Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (936 page)

- “If ever a naughtiness seized me
   To woo adulation
From creatures more keen than those crude ones
   That first formed my train -

“If inly a moment I murmured,
   ’The simple praise sweetly,
But sweetlier the sage’ — and did rashly
   Man’s vision unrein,

“I rue it! . . . His guileless forerunners,
   Whose brains I could blandish,
To measure the deeps of my mysteries
   Applied them in vain.

“From them my waste aimings and futile
   I subtly could cover;
‘Every best thing,’ said they, ‘to best purpose
   Her powers preordain.’ -

“No more such! . . . My species are dwindling,
   My forests grow barren,
My popinjays fail from their tappings,
   My larks from their strain.

“My leopardine beauties are rarer,
   My tusky ones vanish,
My children have aped mine own slaughters
   To quicken my wane.

“Let me grow, then, but mildews and mandrakes,
   And slimy distortions,
Let nevermore things good and lovely
   To me appertain;

“For Reason is rank in my temples,
   And Vision unruly,
And chivalrous laud of my cunning
   Is heard not again!”

I SAID TO LOVE

      I said to Love,
“It is not now as in old days
When men adored thee and thy ways
      All else above;
Named thee the Boy, the Bright, the One
Who spread a heaven beneath the sun,”
      I said to Love.

      I said to him,
“We now know more of thee than then;
We were but weak in judgment when,
      With hearts abrim,
We clamoured thee that thou would’st please
Inflict on us thine agonies,”
      I said to him.

      I said to Love,
“Thou art not young, thou art not fair,
No faery darts, no cherub air,
      Nor swan, nor dove
Are thine; but features pitiless,
And iron daggers of distress,”
      I said to Love.

      ”Depart then, Love! . . .
- Man’s race shall end, dost threaten thou?
The age to come the man of now
      Know nothing of? -
We fear not such a threat from thee;
We are too old in apathy!
Mankind shall cease. — So let it be,”
      I said to Love.

A COMMONPLACE DAY

   The day is turning ghost,
And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively,
   To join the anonymous host
Of those that throng oblivion; ceding his place, maybe,
   To one of like degree.

   I part the fire-gnawed logs,
Rake forth the embers, spoil the busy flames, and lay the ends
   Upon the shining dogs;
Further and further from the nooks the twilight’s stride extends,
   And beamless black impends.

   Nothing of tiniest worth
Have I wrought, pondered, planned; no one thing asking blame or
praise,
   Since the pale corpse-like birth
Of this diurnal unit, bearing blanks in all its rays -
   Dullest of dull-hued Days!

   Wanly upon the panes
The rain slides as have slid since morn my colourless thoughts; and
yet
   Here, while Day’s presence wanes,
And over him the sepulchre-lid is slowly lowered and set,
   He wakens my regret.

   Regret — though nothing dear
That I wot of, was toward in the wide world at his prime,
   Or bloomed elsewhere than here,
To die with his decease, and leave a memory sweet, sublime,
   Or mark him out in Time . . .

  — Yet, maybe, in some soul,
In some spot undiscerned on sea or land, some impulse rose,
   Or some intent upstole
Of that enkindling ardency from whose maturer glows
   The world’s amendment flows;

   But which, benumbed at birth
By momentary chance or wile, has missed its hope to be
   Embodied on the earth;
And undervoicings of this loss to man’s futurity
   May wake regret in me.

AT A LUNAR ECLIPSE

Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea,
Now steals along upon the Moon’s meek shine
In even monochrome and curving line
Of imperturbable serenity.

How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry
With the torn troubled form I know as thine,
That profile, placid as a brow divine,
With continents of moil and misery?

And can immense Mortality but throw
So small a shade, and Heaven’s high human scheme
Be hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies?

Is such the stellar gauge of earthly show,
Nation at war with nation, brains that teem,
Heroes, and women fairer than the skies?

THE LACKING SENSE

SCENE. — A sad-coloured landscape, Waddon Vale

I

“O Time, whence comes the Mother’s moody look amid her labours,
   As of one who all unwittingly has wounded where she loves?
   Why weaves she not her world-webs to according lutes and tabors,
With nevermore this too remorseful air upon her face,
      As of angel fallen from grace?”

II

- “Her look is but her story: construe not its symbols keenly:
   In her wonderworks yea surely has she wounded where she loves.
   The sense of ills misdealt for blisses blanks the mien most
queenly,
Self-smitings kill self-joys; and everywhere beneath the sun
      Such deeds her hands have done.”

III

- “And how explains thy Ancient Mind her crimes upon her creatures,
   These fallings from her fair beginnings, woundings where she
loves,
   Into her would-be perfect motions, modes, effects, and features
Admitting cramps, black humours, wan decay, and baleful blights,
      Distress into delights?”

IV

- “Ah! know’st thou not her secret yet, her vainly veiled deficience,
   Whence it comes that all unwittingly she wounds the lives she
loves?
   That sightless are those orbs of hers? — which bar to her
omniscience
Brings those fearful unfulfilments, that red ravage through her zones
      Whereat all creation groans.

V

“She whispers it in each pathetic strenuous slow endeavour,
   When in mothering she unwittingly sets wounds on what she loves;
   Yet her primal doom pursues her, faultful, fatal is she ever;
Though so deft and nigh to vision is her facile finger-touch
      That the seers marvel much.

VI

“Deal, then, her groping skill no scorn, no note of malediction;
   Not long on thee will press the hand that hurts the lives it
loves;
   And while she dares dead-reckoning on, in darkness of affliction,
Assist her where thy creaturely dependence can or may,
      For thou art of her clay.”

TO LIFE

   O life with the sad seared face,
      I weary of seeing thee,
And thy draggled cloak, and thy hobbling pace,
      And thy too-forced pleasantry!

   I know what thou would’st tell
      Of Death, Time, Destiny -
I have known it long, and know, too, well
      What it all means for me.

   But canst thou not array
      Thyself in rare disguise,
And feign like truth, for one mad day,
      That Earth is Paradise?

   I’ll tune me to the mood,
      And mumm with thee till eve;
And maybe what as interlude
      I feign, I shall believe!

DOOM AND SHE

I

   There dwells a mighty pair -
   Slow, statuesque, intense -
   Amid the vague Immense:
None can their chronicle declare,
   Nor why they be, nor whence.

II

   Mother of all things made,
   Matchless in artistry,
   Unlit with sight is she. -
And though her ever well-obeyed
   Vacant of feeling he.

III

   The Matron mildly asks -
   A throb in every word -
   ”Our clay-made creatures, lord,
How fare they in their mortal tasks
   Upon Earth’s bounded bord?

IV

   ”The fate of those I bear,
   Dear lord, pray turn and view,
   And notify me true;
Shapings that eyelessly I dare
   Maybe I would undo.

V

   ”Sometimes from lairs of life
   Methinks I catch a groan,
   Or multitudinous moan,
As though I had schemed a world of strife,
   Working by touch alone.”

VI

   ”World-weaver!” he replies,
   ”I scan all thy domain;
   But since nor joy nor pain
Doth my clear substance recognize,
   I read thy realms in vain.

VII

   ”World-weaver! what IS Grief?
   And what are Right, and Wrong,
   And Feeling, that belong
To creatures all who owe thee fief?
   What worse is Weak than Strong?” . . .

VIII

  — Unlightened, curious, meek,
   She broods in sad surmise . . .
  — Some say they have heard her sighs
On Alpine height or Polar peak
   When the night tempests rise.

THE PROBLEM

   Shall we conceal the Case, or tell it -
      We who believe the evidence?
   Here and there the watch-towers knell it
      With a sullen significance,
Heard of the few who hearken intently and carry an eagerly upstrained
sense.

   Hearts that are happiest hold not by it;
      Better we let, then, the old view reign;
   Since there is peace in it, why decry it?
      Since there is comfort, why disdain?
Note not the pigment the while that the painting determines
humanity’s joy and pain!

THE SUBALTERNS

I

“Poor wanderer,” said the leaden sky,
   ”I fain would lighten thee,
But there be laws in force on high
   Which say it must not be.”

II

- “I would not freeze thee, shorn one,” cried
   The North, “knew I but how
To warm my breath, to slack my stride;
   But I am ruled as thou.”

III

- “To-morrow I attack thee, wight,”
   Said Sickness. “Yet I swear
I bear thy little ark no spite,
   But am bid enter there.”

IV

- “Come hither, Son,” I heard Death say;
   ”I did not will a grave
Should end thy pilgrimage to-day,
   But I, too, am a slave!”

V

We smiled upon each other then,
   And life to me wore less
That fell contour it wore ere when
   They owned their passiveness.

THE SLEEP-WORKER

When wilt thou wake, O Mother, wake and see -
As one who, held in trance, has laboured long
By vacant rote and prepossession strong -
The coils that thou hast wrought unwittingly;

Wherein have place, unrealised by thee,
Fair growths, foul cankers, right enmeshed with wrong,
Strange orchestras of victim-shriek and song,
And curious blends of ache and ecstasy? -

Should that morn come, and show thy opened eyes
All that Life’s palpitating tissues feel,
How wilt thou bear thyself in thy surprise? -

Wilt thou destroy, in one wild shock of shame,
Thy whole high heaving firmamental frame,
Or patiently adjust, amend, and heal?

THE BULLFINCHES

   Bother Bulleys, let us sing
   From the dawn till evening! -
For we know not that we go not
   When the day’s pale pinions fold
   Unto those who sang of old.

   When I flew to Blackmoor Vale,
   Whence the green-gowned faeries hail,
Roosting near them I could hear them
   Speak of queenly Nature’s ways,
   Means, and moods, — well known to fays.

   All we creatures, nigh and far
   (Said they there), the Mother’s are:
Yet she never shows endeavour
   To protect from warrings wild
   Bird or beast she calls her child.

   Busy in her handsome house
   Known as Space, she falls a-drowse;
Yet, in seeming, works on dreaming,
   While beneath her groping hands
   Fiends make havoc in her bands.

   How her hussif’ry succeeds
   She unknows or she unheeds,
All things making for Death’s taking!
  — So the green-gowned faeries say
   Living over Blackmoor way.

   Come then, brethren, let us sing,
   From the dawn till evening! -
For we know not that we go not
   When the day’s pale pinions fold
   Unto those who sang of old.

GOD-FORGOTTEN

   I towered far, and lo! I stood within
   The presence of the Lord Most High,
Sent thither by the sons of earth, to win
      Some answer to their cry.

  — ”The Earth, say’st thou? The Human race?
   By Me created? Sad its lot?
Nay: I have no remembrance of such place:
      Such world I fashioned not.” -

  — ”O Lord, forgive me when I say
   Thou spak’st the word, and mad’st it all.” -
“The Earth of men — let me bethink me . . . Yea!
      I dimly do recall

   ”Some tiny sphere I built long back
   (Mid millions of such shapes of mine)
So named . . . It perished, surely — not a wrack
      Remaining, or a sign?

   ”It lost my interest from the first,
   My aims therefor succeeding ill;
Haply it died of doing as it durst?” -
      ”Lord, it existeth still.” -

   ”Dark, then, its life! For not a cry
   Of aught it bears do I now hear;
Of its own act the threads were snapt whereby
      Its plaints had reached mine ear.

   ”It used to ask for gifts of good,
   Till came its severance self-entailed,
When sudden silence on that side ensued,
      And has till now prevailed.