Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (956 page)

XV — IN THE MOONLIGHT

“O lonely workman, standing there
In a dream, why do you stare and stare
At her grave, as no other grave there were?

“If your great gaunt eyes so importune
Her soul by the shine of this corpse-cold moon,
Maybe you’ll raise her phantom soon!”

“Why, fool, it is what I would rather see
Than all the living folk there be;
But alas, there is no such joy for me!”

“Ah — she was one you loved, no doubt,
Through good and evil, through rain and drought,
And when she passed, all your sun went out?”

“Nay: she was the woman I did not love,
Whom all the others were ranked above,
Whom during her life I thought nothing of.”

LYRICS AND REVERIES (continued)

SELF-UNCONSCIOUS

   Along the way
   He walked that day,
Watching shapes that reveries limn,
   And seldom he
   Had eyes to see
The moment that encompassed him.

   Bright yellowhammers
   Made mirthful clamours,
And billed long straws with a bustling air,
   And bearing their load
   Flew up the road
That he followed, alone, without interest there.

   From bank to ground
   And over and round
They sidled along the adjoining hedge;
   Sometimes to the gutter
   Their yellow flutter
Would dip from the nearest slatestone ledge.

   The smooth sea-line
   With a metal shine,
And flashes of white, and a sail thereon,
   He would also descry
   With a half-wrapt eye
Between the projects he mused upon.

   Yes, round him were these
   Earth’s artistries,
But specious plans that came to his call
   Did most engage
   His pilgrimage,
While himself he did not see at all.

   Dead now as sherds
   Are the yellow birds,
And all that mattered has passed away;
   Yet God, the Elf,
   Now shows him that self
As he was, and should have been shown, that day.

   O it would have been good
   Could he then have stood
At a focussed distance, and conned the whole,
   But now such vision
   Is mere derision,
Nor soothes his body nor saves his soul.

   Not much, some may
   Incline to say,
To see therein, had it all been seen.
   Nay! he is aware
   A thing was there
That loomed with an immortal mien.

THE DISCOVERY

   I wandered to a crude coast
      Like a ghost;
   Upon the hills I saw fires -
      Funeral pyres
   Seemingly — and heard breaking
Waves like distant cannonades that set the land shaking.

   And so I never once guessed
      A Love-nest,
   Bowered and candle-lit, lay
      In my way,
   Till I found a hid hollow,
Where I burst on her my heart could not but follow.

TOLERANCE

“It is a foolish thing,” said I,
“To bear with such, and pass it by;
Yet so I do, I know not why!”

And at each clash I would surmise
That if I had acted otherwise
I might have saved me many sighs.

But now the only happiness
In looking back that I possess -
Whose lack would leave me comfortless -

Is to remember I refrained
From masteries I might have gained,
And for my tolerance was disdained;

For see, a tomb. And if it were
I had bent and broke, I should not dare
To linger in the shadows there.

BEFORE AND AFTER SUMMER

I

Looking forward to the spring
One puts up with anything.
On this February day,
Though the winds leap down the street,
Wintry scourgings seem but play,
And these later shafts of sleet
 — Sharper pointed than the first -
And these later snows — the worst -
Are as a half-transparent blind
Riddled by rays from sun behind.

II

Shadows of the October pine
Reach into this room of mine:
On the pine there stands a bird;
He is shadowed with the tree.
Mutely perched he bills no word;
Blank as I am even is he.
For those happy suns are past,
Fore-discerned in winter last.
When went by their pleasure, then?
I, alas, perceived not when.

AT DAY-CLOSE IN NOVEMBER

The ten hours’ light is abating,
   And a late bird flies across,
Where the pines, like waltzers waiting,
   Give their black heads a toss.

Beech leaves, that yellow the noon-time,
   Float past like specks in the eye;
I set every tree in my June time,
   And now they obscure the sky.

And the children who ramble through here
   Conceive that there never has been
A time when no tall trees grew here,
   A time when none will be seen.

THE YEAR’S AWAKENING

How do you know that the pilgrim track
Along the belting zodiac
Swept by the sun in his seeming rounds
Is traced by now to the Fishes’ bounds
And into the Ram, when weeks of cloud
Have wrapt the sky in a clammy shroud,
And never as yet a tinct of spring
Has shown in the Earth’s apparelling;
   O vespering bird, how do you know,
      How do you know?

How do you know, deep underground,
Hid in your bed from sight and sound,
Without a turn in temperature,
With weather life can scarce endure,
That light has won a fraction’s strength,
And day put on some moments’ length,
Whereof in merest rote will come,
Weeks hence, mild airs that do not numb;
   O crocus root, how do you know,
      How do you know?

February 1910.

UNDER THE WATERFALL

“Whenever I plunge my arm, like this,
In a basin of water, I never miss
The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day
Fetched back from its thickening shroud of gray.
   Hence the only prime
   And real love-rhyme
   That I know by heart,
   And that leaves no smart,
Is the purl of a little valley fall
About three spans wide and two spans tall
Over a table of solid rock,
And into a scoop of the self-same block;
The purl of a runlet that never ceases
In stir of kingdoms, in wars, in peaces;
With a hollow boiling voice it speaks
And has spoken since hills were turfless peaks.”

“And why gives this the only prime
Idea to you of a real love-rhyme?
And why does plunging your arm in a bowl
Full of spring water, bring throbs to your soul?
Well, under the fall, in a crease of the stone,
Though where precisely none ever has known,
Jammed darkly, nothing to show how prized,
And by now with its smoothness opalised,
   Is a drinking-glass:
   For, down that pass
   My lover and I
   Walked under a sky
Of blue with a leaf-woven awning of green,
In the burn of August, to paint the scene,
And we placed our basket of fruit and wine
By the runlet’s rim, where we sat to dine;
And when we had drunk from the glass together,
Arched by the oak-copse from the weather,
I held the vessel to rinse in the fall,
Where it slipped, and sank, and was past recall,
Though we stooped and plumbed the little abyss
With long bared arms. There the glass still is.
And, as said, if I thrust my arm below
Cold water in basin or bowl, a throe
From the past awakens a sense of that time,
And the glass both used, and the cascade’s rhyme.
The basin seems the pool, and its edge
The hard smooth face of the brook-side ledge,
And the leafy pattern of china-ware
The hanging plants that were bathing there.
By night, by day, when it shines or lours,
There lies intact that chalice of ours,
And its presence adds to the rhyme of love
Persistently sung by the fall above.
No lip has touched it since his and mine
In turns therefrom sipped lovers’ wine.”

THE SPELL OF THE ROSE

   ”I mean to build a hall anon,
      And shape two turrets there,
      And a broad newelled stair,
And a cool well for crystal water;
   Yes; I will build a hall anon,
   Plant roses love shall feed upon,
      And apple trees and pear.”

   He set to build the manor-hall,
      And shaped the turrets there,
      And the broad newelled stair,
And the cool well for crystal water;
   He built for me that manor-hall,
   And planted many trees withal,
      But no rose anywhere.

   And as he planted never a rose
      That bears the flower of love,
      Though other flowers throve
A frost-wind moved our souls to sever
   Since he had planted never a rose;
   And misconceits raised horrid shows,
      And agonies came thereof.

   ”I’ll mend these miseries,” then said I,
      And so, at dead of night,
      I went and, screened from sight,
That nought should keep our souls in severance,
   I set a rose-bush. “This,” said I,
   ”May end divisions dire and wry,
      And long-drawn days of blight.”

   But I was called from earth — yea, called
      Before my rose-bush grew;
      And would that now I knew
What feels he of the tree I planted,
   And whether, after I was called
   To be a ghost, he, as of old,
      Gave me his heart anew!

   Perhaps now blooms that queen of trees
      I set but saw not grow,
      And he, beside its glow -
Eyes couched of the mis-vision that blurred me -
   Ay, there beside that queen of trees
   He sees me as I was, though sees
      Too late to tell me so!

ST. LAUNCE’S REVISITED

   Slip back, Time!
Yet again I am nearing
Castle and keep, uprearing
   Gray, as in my prime.

   At the inn
Smiling close, why is it
Not as on my visit
   When hope and I were twin?

   Groom and jade
Whom I found here, moulder;
Strange the tavern-holder,
   Strange the tap-maid.

   Here I hired
Horse and man for bearing
Me on my wayfaring
   To the door desired.

   Evening gloomed
As I journeyed forward
To the faces shoreward,
   Till their dwelling loomed.

   If again
Towards the Atlantic sea there
I should speed, they’d be there
   Surely now as then? . . .

   Why waste thought,
When I know them vanished
Under earth; yea, banished
   Ever into nought.

POEMS OF 1912-13
Veteris vestigia flammae

THE GOING

Why did you give no hint that night
That quickly after the morrow’s dawn,
And calmly, as if indifferent quite,
You would close your term here, up and be gone
   Where I could not follow
   With wing of swallow
To gain one glimpse of you ever anon!

   Never to bid good-bye,
   Or give me the softest call,
Or utter a wish for a word, while I
Saw morning harden upon the wall,
   Unmoved, unknowing
   That your great going
Had place that moment, and altered all.

Why do you make me leave the house
And think for a breath it is you I see
At the end of the alley of bending boughs
Where so often at dusk you used to be;
   Till in darkening dankness
   The yawning blankness
Of the perspective sickens me!

   You were she who abode
   By those red-veined rocks far West,
You were the swan-necked one who rode
Along the beetling Beeny Crest,
   And, reining nigh me,
   Would muse and eye me,
While Life unrolled us its very best.

Why, then, latterly did we not speak,
Did we not think of those days long dead,
And ere your vanishing strive to seek
That time’s renewal? We might have said,
   ”In this bright spring weather
   We’ll visit together
Those places that once we visited.”

   Well, well! All’s past amend,
   Unchangeable. It must go.
I seem but a dead man held on end
To sink down soon . . . O you could not know
   That such swift fleeing
   No soul foreseeing -
Not even I — would undo me so!

December 1912.

YOUR LAST DRIVE

Here by the moorway you returned,
And saw the borough lights ahead
That lit your face — all undiscerned
To be in a week the face of the dead,
And you told of the charm of that haloed view
That never again would beam on you.

And on your left you passed the spot
Where eight days later you were to lie,
And be spoken of as one who was not;
Beholding it with a cursory eye
As alien from you, though under its tree
You soon would halt everlastingly.

I drove not with you . . . Yet had I sat
At your side that eve I should not have seen
That the countenance I was glancing at
Had a last-time look in the flickering sheen,
Nor have read the writing upon your face,
“I go hence soon to my resting-place;

“You may miss me then. But I shall not know
How many times you visit me there,
Or what your thoughts are, or if you go
There never at all. And I shall not care.
Should you censure me I shall take no heed
And even your praises I shall not need.”

True: never you’ll know. And you will not mind.
But shall I then slight you because of such?
Dear ghost, in the past did you ever find
The thought “What profit?” move me much
Yet the fact indeed remains the same,
You are past love, praise, indifference, blame.

December 1912.

THE WALK

   You did not walk with me
   Of late to the hill-top tree
      By the gated ways,
      As in earlier days;
      You were weak and lame,
      So you never came,
And I went alone, and I did not mind,
Not thinking of you as left behind.