Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (942 page)
Read Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) Online
Authors: Thomas Hardy
V
“Yet,” said they, “his frail speech,
Hath accents pitched like thine -
Thy mould and his define
A likeness each to each -
But go! Deep pain
Alas, would be
His name to thee,
And told in vain!”
Feb. 2, 1899.
MEMORY AND I
“O memory, where is now my youth,
Who used to say that life was truth?”
“I saw him in a crumbled cot
Beneath a tottering tree;
That he as phantom lingers there
Is only known to me.”
“O Memory, where is now my joy,
Who lived with me in sweet employ?”
“I saw him in gaunt gardens lone,
Where laughter used to be;
That he as phantom wanders there
Is known to none but me.”
“O Memory, where is now my hope,
Who charged with deeds my skill and scope?”
“I saw her in a tomb of tomes,
Where dreams are wont to be;
That she as spectre haunteth there
Is only known to me.”
“O Memory, where is now my faith,
One time a champion, now a wraith?”
“I saw her in a ravaged aisle,
Bowed down on bended knee;
That her poor ghost outflickers there
Is known to none but me.”
“O Memory, where is now my love,
That rayed me as a god above?”
“I saw him by an ageing shape
Where beauty used to be;
That his fond phantom lingers there
Is only known to me.”
GREEK TITLE
Long have I framed weak phantasies of Thee,
O Willer masked and dumb!
Who makest Life become, -
As though by labouring all-unknowingly,
Like one whom reveries numb.
How much of consciousness informs Thy will
Thy biddings, as if blind,
Of death-inducing kind,
Nought shows to us ephemeral ones who fill
But moments in Thy mind.
Perhaps Thy ancient rote-restricted ways
Thy ripening rule transcends;
That listless effort tends
To grow percipient with advance of days,
And with percipience mends.
For, in unwonted purlieus, far and nigh,
At whiles or short or long,
May be discerned a wrong
Dying as of self-slaughter; whereat I
Would raise my voice in song.
TIME’S LAUGHINGSTOCKS AND OTHER VERSES
CONTENTS
A SUNDAY MORNING TRAGEDY (circa 186-)
THE CURATE’S KINDNESS A WORKHOUSE IRONY
REMINISCENCES OF A DANCING MAN
TO AN IMPERSONATOR OF ROSALIND
THE RASH BRIDE AN EXPERIENCE OF THE MELLSTOCK QUIRE
AFTER THE LAST BREATH (J. H. 1813-1904)
THE PINE PLANTERS (MARTY SOUTH’S REVERIE)
GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE (A MEMORY OF CHRISTIANA C-)
ONE RALPH BLOSSOM SOLILOQUIZES
THE NOBLE LADY’S TALE (circa 1790)
A YOUNG MAN’S EPIGRAM ON EXISTENCE
PREFACE
In collecting the following poems I have to thank the editors and proprietors of the periodicals in which certain of them have appeared for permission to reclaim them.
Now that the miscellany is brought together, some lack of concord in pieces written at widely severed dates, and in contrasting moods and circumstances, will be obvious enough. This I cannot help, but the sense of disconnection, particularly in respect of those lyrics penned in the first person, will be immaterial when it is borne in mind that they are to be regarded, in the main, as dramatic monologues by different characters.
As a whole they will, I hope, take the reader forward, even if not far, rather than backward. I should add that some lines in the early-dated poems have been rewritten, though they have been left substantially unchanged.
T. H.
September 1909.
THE REVISITATION
As I lay awake at night-time
In an ancient country barrack known to ancient cannoneers,
And recalled the hopes that heralded each seeming brave and bright time
Of my primal purple years,
Much it haunted me that, nigh there,
I had borne my bitterest loss — when One who went, came not again;
In a joyless hour of discord, in a joyless-hued July there -
A July just such as then.
And as thus I brooded longer,
With my faint eyes on the feeble square of wan-lit window frame,
A quick conviction sprung within me, grew, and grew yet stronger,
That the month-night was the same,
Too, as that which saw her leave me
On the rugged ridge of Waterstone, the peewits plaining round;
And a lapsing twenty years had ruled that — as it were to grieve me -
I should near the once-loved ground.
Though but now a war-worn stranger
Chance had quartered here, I rose up and descended to the yard.
All was soundless, save the troopers’ horses tossing at the manger,
And the sentry keeping guard.
Through the gateway I betook me
Down the High Street and beyond the lamps, across the battered bridge,
Till the country darkness clasped me and the friendly shine forsook me,
And I bore towards the Ridge,
With a dim unowned emotion
Saying softly: “Small my reason, now at midnight, to be here . . .
Yet a sleepless swain of fifty with a brief romantic notion
May retrace a track so dear.”
Thus I walked with thoughts half-uttered
Up the lane I knew so well, the grey, gaunt, lonely Lane of Slyre;
And at whiles behind me, far at sea, a sullen thunder muttered
As I mounted high and higher.
Till, the upper roadway quitting,
I adventured on the open drouthy downland thinly grassed,
While the spry white scuts of conies flashed before me, earthward flitting,
And an arid wind went past.
Round about me bulged the barrows
As before, in antique silence — immemorial funeral piles -
Where the sleek herds trampled daily the remains of flint-tipt arrows
Mid the thyme and chamomiles;
And the Sarsen stone there, dateless,
On whose breast we had sat and told the zephyrs many a tender vow,
Held the heat of yester sun, as sank thereon one fated mateless
From those far fond hours till now.
Maybe flustered by my presence
Rose the peewits, just as all those years back, wailing soft and loud,
And revealing their pale pinions like a fitful phosphorescence
Up against the cope of cloud,
Where their dolesome exclamations
Seemed the voicings of the self-same throats I had heard when life was
green,
Though since that day uncounted frail forgotten generations
Of their kind had flecked the scene. -
And so, living long and longer
In a past that lived no more, my eyes discerned there, suddenly,
That a figure broke the skyline — first in vague contour, then stronger,
And was crossing near to me.
Some long-missed familiar gesture,
Something wonted, struck me in the figure’s pause to list and heed,
Till I fancied from its handling of its loosely wrapping vesture
That it might be She indeed.
’Twas not reasonless: below there
In the vale, had been her home; the nook might hold her even yet,
And the downlands were her father’s fief; she still might come and go there;
-
So I rose, and said, “Agnette!”
With a little leap, half-frightened,
She withdrew some steps; then letting intuition smother fear
In a place so long-accustomed, and as one whom thought enlightened,
She replied: “What — THAT voice? — here!”
”Yes, Agnette! — And did the occasion
Of our marching hither make you think I MIGHT walk where we two — ’
“O, I often come,” she murmured with a moment’s coy evasion,
”(‘Tis not far), — and — think of you.”
Then I took her hand, and led her
To the ancient people’s stone whereon I had sat. There now sat we;
And together talked, until the first reluctant shyness fled her,
And she spoke confidingly.
”It is JUST as ere we parted!”
Said she, brimming high with joy. — ”And when, then, came you here, and why?”
“ — Dear, I could not sleep for thinking of our trystings when twin-hearted.”
She responded, “Nor could I.
”There are few things I would rather
Than be wandering at this spirit-hour — lone-lived, my kindred dead -
On this wold of well-known feature I inherit from my father:
Night or day, I have no dread . . .
”O I wonder, wonder whether
Any heartstring bore a signal-thrill between us twain or no? -
Some such influence can, at times, they say, draw severed souls together.”
I said, “Dear, we’ll dream it so.”
Each one’s hand the other’s grasping,
And a mutual forgiveness won, we sank to silent thought,
A large content in us that seemed our rended lives reclasping,
And contracting years to nought.
Till I, maybe overweary
From the lateness, and a wayfaring so full of strain and stress
For one no longer buoyant, to a peak so steep and eery,
Sank to slow unconsciousness . . .
How long I slept I knew not,
But the brief warm summer night had slid when, to my swift surprise,
A red upedging sun, of glory chambered mortals view not,
Was blazing on my eyes,
From the Milton Woods to Dole-Hill
All the spacious landscape lighting, and around about my feet
Flinging tall thin tapering shadows from the meanest mound and mole-hill,
And on trails the ewes had beat.
She was sitting still beside me,
Dozing likewise; and I turned to her, to take her hanging hand;
When, the more regarding, that which like a spectre shook and tried me
In her image then I scanned;
That which Time’s transforming chisel
Had been tooling night and day for twenty years, and tooled too well,
In its rendering of crease where curve was, where was raven, grizzle -
Pits, where peonies once did dwell.
She had wakened, and perceiving
(I surmise) my sigh and shock, my quite involuntary dismay,
Up she started, and — her wasted figure all throughout it heaving -
Said, “Ah, yes: I am THUS by day!