Thomas Hardy

“ Would that dancing were the worst thing from the latest to the first thing
That the faded year can charge us with; but what avails a word!
That which makes man’s love the lighter and the woman’s burn no brighter
Came to pass with us inevitably while slipped the shortening year . . .
And there stands your father’s dwelling with its blind bleak windows telling
That the vows of man and maid are frail as filmy gossamere. ”

“ The wind a yearning cry,
The faulty fair,
Things dreamt, of comelier hue
Than things beholden! . . .
—I speak as one who plumbs
Life’s dim profound,
One who at length can sound
Clear views and certain. ”

“ We searched till dawn about the house; within the house, without the house,
We searched among the laurel boughs that grew beneath the wall,
And then among the crocks and things, and stores for winter junketings,
In linhay, loft, and dairy; but we found her not at all.
XII
Then John rushed in: “O friends,” he said, “hear this, this, this!” and bends his head:
“I’ve—searched round by the—well, and find the cover open wide!
I am fearful that—I can’t say what . . . Bring lanterns, and some cords to knot.” ”

“ As I lay weak,
The leaves a-falling on my cheek,
The red moon low declined—
The ghost of him I’d die to kiss
Rose up and said: “Ah, tell me this!
Was the child mine, or was it his?
Speak, that I rest may find!”
XIII
O doubt not but I told him then,
I told him then,
That I had kept me from all men
Since we joined lips and swore.
Whereat he smiled, and thinned away
As the wind stirred to call up day . . .
—’Tis past! And here alone I stray
Haunting the Western Moor.
Notes.—“Windwhistle” (Stanza iv.) . ”

“ IX
“The words, sir?” cried a creature
Hovering mid the shine and shade as ’twixt the live world and the tomb;
But the well-known numbers needed not for me a text or teacher
To revive and re-illume.
X
Then the play . . . But how unfitted
Was this Rosalind!—a mammet quite to me, in memories nurst,
p. 20And with chilling disappointment soon I sought the street I had quitted,
To re-ponder on the first.
XI
The hag still hawked,—I met her
Just without the colonnade. “So you don’t like her, sir?” said she.
“Ah—I was once that Rosalind!—I acted her—none better—
Yes—in eighteen sixty-three. ”

“ And the baby too . . . ’Tis well.
You knew her in maidhood likewise?—Yes,
That’s her burial bell.
“I suppose,” with a laugh, she said,
“I should blush that I’m not a wife;
But how can it matter, so soon to be dead,
What one does in life!” ”

“ Had been tooling night and day for twenty years, and tooled too well,
In its rendering of crease where curve was, where was raven, grizzle—
Pits, where peonies once did dwell.
She had wakened, and perceiving
(I surmise) my sigh and shock, my quite involuntary dismay,
Up she started, and—her wasted figure all throughout it heaving—
Said, “Ah, yes: I am thus by day!
“Can you really wince and wonder
That the sunlight should reveal you such a thing of skin and bone,
As if unaware a Death’s-head must of need lie not far under
Flesh whose years out-count your own? ”

“ For shaping griefs and ails untold
(Deeming them punishments undue)
You rage, as Moses wrote of old?
When we exclaim: ‘Beneficent
He is not, for he orders pain,
Or, if so, not omnipotent:
To a mere child the thing is plain!’
Those who profess to represent
You, cry out: ‘Impious and profane!’”
He: “Save me from my friends, who deem
That I care what my creatures say! ”

“ A quick conviction sprung within me, grew, and grew yet stronger,
That the month-night was the same,
Too, as that which saw her leave me
On the rugged ridge of Waterstone, the peewits plaining round;
p. 4And a lapsing twenty years had ruled that—as it were to grieve me—
I should near the once-loved ground. ”

“ VI
“Old folks, that harsh order is altered,
Be not sick of heart!
The Guardians they poohed and they pished and they paltered
When urged not to keep you apart.
VII
“‘It is wrong,’ I maintained, ‘to divide them,
Near forty years wed.’
‘Very well, sir. We promise, then, they shall abide them
In one wing together,’ they said.”
p. 33VIII
Then I sank—knew ’twas quite a foredone thing
That misery should be
To the end! . . . To get freed of her there was the one thing
Had made the change welcome to me. ”

“ I looked and thought, “All is too gray and cold
To wake my place-enthusiasms of old!”
Till a voice passed: “Behind that granite mien
Lurks the imposing beauty of a Queen.”
I looked anew; and saw the radiant form
Of Her who soothes in stress, who steers in storm,
On the grave influence of whose eyes sublime
Men count for the stability of the time.
p. 205GEORGE MEREDITH
1828–1909 Forty years back, when much had place
That since has perished out of mind,
I heard that voice and saw that face.
He spoke as one afoot will wind
A morning horn ere men awake ”

“ 186THE MAN HE KILLED “Had he and I but met
By some old ancient inn,
We should have sat us down to wet
Right many a nipperkin!
“But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.
“I shot him dead because—
Because he was my foe,
Just so: my foe of course he was;
That’s clear enough; although
“He thought he’d ’list, perhaps,
Off-hand like—just as I—
Was out of work—had sold his traps—
No other reason why.
“Yes; quaint and curious war is!
You shoot a fellow down
You’d treat if met where any bar is,
Or help to half-a-crown.” ”

“ Though fervent was our vow,
Though ruddily ran our pleasure,
Bliss has fulfilled its measure,
And sees its sentence now.
Ache deep; but make no moans:
Smile out; but stilly suffer:
The paths of love are rougher
Than thoroughfares of stones. ”

“ III
“’Tis hard; but,” I thought, “never mind it:
There’s gain in the end:
And when I get used to the place I shall find it
A home, and may find there a friend.
p. 32IV
“Life there will be better than t’other.
For peace is assured.
The men in one wing and their wives in another
Is strictly the rule of the Board.” ”

“ Livers in levity.
p. 130VIII
“The taper flames and hearthfire shine
Grew smoke-hazed to a lurid light,
And songs on subjects not divine
Were warbled forth that night.
IX
“Yet many were sons and grandsons here
Of those who, on such eves gone by,
At that still hour had throated clear
Their anthems to the sky.
X
“The clock belled midnight; and ere long
One shouted, ‘Now ’tis Christmas morn;
Here’s to our women old and young,
And to John Barleycorn!’
XI
“They drink the toast and shout again:
The pewter-ware rings back the boom,
And for a breath-while follows then
A silence in the room. ”

“ Let me enjoy the earth no less
Because the all-enacting Might
That fashioned forth its loveliness
Had other aims than my delight. ”

“ Make a spouse in your pocket, and let the men be.”
I spake on’t again and again: father cried,
“Why—if you go husbanding, where shall I bide?
For never a home’s for me elsewhere than here!”
And I yielded; for father had ever been dear.
But now father’s gone, and I feel growing old,
And I’m lonely and poor in this house on the wold,
And my sweetheart that was found a partner elsewhere,
And nobody flings me a thought or a care.
p. 104THE SPRING CALL Down Wessex way, when spring’s a-shine,
The blackbird’s “pret-ty de-urr!”
In Wessex accents marked as mine
Is heard afar and near. ”

“ I knew him—one from Woolcomb way—Giles Swetman—honest as the day,
But eager, hasty; and I felt that some strange trouble neared.
p. 124VI
“How comes he there? . . . Suppose,” said we, “she’s wed of late! Who knows?” said we.
—“She married yester-morning—only mother yet has known
The secret o’t!” shrilled one small boy. “But now I’ve told, let’s wish ’em joy!”
A heavy fall aroused us: John had gone down like a stone. ”

“ I pitched my day’s leazings in Crimmercrock Lane,
To tie up my garter and jog on again,
When a dear dark-eyed gentleman passed there and said,
In a way that made all o’ me colour rose-red,
“What do I see—
O pretty knee!”
And he came and he tied up my garter for me.
II
’Twixt sunset and moonrise it was, I can mind:
Ah, ’tis easy to lose what we nevermore find!—
Of the dear stranger’s home, of his name, I knew nought,
p. 101But I soon knew his nature and all that it brought. ”

“ There’s no more to be done, or feared, or hoped;
None now need watch, speak low, and list, and tire;
No irksome crease outsmoothed, no pillow sloped
Does she require.
Blankly we gaze. We are free to go or stay ”

“ On this wold of well-known feature I inherit from my father:
Night or day, I have no dread . . .
“O I wonder, wonder whether
Any heartstring bore a signal-thrill between us twain or no?—
p. 8Some such influence can, at times, they say, draw severed souls together.” ”

“ The thing is dark, Dear. I do not know.
p. 66IN THE MIND’S EYE That was once her casement,
And the taper nigh,
Shining from within there,
Beckoned, “Here am I!”
Now, as then, I see her
Moving at the pane;
Ah; ’tis but her phantom
Borne within my brain!—
Foremost in my vision
Everywhere goes she;
Change dissolves the landscapes,
She abides with me. ”

“ And this long night’s dance this year’s end eve now finishes the spell;
p. 75Yet we dreamt us but beginning a sweet sempiternal spinning
Of a cord we have spun to breaking—too intemperately, too well. ”

“ But the disease of feeling germed,
And primal rightness took the tinct of wrong;
Ere nescience shall be reaffirmed
How long, how long? ”

“ Now that the miscellany is brought together, some lack of concord in pieces written at widely severed dates, and in contrasting moods and circumstances, will be obvious enough. This I cannot help, but the sense of disconnection, particularly in respect of those lyrics penned in the first person, will be immaterial when it is borne in mind that they are to be regarded, in the main, as dramatic monologues by different characters. ”

“ His mind at last being stressed by ails and age:—
Yet his good faith thereon I well could wage.
I had said it long had been a wish with me
That I might leave a scion—some small tree
As channel for my sap, if not my name—
Ay, offspring even of no legitimate claim,
p. 175In whose advance I secretly could joy.
Thereat he warned.
“Cancel such wishes, boy!
A son may be a comfort or a curse,
A seer, a doer, a coward, a fool; yea, worse—
A criminal . . . That I could testify!” ”

“ May 1909.
p. 207YELL’HAM-WOOD’S STORY Coomb-Firtrees say that Life is a moan,
And Clyffe-hill Clump says “Yea!”
But Yell’ham says a thing of its own:
It’s not “Gray, gray
Is Life alway!”
That Yell’ham says,
Nor that Life is for ends unknown.
It says that Life would signify
A thwarted purposing:
That we come to live, and are called to die,
Yes, that’s the thing
In fall, in spring,
That Yell’ham says:—
“Life offers—to deny!”
1902.
p. 208A YOUNG MAN’S EPIGRAM ON EXISTENCE A senseless school, where we must give
Our lives that we may learn to live! ”

“ It used to exhibit a fine old swinging sign.
“Blue Jimmy” (Stanza x.) was a notorious horse-stealer of Wessex in those days, who appropriated more than a hundred horses before he was caught, among others one belonging to a neighbour of the writer’s grandfather. He was hanged at the now demolished Ivel-chester or Ilchester jail above mentioned—that building formerly of so many sinister associations in the minds of the local peasantry, and the continual haunt of fever, which at last led to its condemnation. Its site is now an innocent-looking green meadow. ”

“ Heaven—has he overheard?”—
“Yes; I have heard, sweet Nan;
I have known it all the time.
I am not a particular man;
Misfortunes are no crime:
“And what with our serious need
Of sons for soldiering,
That accident, indeed,
To maids, is a useful thing!”
p. 113ROSE-ANN Why didn’t you say you was promised, Rose-Ann?
Why didn’t you name it to me,
Ere ever you tempted me hither, Rose-Ann,
So often, so wearifully?
O why did you let me be near ’ee, Rose-Ann,
Talking things about wedlock so free,
And never by nod or by whisper, Rose-Ann,
Give a hint that it wasn’t to be? ”

“ Note.—It is, or was, a common custom in Wessex, and probably other country places, to prepare the mourning beside the death-bed, the dying person sometimes assisting, who also selects his or her bearers on such occasions. ”

“ Enrichments of mien or mind.
p. 62I covered my eyes
As to cover the thought,
And unrecognize
What the morn had taught.
O vision appalling
When the one believed-in thing
Is seen falling, falling,
With all to which hope can cling.
Off: it is not true ”

“ The distant gurgling of the weirs.
“I have married him—yes; feel that ring;
’Tis a week ago that he put it on . . .
A dutiful daughter does this thing,
And resignation succeeds anon!
“But that I body and soul was yours
Ere he’d possession, he’ll never know.
He’s a confident man. ‘The husband scores,’
He says, ‘in the long run’ . . . Now, Dear, go!”
p. 64I went. And to-day I pass the spot;
It is only a smart the more to endure ”

“ Of the worth of man’s devotion!—Yes, Sir, I am old,” said she,
p. 10“And the thing which should increase love turns it quickly into scorning—
And your new-won heart from me!”
Then she went, ere I could call her,
With the too proud temper ruling that had parted us before,
And I saw her form descend the slopes, and smaller grow and smaller,
Till I caught its course no more . . .
True; I might have dogged her downward ”

“ A carol in a minor key, a carol in the major D,
Then at each house: “Good wishes: many Christmas joys to you!”
II
Next, to the widow’s John and I and all the rest drew on. And I
Discerned that John could hardly hold the tongue of him for joy.
The widow was a sweet young thing whom John was bent on marrying,
And quiring at her casement seemed romantic to the boy.
p. 123III
“She’ll make reply, I trust,” said he, “to our salute? She must!” ”