Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)

by Thomas Hardy

  ‘Tis May morning,

  All-adorning,

  No cloud warning

  Of rain to-day.

  Where shall I go to,

  Go to, go to? -

  Can I say No to

  Lyonnesse-way?

  Well - what reason

  Now at this season

  Is there for treason

  To other shrines?

  Tristram is not there,

  Isolt forgot there,

  New eras blot there

  Sought-for signs!

  Stratford-on-Avon -

  Poesy-paven -

  I’ll find a haven

  There, somehow! -

  Nay - I’m but caught of

  Dreams long thought of,

  The Swan knows nought of

  His Avon now!

  What shall it be, then,

  I go to see, then,

  Under the plea, then,

  Of votary?

  I’ll go to Lakeland,

  Lakeland, Lakeland,

  Certainly Lakeland

  Let it be.

  But - why to that place,

  That place, that place,

  Such a hard come-at place

  Need I fare?

  When its bard cheers no more,

  Loves no more, fears no more,

  Sees no more, hears no more

  Anything there!

  Ah, there is Scotland,

  Burns’s Scotland,

  And Waverley’s. To what land

  Better can I hie? -

  Yet - if no whit now

  Feel those of it now -

  Care not a bit now

  For it - why I?

  I’ll seek a town street,

  Aye, a brick-brown street,

  Quite a tumbledown street,

  Drawing no eyes.

  For a Mary dwelt there,

  And a Percy felt there

  Heart of him melt there,

  A Claire likewise.

  Why incline to that city,

  Such a city, that city,

  Now a mud-bespat city! -

  Care the lovers who

  Now live and walk there,

  Sit there and talk there,

  Buy there, or hawk there,

  Or wed, or woo?

  Laughters in a volley

  Greet so fond a folly

  As nursing melancholy

  In this and that spot,

  Which, with most endeavour,

  Those can visit never,

  But for ever and ever

  Will now know not!

  If, on lawns Elysian,

  With a broadened vision

  And a faint derision

  Conscious be they,

  How they might reprove me

  That these fancies move me,

  Think they ill behoove me,

  Smile, and say:

  “What! - our hoar old houses,

  Where the past dead-drowses,

  Nor a child nor spouse is

  Of our name at all?

  Such abodes to care for,

  Inquire about and bear for,

  And suffer wear and tear for -

  How weak of you and small!”

  May 1921.

  AN EXPERIENCE

  Wit, weight, or wealth there was not

  In anything that was said,

  In anything that was done;

  All was of scope to cause not

  A triumph, dazzle, or dread

  To even the subtlest one,

  My friend,

  To even the subtlest one.

  But there was a new afflation -

  An aura zephyring round,

  That care infected not:

  It came as a salutation,

  And, in my sweet astound,

  I scarcely witted what

  Might pend,

  I scarcely witted what.

  The hills in samewise to me

  Spoke, as they grayly gazed,

  - First hills to speak so yet!

  The thin-edged breezes blew me

  What I, though cobwebbed, crazed,

  Was never to forget,

  My friend,

  Was never to forget!

  THE BEAUTY

  O do not praise my beauty more,

  In such word-wild degree,

  And say I am one all eyes adore;

  For these things harass me!

  But do for ever softly say:

  ”From now unto the end

  Come weal, come wanzing, come what may,

  Dear, I will be your friend.”

  I hate my beauty in the glass:

  My beauty is not I:

  I wear it: none cares whether, alas,

  Its wearer live or die!

  The inner I O care for, then,

  Yea, me and what I am,

  And shall be at the gray hour when

  My cheek begins to clam.

  Note. - “The Regent Street beauty, Miss Verrey, the Swiss confectioner’s daughter, whose personal attractions have been so mischievously exaggerated, died of fever on Monday evening, brought on by the annoyance she had been for some time subject to.” - London paper, October 1828.

  THE COLLECTOR CLEANS HIS PICTURE

  Fili hominis, ecce ego tollo a te desiderabile oculorum tuorom in plaga. - EZECH. xxiv. 16.

  How I remember cleaning that strange picture!

  I had been deep in duty for my sick neighbour -

  His besides my own - over several Sundays,

  Often, too, in the week; so with parish pressures,

  Baptisms, burials, doctorings, conjugal counsel -

  All the whatnots asked of a rural parson -

  Faith, I was well-nigh broken, should have been fully

  Saving for one small secret relaxation,

  One that in mounting manhood had grown my hobby.

  This was to delve at whiles for easel-lumber,

  Stowed in the backmost slums of a soon-reached city,

  Merely on chance to uncloak some worthy canvas,

  Panel, or plaque, blacked blind by uncouth adventure,

  Yet under all concealing a precious art-feat.

  Such I had found not yet. My latest capture

  Came from the rooms of a trader in ancient house-gear

  Who had no scent of beauty or soul for brushcraft.

  Only a tittle cost it - murked with grime-films,

  Gatherings of slow years, thick-varnished over,

  Never a feature manifest of man’s painting.

  So, one Saturday, time ticking hard on midnight

  Ere an hour subserved, I set me upon it.

  Long with coiled-up sleeves I cleaned and yet cleaned,

  Till a first fresh spot, a high light, looked forth,

  Then another, like fair flesh, and another;

  Then a curve, a nostril, and next a finger,

  Tapering, shapely, significantly pointing slantwise.

  “Flemish?” I said. “Nay, Spanish . . . But, nay, Italian!”

  - Then meseemed it the guise of the ranker Venus,

  Named of some Astarte, of some Cotytto.

  Down I knelt before it and kissed the panel,

  Drunk with the lure of love’s inhibited dreamings.

  Till the dawn I rubbed, when there gazed up at me

  A hag, that had slowly emerged from under my hands there,

  Pointing the slanted finger towards a bosom

  Eaten away of a rot from the lusts of a lifetime . . .

  - I could have ended myself in heart-shook horror.

  Stunned I sat till roused by a clear-voiced bell-chime,

  Fresh and sweet as the dew-fleece under my luthern.

  It was the matin service calling to me

  From the adjacent steeple.

  THE WOOD FIRE

  (A FRAGMENT)

  “This is a brightsome blaze you’ve lit good friend, to-night!”

  “ - Aye, it has been the bleakest spring I have felt for
years,

  And nought compares with cloven logs to keep alight:

  I buy them bargain-cheap of the executioners,

  As I dwell near; and they wanted the crosses out of sight

  By Passover, not to affront the eyes of visitors.

  “Yes, they’re from the crucifixions last week-ending

  At Kranion. We can sometimes use the poles again,

  But they get split by the nails, and ‘tis quicker work than mending

  To knock together new; though the uprights now and then

  Serve twice when they’re let stand. But if a feast’s impending,

  As lately, you’ve to tidy up for the corners’ ken.

  “Though only three were impaled, you may know it didn’t pass off

  So quietly as was wont? That Galilee carpenter’s son

  Who boasted he was king, incensed the rabble to scoff:

  I heard the noise from my garden. This piece is the one he was on . . .

  Yes, it blazes up well if lit with a few dry chips and shroff;

  And it’s worthless for much else, what with cuts and stains thereon.”

  SAYING GOOD-BYE

  (SONG)

  We are always saying

  ”Good-bye, good-bye!”

  In work, in playing,

  In gloom, in gaying:

  At many a stage

  Of pilgrimage

  From youth to age

  We say, “Good-bye,

  Good-bye!”

  We are undiscerning

  Which go to sigh,

  Which will be yearning

  For soon returning;

  And which no more

  Will dark our door,

  Or tread our shore,

  But go to die,

  To die.

  Some come from roaming

  With joy again;

  Some, who come homing

  By stealth at gloaming,

  Had better have stopped

  Till death, and dropped

  By strange hands propped,

  Than come so fain,

  So fain.

  So, with this saying,

  ”Good-bye, good-bye,”

  We speed their waying

  Without betraying

  Our grief, our fear

  No more to hear

  From them, close, clear,

  Again: “Good-bye,

  Good-bye!”

  ON THE TUNE CALLED THE OLD-HUNDRED-AND-FOURTH

  We never sang together

  Ravenscroft’s terse old tune

  On Sundays or on weekdays,

  In sharp or summer weather,

  At night-time or at noon.

  Why did we never sing it,

  Why never so incline

  On Sundays or on weekdays,

  Even when soft wafts would wing it

  From your far floor to mine?

  Shall we that tune, then, never

  Stand voicing side by side

  On Sundays or on weekdays? . . .

  Or shall we, when for ever

  In Sheol we abide,

  Sing it in desolation,

  As we might long have done

  On Sundays or on weekdays

  With love and exultation

  Before our sands had run?

  THE OPPORTUNITY

  (FOR H. P.)

  Forty springs back, I recall,

  We met at this phase of the Maytime:

  We might have clung close through all,

  But we parted when died that daytime.

  We parted with smallest regret;

  Perhaps should have cared but slightly,

  Just then, if we never had met:

  Strange, strange that we lived so lightly!

  Had we mused a little space

  At that critical date in the Maytime,

  One life had been ours, one place,

  Perhaps, till our long cold daytime.

  - This is a bitter thing

  For thee, O man: what ails it?

  The tide of chance may bring

  Its offer; but nought avails it!

  EVELYN G. OF CHRISTMINSTER

  I can see the towers

  In mind quite clear

  Not many hours’

  Faring from here;

  But how up and go,

  And briskly bear

  Thither, and know

  That are not there?

  Though the birds sing small,

  And apple and pear

  On your trees by the wall

  Are ripe and rare,

  Though none excel them,

  I have no care

  To taste them or smell them

  And you not there.

  Though the College stones

  Are smit with the sun,

  And the graduates and Dons

  Who held you as one

  Of brightest brow

  Still think as they did,

  Why haunt with them now

  Your candle is hid?

  Towards the river

  A pealing swells:

  They cost me a quiver -

  Those prayerful bells!

  How go to God,

  Who can reprove

  With so heavy a rod

  As your swift remove!

  The chorded keys

  Wait all in a row,

  And the bellows wheeze

  As long ago.

  And the psalter lingers,

  And organist’s chair;

  But where are your fingers

  That once wagged there?

  Shall I then seek

  That desert place

  This or next week,

  And those tracks trace

  That fill me with cark

  And cloy; nowhere

  Being movement or mark

  Of you now there!

  THE RIFT

  (SONG: Minor Mode)

  ‘Twas just at gnat and cobweb-time,

  When yellow begins to show in the leaf,

  That your old gamut changed its chime

  From those true tones - of span so brief! -

  That met my beats of joy, of grief,

  As rhyme meets rhyme.

  So sank I from my high sublime!

  We faced but chancewise after that,

  And never I knew or guessed my crime. . .

  Yes; ‘twas the date - or nigh thereat -

  Of the yellowing leaf; at moth and gnat

  And cobweb-time.

  VOICES FROM THINGS GROWING IN A CHURCHYARD

  These flowers are I, poor Fanny Hurd,

  Sir or Madam,

  A little girl here sepultured.

  Once I flit-fluttered like a bird

  Above the grass, as now I wave

  In daisy shapes above my grave,

  All day cheerily,

  All night eerily!

  - I am one Bachelor Bowring, “Gent,”

  Sir or Madam;

  In shingled oak my bones were pent;

  Hence more than a hundred years I spent

  In my feat of change from a coffin-thrall

  To a dancer in green as leaves on a wall.

  All day cheerily,

  All night eerily!

  - I, these berries of juice and gloss,

  Sir or Madam,

  Am clean forgotten as Thomas Voss;

  Thin-urned, I have burrowed away from the moss

  That covers my sod, and have entered this yew,

  And turned to clusters ruddy of view,

  All day cheerily,

  All night eerily!

  - The Lady Gertrude, proud, high-bred,

  Sir or Madam,

  Am I - this laurel that shades your head;

  Into its veins I have stilly sped,

  And made them of me; and my leaves now shine,

  As did my satins superfine,

  All day cheerily,

  All night eerily!

  - I, who as innocent withwind climb,

  Sir
or Madam.

  Am one Eve Greensleeves, in olden time

  Kissed by men from many a clime,

  Beneath sun, stars, in blaze, in breeze,

  As now by glowworms and by bees,

  All day cheerily,

  All night eerily!

  - I’m old Squire Audeley Grey, who grew,

  Sir or Madam,

  Aweary of life, and in scorn withdrew;

  Till anon I clambered up anew

  As ivy-green, when my ache was stayed,

  And in that attire I have longtime gayed

  All day cheerily,

  All night eerily!

  - And so they breathe, these masks, to each

  Sir or Madam

  Who lingers there, and their lively speech

  Affords an interpreter much to teach,

  As their murmurous accents seem to come

  Thence hitheraround in a radiant hum,

  All day cheerily,

  All night eerily!

  ON THE WAY

  The trees fret fitfully and twist,

  Shutters rattle and carpets heave,

  Slime is the dust of yestereve,

  And in the streaming mist

  Fishes might seem to fin a passage if they list.

  But to his feet,

  Drawing nigh and nigher

  A hidden seat,

  The fog is sweet

  And the wind a lyre.

  A vacant sameness grays the sky,

  A moisture gathers on each knop

  Of the bramble, rounding to a drop,

  That greets the goer-by

  With the cold listless lustre of a dead man’s eye.

  But to her sight,

  Drawing nigh and nigher

  Its deep delight,

  The fog is bright

  And the wind a lyre.

  SHE DID NOT TURN

  She did not turn,

  But passed foot-faint with averted head

  In her gown of green, by the bobbing fern,

  Though I leaned over the gate that led

  From where we waited with table spread;

  But she did not turn:

  Why was she near there if love had fled?