Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated)

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Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) Page 769

by Thomas Hardy


  And he sat by the fire last Fall,

  And mother stood by sighing;

  But I’m not afraid at all!”

  THE DREAM IS - WHICH?

  I am laughing by the brook with her,

  Splashed in its tumbling stir;

  And then it is a blankness looms

  As if I walked not there,

  Nor she, but found me in haggard rooms,

  And treading a lonely stair.

  With radiant cheeks and rapid eyes

  We sit where none espies;

  Till a harsh change comes edging in

  As no such scene were there,

  But winter, and I were bent and thin,

  And cinder-gray my hair.

  We dance in heys around the hall,

  Weightless as thistleball;

  And then a curtain drops between,

  As if I danced not there,

  But wandered through a mounded green

  To find her, I knew where.

  March 1913.

  THE COUNTRY WEDDING

  (A FIDDLER’S STORY)

  Little fogs were gathered in every hollow,

  But the purple hillocks enjoyed fine weather

  As we marched with our fiddles over the heather

  - How it comes back! - to their wedding that day.

  Our getting there brought our neighbours and all, O!

  Till, two and two, the couples stood ready.

  And her father said: “Souls, for God’s sake, be steady!”

  And we strung up our fiddles, and sounded out “A.”

  The groomsman he stared, and said, “You must follow!”

  But we’d gone to fiddle in front of the party,

  (Our feelings as friends being true and hearty)

  And fiddle in front we did - all the way.

  Yes, from their door by Mill-tail-Shallow,

  And up Styles-Lane, and by Front-Street houses,

  Where stood maids, bachelors, and spouses,

  Who cheered the songs that we knew how to play.

  I bowed the treble before her father,

  Michael the tenor in front of the lady,

  The bass-viol Reub - and right well played he! -

  The serpent Jim; ay, to church and back.

  I thought the bridegroom was flurried rather,

  As we kept up the tune outside the chancel,

  While they were swearing things none can cancel

  Inside the walls to our drumstick’s whack.

  “Too gay!” she pleaded. “Clouds may gather,

  And sorrow come.” But she gave in, laughing,

  And by supper-time when we’d got to the quaffing

  Her fears were forgot, and her smiles weren’t slack.

  A grand wedding ‘twas! And what would follow

  We never thought. Or that we should have buried her

  On the same day with the man that married her,

  A day like the first, half hazy, half clear.

  Yes: little fogs were in every hollow,

  Though the purple hillocks enjoyed fine weather,

  When we went to play ‘em to church together,

  And carried ‘em there in an after year.

  FIRST OR LAST

  (SONG)

  If grief come early

  Joy comes late,

  If joy come early

  Grief will wait;

  Aye, my dear and tender!

  Wise ones joy them early

  While the cheeks are red,

  Banish grief till surly

  Time has dulled their dread.

  And joy being ours

  Ere youth has flown,

  The later hours

  May find us gone;

  Aye, my dear and tender!

  LONELY DAYS

  Lonely her fate was,

  Environed from sight

  In the house where the gate was

  Past finding at night.

  None there to share it,

  No one to tell:

  Long she’d to bear it,

  And bore it well.

  Elsewhere just so she

  Spent many a day;

  Wishing to go she

  Continued to stay.

  And people without

  Basked warm in the air,

  But none sought her out,

  Or knew she was there.

  Even birthdays were passed so,

  Sunny and shady:

  Years did it last so

  For this sad lady.

  Never declaring it,

  No one to tell,

  Still she kept bearing it -

  Bore it well.

  The days grew chillier,

  And then she went

  To a city, familiar

  In years forespent,

  When she walked gaily

  Far to and fro,

  But now, moving frailly,

  Could nowhere go.

  The cheerful colour

  Of houses she’d known

  Had died to a duller

  And dingier tone.

  Streets were now noisy

  Where once had rolled

  A few quiet coaches,

  Or citizens strolled.

  Through the party-wall

  Of the memoried spot

  They danced at a ball

  Who recalled her not.

  Tramlines lay crossing

  Once gravelled slopes,

  Metal rods clanked,

  And electric ropes.

  So she endured it all,

  Thin, thinner wrought,

  Until time cured it all,

  And she knew nought.

  Versified from a Diary.

  Versified from a Diary.

  WHAT DID IT MEAN?

  What did it mean that noontide, when

  You bade me pluck the flower

  Within the other woman’s bower,

  Whom I knew nought of then?

  I thought the flower blushed deeplier - aye,

  And as I drew its stalk to me

  It seemed to breathe: “I am, I see,

  Made use of in a human play.”

  And while I plucked, upstarted sheer

  As phantom from the pane thereby

  A corpse-like countenance, with eye

  That iced me by its baleful peer -

  Silent, as from a bier . . .

  When I came back your face had changed,

  It was no face for me;

  O did it speak of hearts estranged,

  And deadly rivalry

  In times before

  I darked your door,

  To seise me of

  Mere second love,

  Which still the haunting first deranged?

  AT THE DINNER-TABLE

  I sat at dinner in my prime,

  And glimpsed my face in the sideboard-glass,

  And started as if I had seen a crime,

  And prayed the ghastly show might pass.

  Wrenched wrinkled features met my sight,

  Grinning back to me as my own;

  I well-nigh fainted with affright

  At finding me a haggard crone.

  My husband laughed. He had slily set

  A warping mirror there, in whim

  To startle me. My eyes grew wet;

  I spoke not all the eve to him.

  He was sorry, he said, for what he had done,

  And took away the distorting glass,

  Uncovering the accustomed one;

  And so it ended? No, alas,

  Fifty years later, when he died,

  I sat me in the selfsame chair,

  Thinking of him. Till, weary-eyed,

  I saw the sideboard facing there;

  And from its mirror looked the lean

  Thing I’d become, each wrinkle and score

  The image of me that I had seen

  In jest there fifty years before.

  THE MARBLE TABLET

  There it stands, though alas, what a
little of her

  Shows in its cold white look!

  Not her glance, glide, or smile; not a tittle of her

  Voice like the purl of a brook;

  Not her thoughts, that you read like a book.

  It may stand for her once in November

  When first she breathed, witless of all;

  Or in heavy years she would remember

  When circumstance held her in thrall;

  Or at last, when she answered her call!

  Nothing more. The still marble, date-graven,

  Gives all that it can, tersely lined;

  That one has at length found the haven

  Which every one other will find;

  With silence on what shone behind.

  St. Juliot: September 8, 1916.

  THE MASTER AND THE LEAVES

  I

  We are budding, Master, budding,

  We of your favourite tree;

  March drought and April flooding

  Arouse us merrily,

  Our stemlets newly studding;

  And yet you do not see!

  II

  We are fully woven for summer

  In stuff of limpest green,

  The twitterer and the hummer

  Here rest of nights, unseen,

  While like a long-roll drummer

  The nightjar thrills the treen.

  III

  We are turning yellow, Master,

  And next we are turning red,

  And faster then and faster

  Shall seek our rooty bed,

  All wasted in disaster!

  But you lift not your head.

  IV

  - “I mark your early going,

  And that you’ll soon be clay,

  I have seen your summer showing

  As in my youthful day;

  But why I seem unknowing

  Is too sunk in to say!”

  1917.

  LAST WORDS TO A DUMB FRIEND

  Pet was never mourned as you,

  Purrer of the spotless hue,

  Plumy tail, and wistful gaze

  While you humoured our queer ways,

  Or outshrilled your morning call

  Up the stairs and through the hall -

  Foot suspended in its fall -

  While, expectant, you would stand

  Arched, to meet the stroking hand;

  Till your way you chose to wend

  Yonder, to your tragic end.

  Never another pet for me!

  Let your place all vacant be;

  Better blankness day by day

  Than companion torn away.

  Better bid his memory fade,

  Better blot each mark he made,

  Selfishly escape distress

  By contrived forgetfulness,

  Than preserve his prints to make

  Every morn and eve an ache.

  From the chair whereon he sat

  Sweep his fur, nor wince thereat;

  Rake his little pathways out

  Mid the bushes roundabout;

  Smooth away his talons’ mark

  From the claw-worn pine-tree bark,

  Where he climbed as dusk embrowned,

  Waiting us who loitered round.

  Strange it is this speechless thing,

  Subject to our mastering,

  Subject for his life and food

  To our gift, and time, and mood;

  Timid pensioner of us Powers,

  His existence ruled by ours,

  Should - by crossing at a breath

  Into safe and shielded death,

  By the merely taking hence

  Of his insignificance -

  Loom as largened to the sense,

  Shape as part, above man’s will,

  Of the Imperturbable.

  As a prisoner, flight debarred,

  Exercising in a yard,

  Still retain I, troubled, shaken,

  Mean estate, by him forsaken;

  And this home, which scarcely took

  Impress from his little look,

  By his faring to the Dim

  Grows all eloquent of him.

  Housemate, I can think you still

  Bounding to the window-sill,

  Over which I vaguely see

  Your small mound beneath the tree,

  Showing in the autumn shade

  That you moulder where you played.

  October 2, 1904.

  A DRIZZLING EASTER MORNING

  And he is risen? Well, be it so . . .

  And still the pensive lands complain,

  And dead men wait as long ago,

  As if, much doubting, they would know

  What they are ransomed from, before

  They pass again their sheltering door.

  I stand amid them in the rain,

  While blusters vex the yew and vane;

  And on the road the weary wain

  Plods forward, laden heavily;

  And toilers with their aches are fain

  For endless rest - though risen is he.

  ON ONE WHO LIVED AND DIED WHERE HE WAS BORN

  When a night in November

  Blew forth its bleared airs

  An infant descended

  His birth-chamber stairs

  For the very first time,

  At the still, midnight chime;

  All unapprehended

  His mission, his aim. -

  Thus, first, one November,

  An infant descended

  The stairs.

  On a night in November

  Of weariful cares,

  A frail aged figure

  Ascended those stairs

  For the very last time:

  All gone his life’s prime,

  All vanished his vigour,

  And fine, forceful frame:

  Thus, last, one November

  Ascended that figure

  Upstairs.

  On those nights in November -

  Apart eighty years -

  The babe and the bent one

  Who traversed those stairs

  From the early first time

  To the last feeble climb -

  That fresh and that spent one -

  Were even the same:

  Yea, who passed in November

  As infant, as bent one,

  Those stairs.

  Wise child of November!

  From birth to blanched hairs

  Descending, ascending,

  Wealth-wantless, those stairs;

  Who saw quick in time

  As a vain pantomime

  Life’s tending, its ending,

  The worth of its fame.

  Wise child of November,

  Descending, ascending

  Those stairs!

  THE SECOND NIGHT

  (BALLAD)

  I missed one night, but the next I went;

  It was gusty above, and clear;

  She was there, with the look of one ill-content,

  And said: “Do not come near!”

  - “I am sorry last night to have failed you here,

  And now I have travelled all day;

  And it’s long rowing back to the West-Hoe Pier,

  So brief must be my stay.”

  - “O man of mystery, why not say

  Out plain to me all you mean?

  Why you missed last night, and must now away

  Is - another has come between!”

  - “ O woman so mocking in mood and mien,

  So be it!” I replied:

  “And if I am due at a differing scene

  Before the dark has died,

  “‘Tis that, unresting, to wander wide

  Has ever been my plight,

  And at least I have met you at Cremyll side

  If not last eve, to-night.”

  - “You get small rest - that read I quite;

  And so do I, maybe;

  Though there’s a rest hid safe from sight


  Elsewhere awaiting me!”

  A mad star crossed the sky to the sea,

  Wasting in sparks as it streamed,

  And when I looked to where stood she

  She had changed, much changed, it seemed:

  The sparks of the star in her pupils gleamed,

  She was vague as a vapour now,

  And ere of its meaning I had dreamed

  She’d vanished - I knew not how.

  I stood on, long; each cliff-top bough,

  Like a cynic nodding there,

  Moved up and down, though no man’s brow

  But mine met the wayward air.

  Still stood I, wholly unaware

  Of what had come to pass,

  Or had brought the secret of my new Fair

  To my old Love, alas!

  I went down then by crag and grass

  To the boat wherein I had come.

  Said the man with the oars: “This news of the lass

  Of Edgcumbe, is sharp for some!

  “Yes: found this daybreak, stiff and numb

  On the shore here, whither she’d sped

  To meet her lover last night in the glum,

  And he came not, ‘tis said.

  “And she leapt down, heart-hit. Pity she’s dead:

  So much for the faithful-bent!” . . .

  I looked, and again a star overhead

  Shot through the firmament.

  SHE WHO SAW NOT

  ”Did you see something within the house

  That made me call you before the red sunsetting?

  Something that all this common scene endows

  With a richened impress there can be no forgetting?”

  ” - I have found nothing to see therein,

  O Sage, that should have made you urge me to enter,

  Nothing to fire the soul, or the sense to win:

  I rate you as a rare misrepresenter!”

  ” - Go anew, Lady, - in by the right . . .

 

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