggy lea,
And the square of each window a dull black blur
Where showed no stir:
Yes, her gloom within at the lack of me
Seemed matching mine at the lack of her.
The black squares grew to be squares of light
As the eyeshade swathed the house and lawn,
And viols gave tone;
There was glee within. And I found that night
The gloom of severance mine alone.
KINGSTON-MAURWARD PARK.
THE LAST SIGNAL
(Oct. 11, 1886)
A MEMORY OF WILLIAM BARNES
Silently I footed by an uphill road
That led from my abode to a spot yew-boughed;
Yellowly the sun sloped low down to westward,
And dark was the east with cloud.
Then, amid the shadow of that livid sad east,
Where the light was least, and a gate stood wide,
Something flashed the fire of the sun that was facing it,
Like a brief blaze on that side.
Looking hard and harder I knew what it meant -
The sudden shine sent from the livid east scene;
It meant the west mirrored by the coffin of my friend there,
Turning to the road from his green,
To take his last journey forth — he who in his prime
Trudged so many a time from that gate athwart the land!
Thus a farewell to me he signalled on his grave-way,
As with a wave of his hand.
WINTERBORNE-CAME PATH.
THE HOUSE OF SILENCE
”That is a quiet place -
That house in the trees with the shady lawn.”
“ — If, child, you knew what there goes on
You would not call it a quiet place.
Why, a phantom abides there, the last of its race,
And a brain spins there till dawn.”
”But I see nobody there, -
Nobody moves about the green,
Or wanders the heavy trees between.”
“ — Ah, that’s because you do not bear
The visioning powers of souls who dare
To pierce the material screen.
”Morning, noon, and night,
Mid those funereal shades that seem
The uncanny scenery of a dream,
Figures dance to a mind with sight,
And music and laughter like floods of light
Make all the precincts gleam.
”It is a poet’s bower,
Through which there pass, in fleet arrays,
Long teams of all the years and days,
Of joys and sorrows, of earth and heaven,
That meet mankind in its ages seven,
An aion in an hour.”
GREAT THINGS
Sweet cyder is a great thing,
A great thing to me,
Spinning down to Weymouth town
By Ridgway thirstily,
And maid and mistress summoning
Who tend the hostelry:
O cyder is a great thing,
A great thing to me!
The dance it is a great thing,
A great thing to me,
With candles lit and partners fit
For night-long revelry;
And going home when day-dawning
Peeps pale upon the lea:
O dancing is a great thing,
A great thing to me!
Love is, yea, a great thing,
A great thing to me,
When, having drawn across the lawn
In darkness silently,
A figure flits like one a-wing
Out from the nearest tree:
O love is, yes, a great thing,
A great thing to me!
Will these be always great things,
Great things to me? . . .
Let it befall that One will call,
”Soul, I have need of thee:”
What then? Joy-jaunts, impassioned flings,
Love, and its ecstasy,
Will always have been great things,
Great things to me!
THE CHIMES
That morning when I trod the town
The twitching chimes of long renown
Played out to me
The sweet Sicilian sailors’ tune,
And I knew not if late or soon
My day would be:
A day of sunshine beryl-bright
And windless; yea, think as I might,
I could not say,
Even to within years’ measure, when
One would be at my side who then
Was far away.
When hard utilitarian times
Had stilled the sweet Saint-Peter’s chimes
I learnt to see
That bale may spring where blisses are,
And one desired might be afar
Though near to me.
THE FIGURE IN THE SCENE
It pleased her to step in front and sit
Where the cragged slope was green,
While I stood back that I might pencil it
With her amid the scene;
Till it gloomed and rained;
But I kept on, despite the drifting wet
That fell and stained
My draught, leaving for curious quizzings yet
The blots engrained.
And thus I drew her there alone,
Seated amid the gauze
Of moisture, hooded, only her outline shown,
With rainfall marked across.
— Soon passed our stay;
Yet her rainy form is the Genius still of the spot,
Immutable, yea,
Though the place now knows her no more, and has known her not
Ever since that day.
From an old note.
WHY DID I SKETCH
Why did I sketch an upland green,
And put the figure in
Of one on the spot with me? -
For now that one has ceased to be seen
The picture waxes akin
To a wordless irony.
If you go drawing on down or cliff
Let no soft curves intrude
Of a woman’s silhouette,
But show the escarpments stark and stiff
As in utter solitude;
So shall you half forget.
Let me sooner pass from sight of the sky
Than again on a thoughtless day
Limn, laugh, and sing, and rhyme
With a woman sitting near, whom I
Paint in for love, and who may
Be called hence in my time!
From an old note.
CONJECTURE
If there were in my kalendar
No Emma, Florence, Mary,
What would be my existence now -
A hermit’s? — wanderer’s weary? -
How should I live, and how
Near would be death, or far?
Could it have been that other eyes
Might have uplit my highway?
That fond, sad, retrospective sight
Would catch from this dim byway
Prized figures different quite
From those that now arise?
With how strange aspect would there creep
The dawn, the night, the daytime,
If memory were not what it is
In song-time, toil, or pray-time. -
O were it else than this,
I’d pass to pulseless sleep!
THE BLOW
That no man schemed it is my hope -
Yea, that it fell by will and scope
Of That Which some enthrone,
And for whose meaning myriads grope.
For I would not that of my kind
There should, of his unbiassed mind,
Have been one known
Who such a stroke could have designed;
Since it would augur works and ways
Below the lowest that man assays
To have hurled that stone
Into the sunshine of our days!
And if it prove that no man did,
And that the Inscrutable, the Hid,
Was cause alone
Of this foul crash our lives amid,
I’ll go in due time, and forget
In some deep graveyard’s oubliette
The thing whereof I groan,
And cease from troubling; thankful yet
Time’s finger should have stretched to show
No aimful author’s was the blow
That swept us prone,
But the Immanent Doer’s That doth not know,
Which in some age unguessed of us
May lift Its blinding incubus,
And see, and own:
“It grieves me I did thus and thus!”
LOVE THE MONOPOLIST
(Young Lover’s Reverie)
The train draws forth from the station-yard,
And with it carries me.
I rise, and stretch out, and regard
The platform left, and see
An airy slim blue form there standing,
And know that it is she.
While with strained vision I watch on,
The figure turns round quite
To greet friends gaily; then is gone . . .
The import may be slight,
But why remained she not hard gazing
Till I was out of sight?
“O do not chat with others there,”
I brood. “They are not I.
O strain your thoughts as if they were
Gold bands between us; eye
All neighbour scenes as so much blankness
Till I again am by!
“A troubled soughing in the breeze
And the sky overhead
Let yourself feel; and shadeful trees,
Ripe corn, and apples red,
Read as things barren and distasteful
While we are separated!
“When I come back uncloak your gloom,
And let in lovely day;
Then the long dark as of the tomb
Can well be thrust away
With sweet things I shall have to practise,
And you will have to say!”
Begun 1871: finished -
AT MIDDLE-FIELD GATE IN FEBRUARY
The bars are thick with drops that show
As they gather themselves from the fog
Like silver buttons ranged in a row,
And as evenly spaced as if measured, although
They fall at the feeblest jog.
They load the leafless hedge hard by,
And the blades of last year’s grass,
While the fallow ploughland turned up nigh
In raw rolls, clammy and clogging lie -
How dry it was on a far-back day
When straws hung the hedge and around,
When amid the sheaves in amorous play
In curtained bonnets and light array
Bloomed a bevy now underground!
BOCKHAMPTON LANE.
THE YOUTH WHO CARRIED A LIGHT
I saw him pass as the new day dawned,
Murmuring some musical phrase;
Horses were drinking and floundering in the pond,
And the tired stars thinned their gaze;
Yet these were not the spectacles at all that he conned,
But an inner one, giving out rays.
Such was the thing in his eye, walking there,
The very and visible thing,
A close light, displacing the gray of the morning air,
And the tokens that the dark was taking wing;
And was it not the radiance of a purpose rare
That might ripe to its accomplishing?
What became of that light? I wonder still its fate!
Was it quenched ere its full apogee?
Did it struggle frail and frailer to a beam emaciate?
Did it thrive till matured in verity?
Or did it travel on, to be a new young dreamer’s freight,
And thence on infinitely?
1915.
THE HEAD ABOVE THE FOG
Something do I see
Above the fog that sheets the mead,
A figure like to life indeed,
Moving along with spectre-speed,
Seen by none but me.
O the vision keen! -
Tripping along to me for love
As in the flesh it used to move,
Only its hat and plume above
The evening fog-fleece seen.
