by Thomas Hardy
We argue them pragmatic cheats. “Aye,” says he. “They’re deceiving:
But I must live; for flamens plead I am all that’s worth believing!”
1920.
FAITHFUL WILSON
“I say she’s handsome, by all laws
Of beauty, if wife ever was!”
Wilson insists thus, though each day
The years fret Fanny towards decay.
“She was once beauteous as a jewel,”
Hint friends; “but Time, of course, is cruel.”
Still Wilson does not quite feel how,
Once fair, she can be different now.
Partly from Strato of Sardis.
GALLANT’S SONG
When the maiden leaves off teasing,
Then the man may leave off pleasing:
Yea, ‘tis sign,
Wet or fine,
She will love him without ceasing
With a love there’s no appeasing.
Is it so?
Ha-ha. Ho!
Nov. 1868.
From an old notebook.
A PHILOSOPHICAL FANTASY
“Milton . . . made God argue.” — Walter Bagehot.
“Well, if thou wilt, then, ask me;
To answer will not task me:
I’ve a response, I doubt not.
And quite agree to flout not
Thy question, if of reason,
Albeit not quite in season:
A universe to marshal,
What god can give but partial
Eye to frail Earth — life-shotten
Ere long, extinct, forgotten! —
But seeing indications
That thou read’st my limitations,
And since my lack of forethought
Aggrieves thy more and more thought,
I’ll hearken to thy pleading:
Some lore may lie in heeding
Thy irregular proceeding.”
“‘Tis this unfulfilled intention,
O Causer, I would mention: —
Will you, in condescension
This evening, ere we’ve parted,
Say why you felt fainthearted,
And let your aim be thwarted,
Its glory be diminished,
Its concept stand unfinished? —
Such I ask you, Sir or Madam,
(I know no more than Adam,
Even vaguely, what your sex is, —
Though feminine I had thought you
Till seers as ‘Sire’ besought you; —
And this my ignorance vexes
Some people not a little,
And, though not me one tittle,
It makes me sometimes choose me
Call you ‘It,’ if you’ll excuse me?”)
“Call me ‘It’ with a good conscience,
And be sure it is all nonsense
That I mind a fault of manner
In a pigmy towards his planner!
Be I, be not I, sexless,
I am in nature vexless.
— How vain must clay-carved man be
To deem such folly can be
As that freaks of my own framing
Can set my visage flaming —
Start me volleying interjections
Against my own confections,
As the Jews and others limned me,
And in fear and trembling hymned me!
Call me ‘but dream-projected,’
I shall not be affected;
Call me ‘blind force persisting,’
I shall remain unlisting;
(A few have done it lately,
And, maybe, err not greatly.)
— Another such a vanity
In witless weak humanity
Is thinking that of those all
Through space at my disposal,
Man’s shape must needs resemble
Mine, that makes zodiacs tremble!
“Continuing where we started: —
As for my aims being thwarted,
Wherefore I feel fainthearted,
Aimless am I, revealing
No heart-scope for faint feeling.
— But thy mistake I’ll pardon,
And, as Adam’s mentioned to me,
(Though in timeless truth there never
Was a man like him whatever)
I’ll meet thee in thy garden,
As I did not him, beshrew me!
In the sun of so-called daytime —
Say, just about the Maytime
Of my next, or next, Creation?
(I love procrastination,
To use the words in thy sense,
Which have no hold on my sense)
Or at any future stray-time. —
One of thy representatives
In some later incarnation
I mean, of course, well knowing
Thy present conformation
But a unit of my tentatives,
Whereof such heaps lie blowing
As dust, where thou art going;
Yea, passed to where suns glow not,
Begrieved of those that go not
(Though what grief is, I know not.)
“Perhaps I may inform thee,
In case I should alarm thee,
That no dramatic stories
Like ancient ones whose core is
A mass of superstition
And monkish imposition
Will mark my explanation
Of the world’s sore situation
(As thou tell’st), with woes that shatter;
Though from former aions to latter
To me ‘tis malleable matter
For treatment scientific
More than sensitive and specific —
Stuff without moral features,
Which I’ve no sense of ever,
Or of ethical endeavour,
Or of justice to Earth’s creatures,
Or how Right from Wrong to sever:
Let these be as men learn such;
For me, I don’t discern such,
And — real enough I daresay —
I know them but by hearsay
As something Time hath rendered
Out of substance I engendered,
Time, too, being a condition
Beyond my recognition.
— I would add that, while unknowing
Of this justice earthward owing,
Nor explanation offering
Of what is meant by suffering,
Thereof I’m not a spurner,
Or averse to be a learner.
“To return from wordy wandering
To the question we are pondering;
Though, viewing the world in my mode,
I fail to see it in thy mode
As ‘unfulfilled intention,’
Which is past my comprehension
Being unconscious in my doings
So largely, (whence thy rueings); —
Aye, to human tribes nor kindlessness
Nor love I’ve given, but mindlessness,
Which state, though far from ending,
May nevertheless be mending.
“However, I’ll advise him —
Him thy scion, who will walk here
When Death hath dumbed thy talk here —
In phrase that may surprise him,
What thing it was befel me,
(A thing that my confessing
Lack of forethought helps thy guessing),
And acted to compel me
By that purposeless propension
Which is mine, and not intention,
Along lines of least resistance,
Or, in brief, unsensed persistence,
That saddens thy existence
To think my so-called scheming
Not that of my first dreaming.”
1920 and 1926.
A QUESTION OF MARRIAGE
“I yield you my whole heart, Countess,” said he;
“Come, Dear, and be queen of m
y studio.”
“No, sculptor. You’re merely my friend,” said she:
“We dine our artists; but marry them — no.”
“Be it thus,” he replied. And his love, so strong,
He subdued as a stoic should. Anon
He wived some damsel who’d loved him long,
Of lineage noteless; and chiselled on.
And a score years passed. As a master-mind
The world made much of his marching fame,
And his wife’s little charms, with his own entwined,
Won day after day increased acclaim.
The countess-widow had closed with a mate
In rank and wealth of her own degree,
And they moved among the obscurely great
Of an order that had no novelty.
And oldening — neither with blame nor praise —
Their stately lives begot no stir,
And she saw that when death should efface her days
All men would abandon thought of her;
And said to herself full gloomily:
“Far better for me had it been to shine
The wench of a genius such as he
Than rust as the wife of a spouse like mine!”
THE LETTER’S TRIUMPH
(A FANCY)
Yes: I perceive it’s to your Love
You are bent on sending me. That this is so
Your words and phrases prove!
And now I am folded, and start to go,
Where you, my writer, have no leave to come:
My entry none will know!
And I shall catch her eye, and dumb
She’ll keep, should my unnoised arrival be
Hoped for, or troublesome.
My face she’ll notice readily:
And, whether she care to meet you, or care not,
She will perforce meet me;
Take me to closet or garden-plot
And, blushing or pouting, bend her eyes quite near,
Moved much, or never a jot.
And while you wait in hope and fear,
Far from her cheeks and lips, snug I shall stay
In close communion there,
And hear her heart-beats, things she may say,
As near her naked fingers, sleeve, or glove
I lie — ha-ha! — all day.
A FORGOTTEN MINIATURE
There you are in the dark,
Deep in a box
Nobody ever unlocks,
Or even turns to mark;
— Out of mind stark.
Yet there you have not been worsed
Like your sitter
By Time, the Fair’s hard-hitter;
Your beauties, undispersed,
Glow as at first.
Shut in your case for years,
Never an eye
Of the many passing nigh,
Fixed on their own affairs,
Thinks what it nears!
— While you have lain in gloom,
A form forgot,
Your reign remembered not,
Much life has come to bloom
Within this room.
Yea, in Time’s cyclic sweep
Unrest has ranged:
Women and men have changed:
Some you knew slumber deep;
Some wait for sleep.
WHISPERED AT THE CHURCH-OPENING
In the bran-new pulpit the bishop stands,
And gives out his text, as his gaze expands
To the people, the aisles, the roof’s new frame,
And the arches, and ashlar with coloured bands.
“Why — he’s the man,” says one, “who came
To preach in my boyhood — a fashion then —
In a series of sermons to working-men
On week-day evenings, a novelty
Which brought better folk to hear and see.
They preached each one each week, by request:
Some were eloquent speakers, among the best
Of the lot being this, as all confessed.”
“I remember now. And reflection brings
Back one in especial, sincerest of all;
Whose words, though unpicked, gave the essence of things; —
And where is he now, whom I well recall?”
“Oh, he’d no touches of tactic skill:
His mind ran on charity and good will:
He’s but as he was, a vicar still.”
IN WEATHERBURY STOCKS
(1850)
“I sit here in these stocks,
And Saint-Mary’s moans eleven;
The sky is dark and cold:
I would I were in heaven!
“What footsteps do I hear?
Ah, you do not forget,
My Sophy! O, my dear,
We may be happy yet!
“But — . Mother, is’t your voice?
You who have come to me? —
It did not cross my thought:
I was thinking it was she.”
“She! Foolish simple son!
She says: ‘I’ve finished quite
With him or any one
Put in the stocks to-night.’
“She’s gone to Blooms-End dance,
And will not come back yet:
Her new man sees his chance,
And is teaching her to forget.
“Jim, think no other woman
To such a fellow is true
But the mother you have grieved so,
Or cares for one like you!”
A PLACID MAN’S EPITAPH
As for my life, I’ve led it
With fair content and credit:
It said: “Take this.” I took it.
Said: “Leave.” And I forsook it.
If I had done without it
None would have cared about it,
Or said: “One has refused it
Who might have meetly used it.”
1925.
THE NEW BOOTS
“They are his new boots,” she pursued;
“They have not been worn at all:
They stay there hung on the wall,
And are getting as stiff as wood.
He bought them for the wet weather,
And they are of waterproof leather.”
“Why does her husband,” said I,
“Never wear those boots bought new?”
To a neighbour of hers I knew;
Who answered: “Ah, those boots. Aye,
He bought them to wear whenever
It rained. But there they hang ever.
“‘Yes,’ he laughed, as he hung them up,
‘I’ve got them at last — a pair
I can walk in anywhere
Through rain and slush and slop.
For many a year I’ve been haunted
By thoughts of how much they were wanted.’
“And she’s not touched them or tried
To remove them. . . . Anyhow,
As you see them hanging now
They have hung ever since he died
The day after gaily declaring:
‘Ha-ha! Now for wet wayfaring.
They’re just the chaps for my wearing!’”
THE MUSING MAIDEN
“Why so often, silent one,
Do you steal away alone?”
Starting, half she turned her head,
And guiltily she said: —
“When the vane points to his far town
I go upon the hog-backed down,
And think the breeze that stroked his lip
Over my own may slip.
“When he walks at close of day
I ramble on the white highway,
And think it reaches to his feet:
A meditation sweet!
“When coasters hence to London sail
I watch their puffed wings waning pale;
His window opens near the quay;
Their coming he can see.
“I go to meet the moon a
t night;
To mark the moon was our delight;
Up there our eyesights touch at will
If such he practise still.”
W.P.V. October 1866 (recopied).
LORNA THE SECOND
Lorna! Yes, you are sweet,
But you are not your mother,
Lorna the First, frank, feat,
Never such another! —
Love of her could smother
Griefs by day or night;
Nor could any other,
Lorna, dear and bright,
Ever so well adorn a
Mansion, coach, or cot,
Or so make men scorn a
Rival in their sight;
Even you could not!
Hence I have to mourn a
Loss ere you were born; a Lorna!
A DAUGHTER RETURNS
I like not that dainty-cut raiment, those earrings of pearl,
I like not the light in that eye;
I like not the note of that voice. Never so was the girl
Who a year ago bade me good-bye!
Hadst but come bare and moneyless, worn in the vamp, weather-gray,
But innocent still as before,
How warmly I’d lodged thee! But sport thy new gains far away;
I pray thee now — come here no more!
And yet I’ll not try to blot out every memory of thee;
I’ll think of thee — yes, now and then:
One who’s watched thee since Time called thee out o’ thy mother and me
Must think of thee; aye, I know when! . . .
When the cold sneer of dawn follows night-shadows black as a hearse,
And the rain filters down the fruit tree,
And the tempest mouths into the flue-top a word like a curse,
Then, then I shall think, think of thee!
December 17, 1901.
THE THIRD KISSING-GATE
She foots it forward down the town,
Then leaves the lamps behind,
