Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (1001 page)
Read Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) Online
Authors: Thomas Hardy
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!
SONG TO AN OLD BURDEN
The feet have left the wormholed flooring,
That danced to the ancient air,
The fiddler, all-ignoring,
Sleeps by the gray-grassed ‘cello player:
Shall I then foot around around around,
As once I footed there!
The voice is heard in the room no longer
That trilled, none sweetlier,
To gentle stops or stronger,
Where now the dust-draped cobwebs stir:
Shall I then sing again again again,
As once I sang with her!
The eyes that beamed out rapid brightness
Have longtime found their close,
The cheeks have wanned to whiteness
That used to sort with summer rose:
Shall I then joy anew anew anew,
As once I joyed in those!
O what’s to me this tedious Maying,
What’s to me this June?
O why should viols be playing
To catch and reel and rigadoon?
Shall I sing, dance around around around,
When phantoms call the tune!
WHY DO I?
Why do I go on doing these things?
Why not cease?
Is it that you are yet in this world of welterings
And unease,
And that, while so, mechanic repetitions please?
When shall I leave off doing these things? —
When I hear
You have dropped your dusty cloak and taken you wondrous wings
To another sphere,
Where no pain is: Then shall I hush this dinning gear.
WINTER WORDS IN VARIOUS MOODS AND METRES
CONTENTS
HER SECOND HUSBAND HEARS HER STORY
A NIGHTMARE, AND THE NEXT THING
A GENTLEMAN’S SECOND-HAND SUIT
WHISPERED AT THE CHURCH-OPENING
THE AGED NEWSPAPER SOLILOQUIZES
DEAD WESSEX THE DOG TO THE HOUSEHOLD
THE CATCHING BALLET OF THE WEDDING CLOTHES
THE NEW DAWN’S BUSINESS
What are you doing outside my walls,
O Dawn of another day?
I have not called you over the edge
Of the heathy ledge,
So why do you come this way,
With your furtive footstep without sound here,
And your face so deedily gray?
“I show a light for killing the man
Who lives not far from you,
And for bringing to birth the lady’s child,
Nigh domiciled,
And for earthing a corpse or two,
And for several other such odd jobs round here
That Time to-day must do.
“But you he leaves alone (although,
As you have often said,
You are always ready to pay the debt
You don’t forget
You owe for board and bed):
The truth is, when men willing are found here
He takes those loth instead.”
PROUD SONGSTERS
The thrushes sing as the sun is going,
And the finches whistle in ones and pairs,
And as it gets dark loud nightingales
In bushes
Pipe, as they can when April wears,
As if all Time were theirs.
These are brand-new birds of twelve-months’ growing,
Which a year ago, or less than twain,
No finches were, nor nightingales,
Nor thrushes,
But only particles of grain,
And earth, and air, and rain.
THOUGHTS AT MIDNIGHT
Mankind, you dismay me
When shadows waylay me! —
Not by your splendours
Do you affray me,
Not as pretenders
To demonic keenness,
Not by your meanness,
Nor your ill-teachings,
Nor your false preachings,
Nor your banalities
And immoralities,
Nor by your daring
Nor sinister bearing;
But by your madnesses
Capping cool badnesses,
Acting like puppets
Under Time’s buffets;
In superstitions
And ambitions
Moved by no wisdom,
Far-sight, or system,
Led by sheer senselessness
And presciencelessness
Into unreason
And hideous self-treason. . . .
God, look he on you,
Have mercy upon you!
Part written 25th
May
1906.
I AM THE ONE
I am the one whom ringdoves see
Through chinks in boughs
When they do not rouse
In sudden dread,
But stay on cooing, as if they said:
“Oh; it’s only he.”
I am the passer when up-eared hares,
Stirred as they eat
The new-sprung wheat,
Their munch resume
As if they thought: “He is one for whom
Nobody cares.”
Wet-eyed mourners glance at me
As in train they pass
Along the grass
To a hollowed spot,
And think: “No matter; he quizzes not
Our misery.”
I hear above: “We stars must lend
No fierce regard
To his gaze, so hard
Bent on us thus, —
Must scathe him not. He is one with us
Beginning and end.”
THE PROPHETESS
1
“Now shall I sing
That pretty thing
‘The Mocking-Bird’?” — And sing it straight did she.
I had no cause
To think it was
A Mocking-bird in truth that sang to me.
2
Not even the glance
She threw askance
Foretold to me, nor did the tune or rhyme,
That the words bore
A meaning more
Than that they were a ditty of the time.
3
But after years
Of hopes and fears,
And all they bring, and all they take away,
I found I had heard
The Mocking-bird
In person singing there to me that day.
A WISH FOR UNCONSCIOUSNESS
If I could but abide
As a tablet on a wall,
Or a hillock daisy-pied,
Or a picture in a hall,
And as nothing else at all,
I should feel no doleful achings,
I should hear no judgment-call,
Have no evil dreams or wakings,
No uncouth or grisly care;
In a word, no cross to bear.
THE BAD EXAMPLE
Fie, Aphrodite, shamming you are no mother,
And your maternal markings trying to smother,
As you were maiden, now you love another! . . .
If one like you need such pretence to noose him,
Indulgence in too early fires beware you,
All girls yet virgin, and have constant care you
Become not staled by use as she has, ere you
Meet your most-loved; lest, tumbled, you should lose him
Partly from Meleager.
TO LOUISA IN THE LANE
Meet me again as at that time
In the hollow of the lane;
I will not pass as in my prime
I passed at each day’s wane.
— Ah, I remember!
To do it you will have to see
Anew this sorry scene wherein you have ceased to be!
But I will welcome your aspen form
As you gaze wondering round
And say with spectral frail alarm,
“Why am I still here found?
— Ah, I remember!
It is through him with blitheful brow
Who did not love me then, but loves and draws me now!”
And I shall answer: “Sweet of eyes,
Carry me with you, Dear,
To where you donned this spirit-guise;
It’s better there than here!”
— Till I remember
Such is a deed you cannot do:
Wait must I, till with flung-off flesh I follow you.
LOVE WATCHES A WINDOW
“Here in the window beaming across
Is he — the lineaments like him so! —
The saint whose name I do not know,
With the holy robe and the cheek aglow.
Here will I kneel as if worshipping God
When all the time I am worshipping you,
Whose Love I was —
You that with me will nevermore tread anew
The paradise-paths we trod!”
She came to that prominent pew each day,
And sat there. Zealously she came
And watched her Love — looking just the same
From the rubied eastern tracery-frame —
The man who had quite forsaken her
And followed another, it was thought. —
Be’t as it may,
Thinner, more thin, was the lady’s figure wrought
By some ache, year on year.
Well, now she’s dead, and dead is he
From whom her heart once drew delight,
Whose face glowed daily, lover-bright,
High in the glass before her sight.
And still the face is seen as clear
In the rubied eastern window-gleam
As formerly;
But not seen now is a passioned woman’s dream
Glowing beside it there.