Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (940 page)

ARCHITECTURAL MASKS

I

There is a house with ivied walls,
And mullioned windows worn and old,
And the long dwellers in those halls
Have souls that know but sordid calls,
   And daily dote on gold.

II

In blazing brick and plated show
Not far away a “villa” gleams,
And here a family few may know,
With book and pencil, viol and bow,
   Lead inner lives of dreams.

III

The philosophic passers say,
“See that old mansion mossed and fair,
Poetic souls therein are they:
And O that gaudy box! Away,
   You vulgar people there.”

THE TENANT-FOR-LIFE

The sun said, watching my watering-pot
   ”Some morn you’ll pass away;
These flowers and plants I parch up hot -
   Who’ll water them that day?

“Those banks and beds whose shape your eye
   Has planned in line so true,
New hands will change, unreasoning why
   Such shape seemed best to you.

“Within your house will strangers sit,
   And wonder how first it came;
They’ll talk of their schemes for improving it,
   And will not mention your name.

“They’ll care not how, or when, or at what
   You sighed, laughed, suffered here,
Though you feel more in an hour of the spot
   Than they will feel in a year

“As I look on at you here, now,
   Shall I look on at these;
But as to our old times, avow
   No knowledge — hold my peace! . . .

“O friend, it matters not, I say;
   Bethink ye, I have shined
On nobler ones than you, and they
   Are dead men out of mind!”

THE KING’S EXPERIMENT

   It was a wet wan hour in spring,
And Nature met King Doom beside a lane,
Wherein Hodge trudged, all blithely ballading
      The Mother’s smiling reign.

   ”Why warbles he that skies are fair
And coombs alight,” she cried, “and fallows gay,
When I have placed no sunshine in the air
      Or glow on earth to-day?”

   ”‘Tis in the comedy of things
That such should be,” returned the one of Doom;
“Charge now the scene with brightest blazonings,
      And he shall call them gloom.”

   She gave the word: the sun outbroke,
All Froomside shone, the hedgebirds raised a song;
And later Hodge, upon the midday stroke,
      Returned the lane along,

   Low murmuring: “O this bitter scene,
And thrice accurst horizon hung with gloom!
How deadly like this sky, these fields, these treen,
      To trappings of the tomb!”

   The Beldame then: “The fool and blind!
Such mad perverseness who may apprehend?” -
“Nay; there’s no madness in it; thou shalt find
      Thy law there,” said her friend.

   ”When Hodge went forth ‘twas to his Love,
To make her, ere this eve, his wedded prize,
And Earth, despite the heaviness above,
      Was bright as Paradise.

   ”But I sent on my messenger,
With cunning arrows poisonous and keen,
To take forthwith her laughing life from her,
      And dull her little een,

   ”And white her cheek, and still her breath,
Ere her too buoyant Hodge had reached her side;
So, when he came, he clasped her but in death,
      And never as his bride.

   ”And there’s the humour, as I said;
Thy dreary dawn he saw as gleaming gold,
And in thy glistening green and radiant red
      Funereal gloom and cold.”

THE TREE AN OLD MAN’S STORY

I

Its roots are bristling in the air
Like some mad Earth-god’s spiny hair;
The loud south-wester’s swell and yell
Smote it at midnight, and it fell.
   Thus ends the tree
   Where Some One sat with me.

II

Its boughs, which none but darers trod,
A child may step on from the sod,
And twigs that earliest met the dawn
Are lit the last upon the lawn.
   Cart off the tree
   Beneath whose trunk sat we!

III

Yes, there we sat: she cooed content,
And bats ringed round, and daylight went;
The gnarl, our seat, is wrenched and sunk,
Prone that queer pocket in the trunk
   Where lay the key
   To her pale mystery.

IV

“Years back, within this pocket-hole
I found, my Love, a hurried scrawl
Meant not for me,” at length said I;
“I glanced thereat, and let it lie:
   The words were three -
   ’Beloved, I agree.’

V

“Who placed it here; to what request
It gave assent, I never guessed.
Some prayer of some hot heart, no doubt,
To some coy maiden hereabout,
   Just as, maybe,
   With you, Sweet Heart, and me.”

VI

She waited, till with quickened breath
She spoke, as one who banisheth
Reserves that lovecraft heeds so well,
To ease some mighty wish to tell:
   ”‘Twas I,” said she,
   ”Who wrote thus clinchingly.

VII

“My lover’s wife — aye, wife! — knew nought
Of what we felt, and bore, and thought . . .
He’d said: ‘I wed with thee or die:
She stands between, ‘tis true. But why?
   Do thou agree,
   And — she shalt cease to be.’

VIII

“How I held back, how love supreme
Involved me madly in his scheme
Why should I say? . . . I wrote assent
(You found it hid) to his intent . . .
   She — DIED . . . But he
   Came not to wed with me.

IX

“O shrink not, Love! — Had these eyes seen
But once thine own, such had not been!
But we were strangers . . . Thus the plot
Cleared passion’s path. — Why came he not
   To wed with me? . . .
   He wived the gibbet-tree.”

X

- Under that oak of heretofore
Sat Sweetheart mine with me no more:
By many a Fiord, and Strom, and Fleuve
Have I since wandered . . . Soon, for love,
   Distraught went she -
   ’Twas said for love of me.

HER LATE HUSBAND (KING’S-HINTOCK, 182-.)

“No — not where I shall make my own;
   But dig his grave just by
The woman’s with the initialed stone -
   As near as he can lie -
After whose death he seemed to ail,
   Though none considered why.

“And when I also claim a nook,
   And your feet tread me in,
Bestow me, under my old name,
   Among my kith and kin,
That strangers gazing may not dream
   I did a husband win.”

“Widow, your wish shall be obeyed;
   Though, thought I, certainly
You’d lay him where your folk are laid,
   And your grave, too, will be,
As custom hath it; you to right,
   And on the left hand he.”

“Aye, sexton; such the Hintock rule,
   And none has said it nay;
But now it haps a native here
   Eschews that ancient way . . .
And it may be, some Christmas night,
   When angels walk, they’ll say:

“‘O strange interment! Civilized lands
   Afford few types thereof;
Here is a man who takes his rest
   Beside his very Love,
Beside the one who was his wife
   In our sight up above!’“

THE SELF-UNSEEING

Here is the ancient floor,
Footworn and hollowed and thin,
Here was the former door
Where the dead feet walked in.

She sat here in her chair,
Smiling into the fire;
He who played stood there,
Bowing it higher and higher.

Childlike, I danced in a dream;
Blessings emblazoned that day
Everything glowed with a gleam;
Yet we were looking away!

DE PROFUNDIS I

“Percussus sum sicut foenum, et aruit cor meum.”
- Ps. ci

   Wintertime nighs;
But my bereavement-pain
It cannot bring again:
   Twice no one dies.

   Flower-petals flee;
But, since it once hath been,
No more that severing scene
   Can harrow me.

   Birds faint in dread:
I shall not lose old strength
In the lone frost’s black length:
   Strength long since fled!

   Leaves freeze to dun;
But friends can not turn cold
This season as of old
   For him with none.

   Tempests may scath;
But love can not make smart
Again this year his heart
   Who no heart hath.

   Black is night’s cope;
But death will not appal
One who, past doubtings all,
   Waits in unhope.

DE PROFUNDIS II

“Considerabam ad dexteram, et videbam; et non erat qui cognosceret me
. . . Non est qui requirat animam meam.” — Ps. cxli.

When the clouds’ swoln bosoms echo back the shouts of the many and
strong
That things are all as they best may be, save a few to be right ere
long,
And my eyes have not the vision in them to discern what to these is
so clear,
The blot seems straightway in me alone; one better he were not here.

The stout upstanders say, All’s well with us: ruers have nought to
rue!
And what the potent say so oft, can it fail to be somewhat true?
Breezily go they, breezily come; their dust smokes around their
career,
Till I think I am one horn out of due time, who has no calling here.

Their dawns bring lusty joys, it seems; their eves exultance sweet;
Our times are blessed times, they cry: Life shapes it as is most
meet,
And nothing is much the matter; there are many smiles to a tear;
Then what is the matter is I, I say. Why should such an one be here?
. . .

Let him to whose ears the low-voiced Best seems stilled by the clash
of the First,
Who holds that if way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look
at the Worst,
Who feels that delight is a delicate growth cramped by crookedness,
custom, and fear,
Get him up and be gone as one shaped awry; he disturbs the order
here.

1895-96.

DE PROFUNDIS III

“Heu mihi, quia incolatus meus prolongatus est! Habitavi cum habitantibus Cedar; multum incola fuit aninia mea.” — Ps. cxix.

There have been times when I well might have passed and the ending
have come -
Points in my path when the dark might have stolen on me, artless,
unrueing -
Ere I had learnt that the world was a welter of futile doing:
Such had been times when I well might have passed, and the ending
have come!

Say, on the noon when the half-sunny hours told that April was nigh,
And I upgathered and cast forth the snow from the crocus-border,
Fashioned and furbished the soil into a summer-seeming order,
Glowing in gladsome faith that I quickened the year thereby.

Or on that loneliest of eves when afar and benighted we stood,
She who upheld me and I, in the midmost of Egdon together,
Confident I in her watching and ward through the blackening heather,
Deeming her matchless in might and with measureless scope endued.

Or on that winter-wild night when, reclined by the chimney-nook
quoin,
Slowly a drowse overgat me, the smallest and feeblest of folk there,
Weak from my baptism of pain; when at times and anon I awoke there -
Heard of a world wheeling on, with no listing or longing to join.

Even then! while unweeting that vision could vex or that knowledge
could numb,
That sweets to the mouth in the belly are bitter, and tart, and
untoward,
Then, on some dim-coloured scene should my briefly raised curtain
have lowered,
Then might the Voice that is law have said “Cease!” and the ending
have come.

1896.

THE CHURCH-BUILDER

I

The church flings forth a battled shade
   Over the moon-blanched sward;
The church; my gift; whereto I paid
   My all in hand and hoard:
      Lavished my gains
      With stintless pains
   To glorify the Lord.

II

I squared the broad foundations in
   Of ashlared masonry;
I moulded mullions thick and thin,
   Hewed fillet and ogee;
      I circleted
      Each sculptured head
   With nimb and canopy.

III

I called in many a craftsmaster
   To fix emblazoned glass,
To figure Cross and Sepulchre
   On dossal, boss, and brass.
      My gold all spent,
      My jewels went
   To gem the cups of Mass.

IV

I borrowed deep to carve the screen
   And raise the ivoried Rood;
I parted with my small demesne
   To make my owings good.
      Heir-looms unpriced
      I sacrificed,
   Until debt-free I stood.

V

So closed the task. “Deathless the Creed
   Here substanced!” said my soul:
“I heard me bidden to this deed,
   And straight obeyed the call.
      Illume this fane,
      That not in vain
   I build it, Lord of all!”

VI

But, as it chanced me, then and there
   Did dire misfortunes burst;
My home went waste for lack of care,
   My sons rebelled and curst;
      Till I confessed
      That aims the best
   Were looking like the worst.

VII

Enkindled by my votive work
   No burning faith I find;
The deeper thinkers sneer and smirk,
   And give my toil no mind;
      From nod and wink
      I read they think
   That I am fool and blind.

VIII

My gift to God seems futile, quite;
   The world moves as erstwhile;
And powerful wrong on feeble right
   Tramples in olden style.
      My faith burns down,
      I see no crown;
   But Cares, and Griefs, and Guile.