by Thomas Hardy
There was a dogging figure,
There was a hiss of “Whore!”
There was a flounce at Weir-water
One night upon the moor. . . .
VI
Yet do I haunt there, knowing
By rote each rill’s low pour,
But only a fitful phantom now
Meets me upon the moor.
1899.
THAT MOMENT
The tragedy of that moment
Was deeper than the sea,
When I came in that moment
And heard you speak to me!
What I could not help seeing
Covered life as a blot;
Yes, that which I was seeing,
And knew that you were not
PREMONITIONS
“The bell went heavy to-day
At afternoon service, they say,
And a screech-owl cried in the boughs,
And a raven flew over the house,
And Betty’s old clock with one hand,
That’s worn out, as I understand,
And never goes now, never will,
Struck twelve when the night was dead still,
Just as when my last loss came to me. . . .
Ah! I wonder who next it will be!”
THIS SUMMER AND LAST
Unhappy summer you,
Who do not see
What your yester-summer saw!
Never, never will you be
Its match to me,
Never, never draw
Smiles your forerunner drew,
Know what it knew!
Divine things done and said
Illumined it,
Whose rays crept into corn-brown curls,
Whose breezes heard a humorous wit
Of fancy flit. —
Still the alert brook purls,
Though feet that there would tread
Elsewhere have sped.
So, bran-new summer, you
Will never see
All that yester-summer saw!
Never, never will you be
In memory
Its rival, never draw
Smiles your forerunner drew,
Know what it knew!
1913?
NOTHING MATTERS MUCH
(B. F. L.)
“Nothing matters much,” he said
Of something just befallen unduly:
He, then active, but now dead,
Truly, truly!
He knew the letter of the law
As voiced by those of wig and gown,
Whose slightest syllogistic flaw
He hammered down.
And often would he shape in word
That nothing needed much lamenting;
And she who sat there smiled and heard,
Sadly assenting.
Facing the North Sea now he lies,
Toward the red altar of the East,
The Flamborough roar his psalmodies,
The wind his priest.
And while I think of his bleak bed,
Of Time that builds, of Time that shatters,
Lost to all thought is he, who said
“Nothing much matters.”
IN THE EVENING
IN MEMORIAM FREDERICI TREVES, 1853–1923 (Dorchester Cemetery, Jan. 2, 1924)
In the evening, when the world knew he was dead,
He lay amid the dust and hoar
Of ages; and to a spirit attending said:
“This chalky bed? —
I surely seem to have been here before?”
“O yes. You have been here. You knew the place,
Substanced as you, long ere your call;
And if you cared to do so you might trace
In this gray space
Your being, and the being of men all.”
Thereto said he: “Then why was I called away?
I knew no trouble or discontent:
Why did I not prolong my ancient stay
Herein for aye?”
The spirit shook its head. “None knows: you went.
“And though, perhaps, Time did not sign to you
The need to go, dream-vision sees
How Aesculapius’ phantom hither flew,
With Galen’s, too,
And his of Cos — plague-proof Hippocrates,
“And beckoned you forth, whose skill had read as theirs,
Maybe, had Science chanced to spell
In their day, modern modes to stem despairs
That mankind bears! . . .
Enough. You have returned. And all is well.”
THE SIX BOARDS
Six boards belong to me:
I do not know where they may be;
If growing green, or lying dry
In a cockloft nigh.
Some morning I shall claim them,
And who may then possess will aim them
To bring to me those boards I need
With thoughtful speed.
But though they hurry so
To yield me mine, I shall not know
How well my want they’ll have supplied
When notified.
Those boards and I — how much
In common we, of feel and touch
Shall share thence on, — earth’s far core-quakings,
Hill-shocks, tide-shakings —
Yea, hid where none will note,
The once live tree and man, remote
From mundane hurt as if on Venus, Mars,
Or furthest stars.
BEFORE MY FRIEND ARRIVED
I sat on the eve-lit weir,
Which gurgled in sobs and sighs;
I looked across the meadows near
To the towered church on the rise.
Overmuch cause had my look!
I pulled out pencil and book,
And drew a white chalk mound,
Outthrown on the sepulchred ground.
Why did I pencil that chalk?
It was fetched from the waiting grave,
And would return there soon,
Of one who had stilled his walk
And sought oblivion’s cave.
He was to come on the morrow noon
And take a good rest in the bed so hewn.
He came, and there he is now, although
This was a wondrous while ago.
And the sun still dons a ruddy dye;
The weir still gurgles nigh;
The tower is dark on the sky.
COMPASSION
AN ODE
In Celebration of the Centenary of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals
I
Backward among the dusky years
A lonesome lamp is seen arise,
Lit by a few fain pioneers
Before incredulous eyes. —
We read the legend that it lights:
“Wherefore beholds this land of historied rights
Mild creatures, despot-doomed, bewildered, plead
Their often hunger, thirst, pangs, prisonment,
In deep dumb gaze more eloquent
Than tongues of widest heed?”
II
What was faint-written, read in a breath
In that year — ten times ten away —
A larger louder conscience saith
More sturdily to-day. —
But still those innocents are thralls
To throbless hearts, near, far, that hear no calls
Of honour towards their too-dependent frail,
And from Columbia Cape to Ind we see
How helplessness breeds tyranny
In power above assail.
III
Cries still are heard in secret nooks,
Till hushed with gag or slit or thud;
And hideous dens whereon none looks
Are sprayed with needless blood.
But here, in battlings, patient, slow,
Much has been won — more, maybe, than we know —
&
nbsp; And on we labour hopeful. “Ailinon!”
A mighty voice calls: “But may the good prevail!”
And “Blessed are the merciful!”
Calls a yet mightier one.
January 22, 1924.
WHY SHE MOVED HOUSE
(THE DOG MUSES)
Why she moved house, without a word,
I cannot understand;
She’d mirrors, flowers, she’d book and bird,
And callers in a band.
And where she is she gets no sun,
No flowers, no book, no glass;
Of callers I am the only one.
And I but pause and pass.
TRAGEDIAN TO TRAGEDIENNE
Shall I leave you behind me
When I play
In earnest what we’ve played in mock to-day?
Why, yes; most surely shall I
Leave you behind
In yet full orbit, when my years upwind.
I may creep off in the night-time,
And none know
Till comes the morning, bringing news ‘tis so.
Will you then turn for a moment
White or red,
Recall those spells of ours; things done, things said?
Aye, those adventurous doings
And those days
Of stress, when I’d the blame and you the praise?
Still you will meet adventure —
None knows what —
Still you will go on changing: I shall not.
Still take a call at the mummings
Daily or nightly,
Yielding to custom, calmly, gloomily, brightly.
Last, you will flag, and finish
Your masquings too:
Yes: end them: I not there to succour you.
THE LADY OF FOREBODINGS
“What do you so regret, my lady,
Sitting beside me here?
Are there not days as clear
As this to come — ev’n shaped less shady?”
“O no,” said she. “Come what delight
To you, by voice or pen,
To me will fall such day, such night,
Not, not again!”
The lamps above and round were fair,
The tables were aglee,
As if ‘twould ever be
That we should smile and sit on there.
But yet she said, as though she must,
“Yes: it will soon be gone,
And all its dearness leave but dust
To muse upon.”
THE BIRD-CATCHER’S BOY
“Father, I fear your trade:
Surely it’s wrong!
Little birds limed and made
Captive life-long.
“Larks bruise and bleed in jail,
Trying to rise;
Every caged nightingale
Soon pines and dies.”
“Don’t be a dolt, my boy!
Birds must be caught;
My lot is such employ,
Yours to be taught.
“Soft shallow stuff as that
Out from your head!
Just learn your lessons pat,
Then off to bed.”
Lightless, without a word
Bedwise he fares;
Groping his way is heard
Seek the dark stairs
Through the long passage, where
Hang the caged choirs:
Harp-like his fingers there
Sweep on the wires.
Next day, at dye of dawn,
Freddy was missed:
Whither the boy had gone
Nobody wist.
That week, the next one, whiled:
No news of him:
Weeks up to months were piled:
Hope dwindled dim.
Yet not a single night
Locked they the door,
Waiting, heart-sick, to sight
Freddy once more.
Hopping there long anon
Still the birds hung:
Like those in Babylon
Captive, they sung.
One wintry Christmastide
Both lay awake;
All cheer within them dried,
Each hour an ache.
Then some one seemed to flit
Soft in below;
“Freddy’s come!” Up they sit,
Faces aglow.
Thereat a groping touch
Dragged on the wires
Lightly and softly — much
As they were lyres;
“Just as it used to be
When he came in,
Feeling in darkness the
Stairway to win!”
Waiting a trice or two
Yet, in the gloom,
Both parents pressed into
Freddy’s old room.
There on the empty bed
White the moon shone,
As ever since they’d said,
“Freddy is gone!”
That night at Durdle-Door
Foundered a hoy,
And the tide washed ashore
One sailor boy.
November 21, 1912.
Durdle-Door, a rock on the south coast.
A HURRIED MEETING
It is August moonlight in the tall plantation,
Whose elms, by aged squirrels’ footsteps worn,
Outscreen the noon, and eve, and morn.
On the facing slope a faint irradiation
From a mansion’s marble front is borne,
Mute in its woodland wreathing.
Up here the night-jar whirrs forlorn,
And the trees seem to withhold their softest breathing.
To the moonshade slips a woman in muslin vesture:
Her naked neck the gossamer-web besmears,
And she sweeps it away with a hasty gesture
Again it touches her forehead, her neck, her ears,
Her fingers, the backs of her hands.
She sweeps it away again
Impatiently, and then
She takes no notice; and listens, and sighs, and stands.
The night-hawk stops. A man shows in the obscure:
They meet, and passively kiss,
And he says: “Well, I’ve come quickly. About this —
Is it really so? You are sure?”
“I am sure. In February it will be.
That such a thing should come to me!
We should have known. We should have left off meeting.
Love is a terrible thing: a sweet allure
That ends in heart-outeating!”
“But what shall we do, my Love, and how?”
“You need not call me by that name now.”
Then he more coldly: “What is your suggestion?”
“I’ve told my mother, and she sees a way,
Since of our marriage there can be no question.
We are crossing South — near about New Year’s Day
The event will happen there.
It is the only thing that we can dare
To keep them unaware!”
“Well, you can marry me.”
She shook her head. “No: that can never be.
“‘Twill be brought home as hers. She’s forty-one,
When many a woman’s bearing is not done,
And well might have a son. —
We should have left off specious self-deceiving:
I feared that such might come,
And knowledge struck me numb.
Love is a terrible thing: witching when first begun,
To end in grieving, grieving!”
And with one kiss again the couple parted:
Inferior clearly he; she haughty-hearted.
He watched her down the slope to return to her place.
The marble mansion of her ancient race,
And saw her brush the gossamers from her face
As she emerged from shade to the moonlight ray.
And when she had gone away
The night-jar seemed to imp, and say,
“You should have taken warning:
Love is a terrible thing: sweet for a space,
And then all mourning, mourning!”
DISCOURAGEMENT
To see the Mother, naturing Nature, stand
All racked and wrung by her unfaithful lord,
Her hopes dismayed by his defiling hand,
Her passioned plans for bloom and beauty marred.
Where she would mint a perfect mould, an ill;
Where she would don divinest hues, a stain,
Over her purposed genial hour a chill,
Upon her charm of flawless flesh a blain:
Her loves dependent on a feature’s trim,
A whole life’s circumstance on hap of birth,
A soul’s direction on a body’s whim,
Eternal Heaven upon a day of Earth,
Is frost to flower of heroism and worth,
And fosterer of visions ghast and grim.
Westbourne Park Villas, 1863–7.
(From old MS.)
A LEAVING
Knowing what it bore
I watched the rain-smitten back of the car —
(Brown-curtained, such as the old ones were) —
When it started forth for a journey afar
Into the sullen November air,
And passed the glistening laurels and round the bend.
I have seen many gayer vehicles turn that bend
In autumn, winter, and summer air,
Bearing for journeys near or afar
Many who now are not, but were,
But I don’t forget that rain-smitten car,
Knowing what it bore!
