Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (1002 page)

THE LOVE-LETTERS

(IN MEMORIAM H. R.)

I met him quite by accident
In a bye-path that he’d frequent.
And, as he neared, the sunset glow
Warmed up the smile of pleasantry
Upon his too thin face, while he
Held a square packet up to me,
Of what, I did not know.

“Well,” said he then; “they are my old letters.
Perhaps she — rather felt them fetters. . . .
You see, I am in a slow decline,
And she’s broken off with me. Quite right
To send them back, and true foresight;
I’d got too fond of her! To-night
I burn them — stuff of mine!”

He laughed in the sun — an ache in his laughter —
And went. I heard of his death soon after.

AN UNKINDLY MAY

A shepherd stands by a gate in a white smock-frock:
He holds the gate ajar, intently counting his flock.

The sour spring wind is blurting boisterous-wise,
And bears on it dirty clouds across the skies;
Plantation timbers creak like rusty cranes,
And pigeons and rooks, dishevelled by late rains,
Are like gaunt vultures, sodden and unkempt,
And song-birds do not end what they attempt:
The buds have tried to open, but quite failing
Have pinched themselves together in their quailing.
The sun frowns whitely in eye-trying flaps
Through passing cloud-holes, mimicking audible taps.
“Nature, you’re not commendable to-day!”
I think. “Better to-morrow!” she seems to say.

That shepherd still stands in that white smock-frock,
Unnoting all things save the counting his flock.

UNKEPT GOOD FRIDAYS

There are many more Good Fridays
Than this, if we but knew
The names, and could relate them,
Of men whom rulers slew
For their goodwill, and date them
As runs the twelvemonth through.

These nameless Christs’ Good Fridays,
Whose virtues wrought their end,
Bore days of bonds and burning,
With no man to their friend,
Of mockeries, and spurning;
Yet they are all unpenned.

When they had their Good Fridays
Of bloody sweat and strain
Oblivion hides. We quote not
Their dying words of pain,
Their sepulchres we note not,
Unwitting where they have lain.

No annual Good Fridays
Gained they from cross and cord,
From being sawn asunder,
Disfigured and abhorred,
Smitten and trampled under:
Such dates no hands have scored.

Let be. Let lack Good Fridays
These Christs of unwrit names;
The world was not even worthy
To taunt their hopes and aims,
As little of earth, earthy,
As his mankind proclaims.

Good Friday, 1927.

THE MOUND

For a moment pause: —
Just here it was;
And through the thin thorn hedge, by the rays of the moon,
I can see the tree in the field, and beside it the mound —
Now sheeted with snow — whereon we sat that June
When it was green and round,
And she crazed my mind by what she coolly told —
The history of her undoing,
(As I saw it), but she called “comradeship,”
That bred in her no rueing:
And saying she’d not be bound
For life to one man, young, ripe-yeared, or old,
Left me — an innocent simpleton to her viewing;

For, though my accompt of years outscored her own,
Hers had more hotly flown. . . .
We never met again by this green mound,
To press as once so often lip on lip,
And palter, and pause: —
Yes; here it was!

LIDDELL AND SCOTT

ON THE COMPLETION OF THEIR LEXICON

(Written after the death of Liddell in 1898. Scott had died some ten years earlier.)

“Well, though it seems
Beyond our dreams,”
Said Liddell to Scott,
“We’ve really got
To the very end,
All inked and penned
Blotless and fair
Without turning a hair,
This sultry summer day, A.D.
Eighteen hundred and forty-three.

“I’ve often, I own,
Belched many a moan
At undertaking it,
And dreamt forsaking it.
 — Yes, on to Pi,
When the end loomed nigh,
And friends said: ‘You’ve as good as done,’
I almost wished we’d not begun.
Even now, if people only knew
My sinkings, as we slowly drew
Along through Kappa, Lambda, Mu,

They’d be concerned at my misgiving,
And how I mused on a College living
Right down to Sigma,
But feared a stigma
If I succumbed, and left old Donnegan
For weary freshmen’s eyes to con again:
And how I often, often wondered
What could have led me to have blundered
So far away from sound theology
To dialects and etymology;
Words, accents not to be breathed by men
Of any country ever again!”

“My heart most failed,
Indeed, quite quailed,”
Said Scott to Liddell,
“Long ere the middle! . . .
‘Twas one wet dawn
When, slippers on,
And a cold in the head anew,
Gazing at Delta
I turned and felt a
Wish for bed anew,
And to let supersedings
Of Passow’s readings
In dialects go.
‘That German has read
More than we!’ I said;
Yea, several times did I feel so! . . .

“O that first morning, smiling bland,
With sheets of foolscap, quills in hand,
To write
±±±Ä¿Â
and
±±³·Â
,
Followed by fifteen hundred pages,
What nerve was ours
So to back our powers,
Assured that we should reach
ÉÉ´·Â
While there was breath left in our bodies!”

Liddell replied: “Well, that’s past now;
The job’s done, thank God, anyhow.”

“And yet it’s not,”
Considered Scott,
“For we’ve to get
Subscribers yet
We must remember;
Yes; by September.”

“O Lord; dismiss that. We’ll succeed.
Dinner is my immediate need.
I feel as hollow as a fiddle,
Working so many hours,” said Liddell.

CHRISTMASTIDE

The rain-shafts splintered on me
As despondently I strode;
The twilight gloomed upon me
And bleared the blank high-road.
Each bush gave forth, when blown on
By gusts in shower and shower,
A sigh, as it were sown on
In handfuls by a sower.

A cheerful voice called, nigh me,
“A merry Christmas, friend!” —
There rose a figure by me,
Walking with townward trend,
A sodden tramp’s, who, breaking
Into thin song, bore straight
Ahead, direction taking
Toward the Casuals’ gate.

RELUCTANT CONFESSION

“What did you do? Cannot you let me know?”
“Don’t ask! . . . ‘Twas midnight, and I’d lost at cards.”
“Ah. Was it crime — or seemed it to be so?”
“No — not till afterwards.”
“But
what
, then, did you do?”

“Well — that was the beginning — months ago;
You see, I had lost, and could not pay but — so.
And there flashed from him strange and strong regards
That you only see when scruples smash to shards;
And thus it happened — O it rained and blew! —
But I can’t tell. ‘Twas all so lurid in hue!
And what was worst came after, when I knew
What first crossed not my mind,
And he has never divined!” . . .
“But he must have, if he proposed it you?”
“I mean, that — I got rid of what resulted
In a way a woman told me I consulted:
‘Tis that he does not know;
Great God, it harrows me so!
I did not mean to. Every night —
In hell-dark dreams
I see an appealing figure in white —
That somehow seems
A newborn child in the clothes I set to make,
But left off, for my own depraved name’s sake!”

EXPECTATION AND EXPERIENCE

“I had a holiday once,” said the woman —
Her name I did not know —
“And I thought that where I’d like to go,
Of all the places for being jolly,
And getting rid of melancholy,
Would be to a good big fair:
And I went. And it rained in torrents, drenching
Every horse, and sheep, and yeoman,
And my shoulders, face and hair;
And I found that I was the single woman
In the field — and looked quite odd there!
Everything was spirit-quenching:
I crept and stood in the lew of a wall
To think, and could not tell at all
What on earth made me plod there!”

ARISTODEMUS THE MESSENIAN

(DRAMATIC HENDECASYLLABICS)

Scene: Before the Stronghold of Ithome, Messenia, 735 B.C.
His daughter’s lover discovered, in the disguise of a soothsayer; to whom enters Aristodemus.
Aristodemus

(apostrophically)
Straightway let it be done!
Lover

Let what be done, chief?
Aristodemus

Who art thou that art speaking? Some sage prophet? —
She, my daughter’s to perish on the altar!
Lover

Thou called hero! — a myth thy vaunted power,
If it fail to redeem thy best beloved.
Aristodemus

Power is nought to the matter. What the Sibyl
Bids, must be!
Lover

But I doubt such bidding thereto.
Aristodemus

Nay. White lippings above the Delphic tripod
Mangle never their message! And they lip such.
Thriving, conquering shall Messene be forthwith —
Future worthy my gift of this intact one.
Yea, and who of the Aépytids’ renowned house
Weigh can greater with Zeus than she my offspring?
Shall these Spartiats sway to save me reavement?
What is fatherhood when they march in hearing?
Hark! E’en now they are here!
(Marching soldiers heard afar.)

Lover

(after a silence)
And mean you to warn her?
Aristodemus

Not till evening shades can cover pallor.
[Exit.
Lover stands motionless. Enter the daughter of Aristodemus.
Daughter

Ah! Thou comest to me, Love, not as earlier!
Lover, as it were waking, approaches, unhoods his face, and embraces her.
Why not speak to me?
Lover

Sweetest, thou’rt a doomed one!
Daughter

How?
Lover

Thy sacrifice by thy father waits thee —
Thee, as offering for the State’s salvation.
Daughter

Not the slaying of me?
Lover

Fail I to stay him —
(She droops in his arms)
Whereto bursts in a flame a means upon me!
Daughter

How? My father is mighty. Thou’rt so powerless.
Lover

Thus and now it adumbrates. Haste I to him,
Vowing love for thee!
Daughter

Which he’ll value wryly —
Less than nought, as I know.

Lover

Till comes my sequel;
This, to wit. Thou art got with child by me. Ay,
List: the Sibylline utterance asks a virgin;
So th’rt saved!
Daughter

But a maid’s the thing I am, Love!
Gods! With child I am not, but veriest virgin —
Who knows surer than thou?
Lover

I’ll make him think so,
Though no man upon earth more knows its falseness,
Such will I.
Daughter

But alas, thou canst not make him:
Me he knows to the core. He’ll not believe thee.
Lover

Then thou canst. He’ll accept thy vouching, sure, Sweet,
And another intact one, equal serving,
Straightway find for the knife.
Daughter

My Love, I must not!
Lover

Not? And yet there is pending for thee, elsewise,
Dark destruction, and all thy burning being
Dungeoned in an eternal nescientness!
She shudders, but weepingly shows unwillingness.
Stay. I’ll make the asseverance first. Thou’lt clinch it?
Daughter

(with white cheeks, after a pause)
Be it so! . . .
The Messenian army is heard going out to meet the Spartans. Lover hoods himself as Aristodemus enters from the stronghold.

Aristodemus

(looking strangely at his daughter)
Stay you yet at the gate? The old man also?
Hath indeed he disclosed the sore pronouncement?
Daughter

(falteringly)
Sore pronouncement? And what is, sire, its substance?
Messenger enters.
Messenger

King Euphaes is just found slain in combat:
Thereby King is the Chief, Aristodemus,
E’en ere falters the strife — still hard against us!
Aristodemus

Ha! And is it in balance yet! — The deed, then!
Daughter looks at her lover, who throws off his disguise; and they go up to Aristodemus together.
Who’s this man? And to what tends all this feigning?
Daughter

He — my lover — who thinks to be my husband —
O my father, thy pardon! Know a secret!
Aristodemus

Lover? Secret? And what? But such is nought now:
Husband he nor another can be to thee,
Let him think as he may! And though I meant not
Death to broach till the eve, let doom be dealt now.
Hark, the Spartan assays! It straight behoves me,
Cost it what to my soul, to give deliverance
To my country the instant. Thou, my daughter,
Foremost maiden of all the maidens round us —
Daughter

O but save me, I pray, sire! And to that end
There has now to be spoke a thing immediate,
And I fain would be speaker. But I cannot!
What he now will reveal, receive as vouched for!
(She rushes into the castle.)

Aristodemus

(to lover)
What means this in her? Reads she what’s impending?
Lover

King, its meaning is much! That she’s with child. Yea,
By me! Hence there is called for immolation
One who’s what she is not — a sure-sealed virgin —
If you’d haste to deliver stressed Ithome,
Bulking yet overhead as though unweakened!
Aristodemus sinks on to a projection of the rock, and covers his eyes.
Aristodemus