Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (933 page)
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Authors: Thomas Hardy
He looked from his loft one day
To where his slighted garden lay;
Nettles and hemlock hid each lawn,
And every flower was starved and gone.
He fainted in his heart, whereon
He rose, and sought his plighted one,
Resolved to loose her bond withal,
Lest she should perish in his fall.
He met her with a careless air,
As though he’d ceased to find her fair,
And said: “True love is dust to me;
I cannot kiss: I tire of thee!”
(That she might scorn him was he fain,
To put her sooner out of pain;
For incensed love breathes quick and dies,
When famished love a-lingering lies.)
Once done, his soul was so betossed,
It found no more the force it lost:
Hope was his only drink and food,
And hope extinct, decay ensued.
And, living long so closely penned,
He had not kept a single friend;
He dwindled thin as phantoms be,
And drooped to death in poverty . . .
Meantime his schoolmate had gone out
To join the fortune-finding rout;
He liked the winnings of the mart,
But wearied of the working part.
He turned to seek a privy lair,
Neglecting note of garb and hair,
And day by day reclined and thought
How he might live by doing nought.
“I plan a valued scheme,” he said
To some. “But lend me of your bread,
And when the vast result looms nigh,
In profit you shall stand as I.”
Yet they took counsel to restrain
Their kindness till they saw the gain;
And, since his substance now had run,
He rose to do what might be done.
He went unto his Love by night,
And said: “My Love, I faint in fight:
Deserving as thou dost a crown,
My cares shall never drag thee down.”
(He had descried a maid whose line
Would hand her on much corn and wine,
And held her far in worth above
One who could only pray and love.)
But this Fair read him; whence he failed
To do the deed so blithely hailed;
He saw his projects wholly marred,
And gloom and want oppressed him hard;
Till, living to so mean an end,
Whereby he’d lost his every friend,
He perished in a pauper sty,
His mate the dying pauper nigh.
And moralists, reflecting, said,
As “dust to dust” in burial read
Was echoed from each coffin-lid,
“These men were like in all they did.”
1866.
LINES
Spoken by Miss ADA REHAN at the Lyceum Theatre, July 23, 1890, at a performance on behalf of Lady Jeune’s Holiday Fund for City Children.
Before we part to alien thoughts and aims,
Permit the one brief word the occasion claims:
- When mumming and grave projects are allied,
Perhaps an Epilogue is justified.
Our under-purpose has, in truth, to-day
Commanded most our musings; least the play:
A purpose futile but for your good-will
Swiftly responsive to the cry of ill:
A purpose all too limited! — to aid
Frail human flowerets, sicklied by the shade,
In winning some short spell of upland breeze,
Or strengthening sunlight on the level leas.
Who has not marked, where the full cheek should be,
Incipient lines of lank flaccidity,
Lymphatic pallor where the pink should glow,
And where the throb of transport, pulses low? -
Most tragical of shapes from Pole to Line,
O wondering child, unwitting Time’s design,
Why should Art add to Nature’s quandary,
And worsen ill by thus immuring thee?
- That races do despite unto their own,
That Might supernal do indeed condone
Wrongs individual for the general ease,
Instance the proof in victims such as these.
Launched into thoroughfares too thronged before,
Mothered by those whose protest is “No more!”
Vitalised without option: who shall say
That did Life hang on choosing — Yea or Nay -
They had not scorned it with such penalty,
And nothingness implored of Destiny?
And yet behind the horizon smile serene
The down, the cornland, and the stretching green -
Space — the child’s heaven: scenes which at least ensure
Some palliative for ill they cannot cure.
Dear friends — now moved by this poor show of ours
To make your own long joy in buds and bowers
For one brief while the joy of infant eyes,
Changing their urban murk to paradise -
You have our thanks! — may your reward include
More than our thanks, far more: their gratitude.
I LOOK INTO MY GLASS
I look into my glass,
And view my wasting skin,
And say, “Would God it came to pass
My heart had shrunk as thin!”
For then, I, undistrest
By hearts grown cold to me,
Could lonely wait my endless rest
With equanimity.
But Time, to make me grieve;
Part steals, lets part abide;
And shakes this fragile frame at eve
With throbbings of noontide.
POEMS OF THE PAST AND THE PRESENT
CONTENTS
ROME: BUILDING A NEW STREET IN THE ANCIENT QUARTER
ROME THE VATICAN — SALA DELLE MUSE (1887)
ROME AT THE PYRAMID OF CESTIUS
ON AN INVITATION TO THE UNITED STATES
THE BEDRIDDEN PEASANT TO AN UNKNOWING GOD
TO FLOWERS FROM ITALY IN WINTER
THE COQUETTE, AND AFTER (TRIOLETS)
THE CAGED THRUSH FREED AND HOME AGAIN (VILLANELLE)
BIRDS AT WINTER NIGHTFALL (TRIOLET)
THE PUZZLED GAME-BIRDS (TRIOLET)
THE COMET AT YALBURY OR YELL’HAM
THE RESPECTABLE BURGHER ON “THE HIGHER CRITICISM”
HER LATE HUSBAND (KING’S-HINTOCK, 182-.)
THE LOST PYX A MEDIAEVAL LEGEND
CARDINAL BEMBO’S EPITAPH ON RAPHAEL
V.R. 1819-1901 A REVERIE
Moments the mightiest pass uncalendared,
And when the Absolute
In backward Time outgave the deedful word
Whereby all life is stirred:
“Let one be born and throned whose mould shall constitute
The norm of every royal-reckoned attribute,”
No mortal knew or heard.
But in due days the purposed Life outshone -
Serene, sagacious, free;
— Her waxing seasons bloomed with deeds well done,
And the world’s heart was won . . .
Yet may the deed of hers most bright in eyes to be
Lie hid from ours — as in the All-One’s thought lay she -
Till ripening years have run.
SUNDAY NIGHT, 27th January 1901.
EMBARCATION
(Southampton Docks: October, 1899)
Here, where Vespasian’s legions struck the sands,
And Cerdic with his Saxons entered in,
And Henry’s army leapt afloat to win
Convincing triumphs over neighbour lands,
Vaster battalions press for further strands,
To argue in the self-same bloody mode
Which this late age of thought, and pact, and code,
Still fails to mend. — Now deckward tramp the bands,
Yellow as autumn leaves, alive as spring;
And as each host draws out upon the sea
Beyond which lies the tragical To-be,
None dubious of the cause, none murmuring,
Wives, sisters, parents, wave white hands and smile,
As if they knew not that they weep the while.
DEPARTURE
(Southampton Docks: October, 1899)
While the far farewell music thins and fails,
And the broad bottoms rip the bearing brine -
All smalling slowly to the gray sea line -
And each significant red smoke-shaft pales,
Keen sense of severance everywhere prevails,
Which shapes the late long tramp of mounting men
To seeming words that ask and ask again:
“How long, O striving Teutons, Slavs, and Gaels
Must your wroth reasonings trade on lives like these,
That are as puppets in a playing hand? -
When shall the saner softer polities
Whereof we dream, have play in each proud land,
And patriotism, grown Godlike, scorn to stand
Bondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas?”
THE COLONEL’S SOLILOQUY
(Southampton Docks: October, 1899)
“The quay recedes. Hurrah! Ahead we go! . . .
It’s true I’ve been accustomed now to home,
And joints get rusty, and one’s limbs may grow
More fit to rest than roam.
“But I can stand as yet fair stress and strain;
There’s not a little steel beneath the rust;
My years mount somewhat, but here’s to’t again!
And if I fall, I must.
“God knows that for myself I’ve scanty care;
Past scrimmages have proved as much to all;
In Eastern lands and South I’ve had my share
Both of the blade and ball.
“And where those villains ripped me in the flitch
With their old iron in my early time,
I’m apt at change of wind to feel a twitch,
Or at a change of clime.
“And what my mirror shows me in the morning
Has more of blotch and wrinkle than of bloom;
My eyes, too, heretofore all glasses scorning,
Have just a touch of rheum . . .
“Now sounds ‘The Girl I’ve left behind me,’ — Ah,
The years, the ardours, wakened by that tune!
Time was when, with the crowd’s farewell ‘Hurrah!’
’Twould lift me to the moon.
“But now it’s late to leave behind me one
Who if, poor soul, her man goes underground,
Will not recover as she might have done
In days when hopes abound.
“She’s waving from the wharfside, palely grieving,
As down we draw . . . Her tears make little show,
Yet now she suffers more than at my leaving
Some twenty years ago.
“I pray those left at home will care for her!
I shall come back; I have before; though when
The Girl you leave behind you is a grandmother,
Things may not be as then.”
THE GOING OF THE BATTERY
WIVES’ LAMENT
(November 2, 1899)
I
O it was sad enough, weak enough, mad enough -
Light in their loving as soldiers can be -
First to risk choosing them, leave alone losing them
Now, in far battle, beyond the South Sea! . . .