Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (937 page)

   ”All other orbs have kept in touch;
   Their voicings reach me speedily:
Thy people took upon them overmuch
      In sundering them from me!

   ”And it is strange — though sad enough -
   Earth’s race should think that one whose call
Frames, daily, shining spheres of flawless stuff
      Must heed their tainted ball! . . .

   ”But say’st thou ‘tis by pangs distraught,
   And strife, and silent suffering? -
Deep grieved am I that injury should be wrought
      Even on so poor a thing!

   ”Thou should’st have learnt that Not to Mend
   For Me could mean but Not to Know:
Hence, Messengers! and straightway put an end
      To what men undergo.” . . .

   Homing at dawn, I thought to see
   One of the Messengers standing by.
- Oh, childish thought! . . . Yet oft it comes to me
      When trouble hovers nigh.

THE BEDRIDDEN PEASANT TO AN UNKNOWING GOD

Much wonder I — here long low-laid -
   That this dead wall should be
Betwixt the Maker and the made,
   Between Thyself and me!

For, say one puts a child to nurse,
   He eyes it now and then
To know if better ‘tis, or worse,
   And if it mourn, and when.

But Thou, Lord, giv’st us men our clay
   In helpless bondage thus
To Time and Chance, and seem’st straightway
   To think no more of us!

That some disaster cleft Thy scheme
   And tore us wide apart,
So that no cry can cross, I deem;
   For Thou art mild of heart,

And would’st not shape and shut us in
   Where voice can not he heard:
‘Tis plain Thou meant’st that we should win
   Thy succour by a word.

Might but Thy sense flash down the skies
   Like man’s from clime to clime,
Thou would’st not let me agonize
   Through my remaining time;

But, seeing how much Thy creatures bear -
   Lame, starved, or maimed, or blind -
Thou’dst heal the ills with quickest care
   Of me and all my kind.

Then, since Thou mak’st not these things be,
   But these things dost not know,
I’ll praise Thee as were shown to me
   The mercies Thou would’st show!

BY THE EARTH’S CORPSE

I

   ”O Lord, why grievest Thou? -
   Since Life has ceased to be
   Upon this globe, now cold
   As lunar land and sea,
And humankind, and fowl, and fur
   Are gone eternally,
All is the same to Thee as ere
   They knew mortality.”

II

“O Time,” replied the Lord,
   ”Thou read’st me ill, I ween;
Were all THE SAME, I should not grieve
   At that late earthly scene,
Now blestly past — though planned by me
   With interest close and keen! -
Nay, nay: things now are NOT the same
   As they have earlier been.

III

   ”Written indelibly
   On my eternal mind
   Are all the wrongs endured
   By Earth’s poor patient kind,
Which my too oft unconscious hand
   Let enter undesigned.
No god can cancel deeds foredone,
   Or thy old coils unwind!

IV

   ”As when, in Noe’s days,
   I whelmed the plains with sea,
   So at this last, when flesh
   And herb but fossils be,
And, all extinct, their piteous dust
   Revolves obliviously,
That I made Earth, and life, and man,
   It still repenteth me!”

MUTE OPINION

I

I traversed a dominion
Whose spokesmen spake out strong
Their purpose and opinion
Through pulpit, press, and song.
I scarce had means to note there
A large-eyed few, and dumb,
Who thought not as those thought there
That stirred the heat and hum.

II

When, grown a Shade, beholding
That land in lifetime trode,
To learn if its unfolding
Fulfilled its clamoured code,
I saw, in web unbroken,
Its history outwrought
Not as the loud had spoken,
But as the mute had thought.

TO AN UNBORN PAUPER CHILD

I

   Breathe not, hid Heart: cease silently,
   And though thy birth-hour beckons thee,
      Sleep the long sleep:
      The Doomsters heap
   Travails and teens around us here,
And Time-wraiths turn our songsingings to fear.

II

   Hark, how the peoples surge and sigh,
   And laughters fail, and greetings die:
      Hopes dwindle; yea,
      Faiths waste away,
   Affections and enthusiasms numb;
Thou canst not mend these things if thou dost come.

III

   Had I the ear of wombed souls
   Ere their terrestrial chart unrolls,
      And thou wert free
      To cease, or be,
   Then would I tell thee all I know,
And put it to thee: Wilt thou take Life so?

IV

   Vain vow! No hint of mine may hence
   To theeward fly: to thy locked sense
      Explain none can
      Life’s pending plan:
   Thou wilt thy ignorant entry make
Though skies spout fire and blood and nations quake.

V

   Fain would I, dear, find some shut plot
   Of earth’s wide wold for thee, where not
      One tear, one qualm,
      Should break the calm.
   But I am weak as thou and bare;
No man can change the common lot to rare.

VI

   Must come and bide. And such are we -
   Unreasoning, sanguine, visionary -
      That I can hope
      Health, love, friends, scope
   In full for thee; can dream thou’lt find
Joys seldom yet attained by humankind!

TO FLOWERS FROM ITALY IN WINTER

Sunned in the South, and here to-day;
  — If all organic things
Be sentient, Flowers, as some men say,
   What are your ponderings?

How can you stay, nor vanish quite
   From this bleak spot of thorn,
And birch, and fir, and frozen white
   Expanse of the forlorn?

Frail luckless exiles hither brought!
   Your dust will not regain
Old sunny haunts of Classic thought
   When you shall waste and wane;

But mix with alien earth, be lit
   With frigid Boreal flame,
And not a sign remain in it
   To tell men whence you came.

ON A FINE MORNING

Whence comes Solace? — Not from seeing
What is doing, suffering, being,
Not from noting Life’s conditions,
Nor from heeding Time’s monitions;
   But in cleaving to the Dream,
   And in gazing at the gleam
   Whereby gray things golden seem.

II

Thus do I this heyday, holding
Shadows but as lights unfolding,
As no specious show this moment
With its irised embowment;
   But as nothing other than
   Part of a benignant plan;
   Proof that earth was made for man.

February 1899.

TO LIZBIE BROWNE

I

Dear Lizbie Browne,
Where are you now?
In sun, in rain? -
Or is your brow
Past joy, past pain,
Dear Lizbie Browne?

II

Sweet Lizbie Browne
How you could smile,
How you could sing! -
How archly wile
In glance-giving,
Sweet Lizbie Browne!

III

And, Lizbie Browne,
Who else had hair
Bay-red as yours,
Or flesh so fair
Bred out of doors,
Sweet Lizbie Browne?

IV

When, Lizbie Browne,
You had just begun
To be endeared
By stealth to one,
You disappeared
My Lizbie Browne!

V

Ay, Lizbie Browne,
So swift your life,
And mine so slow,
You were a wife
Ere I could show
Love, Lizbie Browne.

VI

Still, Lizbie Browne,
You won, they said,
The best of men
When you were wed . . .
Where went you then,
O Lizbie Browne?

VII

Dear Lizbie Browne,
I should have thought,
“Girls ripen fast,”
And coaxed and caught
You ere you passed,
Dear Lizbie Browne!

VIII

But, Lizbie Browne,
I let you slip;
Shaped not a sign;
Touched never your lip
With lip of mine,
Lost Lizbie Browne!

IX

So, Lizbie Browne,
When on a day
Men speak of me
As not, you’ll say,
“And who was he?” -
Yes, Lizbie Browne!

SONG OF HOPE

O sweet To-morrow! -
   After to-day
   There will away
This sense of sorrow.
Then let us borrow
Hope, for a gleaming
Soon will be streaming,
   Dimmed by no gray -
      No gray!

While the winds wing us
   Sighs from The Gone,
   Nearer to dawn
Minute-beats bring us;
When there will sing us
Larks of a glory
Waiting our story
   Further anon -
      Anon!

Doff the black token,
   Don the red shoon,
   Right and retune
Viol-strings broken;
Null the words spoken
In speeches of rueing,
The night cloud is hueing,
   To-morrow shines soon -
      Shines soon!

THE WELL-BELOVED

I wayed by star and planet shine
   Towards the dear one’s home
At Kingsbere, there to make her mine
   When the next sun upclomb.

I edged the ancient hill and wood
   Beside the Ikling Way,
Nigh where the Pagan temple stood
   In the world’s earlier day.

And as I quick and quicker walked
   On gravel and on green,
I sang to sky, and tree, or talked
   Of her I called my queen.

- “O faultless is her dainty form,
   And luminous her mind;
She is the God-created norm
   Of perfect womankind!”

A shape whereon one star-blink gleamed
   Glode softly by my side,
A woman’s; and her motion seemed
   The motion of my bride.

And yet methought she’d drawn erstwhile
   Adown the ancient leaze,
Where once were pile and peristyle
   For men’s idolatries.

- “O maiden lithe and lone, what may
   Thy name and lineage be,
Who so resemblest by this ray
   My darling? — Art thou she?”

The Shape: “Thy bride remains within
   Her father’s grange and grove.”
- “Thou speakest rightly,” I broke in,
   ”Thou art not she I love.”

- “Nay: though thy bride remains inside
   Her father’s walls,” said she,
“The one most dear is with thee here,
   For thou dost love but me.”

Then I: “But she, my only choice,
   Is now at Kingsbere Grove?”
Again her soft mysterious voice:
   ”I am thy only Love.”

Thus still she vouched, and still I said,
   ”O sprite, that cannot be!” . . .
It was as if my bosom bled,
   So much she troubled me.

The sprite resumed: “Thou hast transferred
   To her dull form awhile
My beauty, fame, and deed, and word,
   My gestures and my smile.

“O fatuous man, this truth infer,
   Brides are not what they seem;
Thou lovest what thou dreamest her;
   I am thy very dream!”

- “O then,” I answered miserably,
   Speaking as scarce I knew,
“My loved one, I must wed with thee
   If what thou say’st be true!”

She, proudly, thinning in the gloom:
   ”Though, since troth-plight began,
I’ve ever stood as bride to groom,
   I wed no mortal man!”

Thereat she vanished by the Cross
   That, entering Kingsbere town,
The two long lanes form, near the fosse
   Below the faneless Down.

- When I arrived and met my bride,
   Her look was pinched and thin,
As if her soul had shrunk and died,
   And left a waste within.

HER REPROACH

Con the dead page as ‘twere live love: press on!
Cold wisdom’s words will ease thy track for thee;
Aye, go; cast off sweet ways, and leave me wan
To biting blasts that are intent on me.

But if thy object Fame’s far summits be,
Whose inclines many a skeleton o’erlies
That missed both dream and substance, stop and see
How absence wears these cheeks and dims these eyes!

It surely is far sweeter and more wise
To water love, than toil to leave anon
A name whose glory-gleam will but advise
Invidious minds to quench it with their own,

And over which the kindliest will but stay
A moment, musing, “He, too, had his day!”

WESTBOURNE PARK VILLAS, 1867.

THE INCONSISTENT

I say, “She was as good as fair,”
   When standing by her mound;
“Such passing sweetness,” I declare,
   ”No longer treads the ground.”
I say, “What living Love can catch
   Her bloom and bonhomie,
And what in newer maidens match
   Her olden warmth to me!”

- There stands within yon vestry-nook
   Where bonded lovers sign,
Her name upon a faded book
   With one that is not mine.
To him she breathed the tender vow
   She once had breathed to me,
But yet I say, “O love, even now
   Would I had died for thee!”

A BROKEN APPOINTMENT

      You did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb. -
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure lovingkindness’ sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
      You did not come.