Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (943 page)

   ”Can you really wince and wonder
That the sunlight should reveal you such a thing of skin and bone,
As if unaware a Death’s-head must of need lie not far under
   Flesh whose years out-count your own?

   ”Yes: that movement was a warning
Of the worth of man’s devotion! — Yes, Sir, I am OLD,” said she,
“And the thing which should increase love turns it quickly into scorning -
   And your new-won heart from me!”

   Then she went, ere I could call her,
With the too proud temper ruling that had parted us before,
And I saw her form descend the slopes, and smaller grow and smaller,
   Till I caught its course no more . . .

   True; I might have dogged her downward;
- But it MAY be (though I know not) that this trick on us of Time
Disconcerted and confused me. — Soon I bent my footsteps townward,
   Like to one who had watched a crime.

   Well I knew my native weakness,
Well I know it still. I cherished her reproach like physic-wine,
For I saw in that emaciate shape of bitterness and bleakness
   A nobler soul than mine.

   Did I not return, then, ever? -
Did we meet again? — mend all? — Alas, what greyhead perseveres! -
Soon I got the Route elsewhither. — Since that hour I have seen her never:
   Love is lame at fifty years.

A TRAMPWOMAN’S TRAGEDY (182-)

I

From Wynyard’s Gap the livelong day,
      The livelong day,
We beat afoot the northward way
   We had travelled times before.
The sun-blaze burning on our backs,
Our shoulders sticking to our packs,
By fosseway, fields, and turnpike tracks
   We skirted sad Sedge-Moor.

II

Full twenty miles we jaunted on,
      We jaunted on, -
My fancy-man, and jeering John,
   And Mother Lee, and I.
And, as the sun drew down to west,
We climbed the toilsome Poldon crest,
And saw, of landskip sights the best,
   The inn that beamed thereby.

III

For months we had padded side by side,
      Ay, side by side
Through the Great Forest, Blackmoor wide,
   And where the Parret ran.
We’d faced the gusts on Mendip ridge,
Had crossed the Yeo unhelped by bridge,
Been stung by every Marshwood midge,
   I and my fancy-man.

IV

Lone inns we loved, my man and I,
      My man and I;
“King’s Stag,” “Windwhistle” high and dry,
   ”The Horse” on Hintock Green,
The cosy house at Wynyard’s Gap,
“The Hut” renowned on Bredy Knap,
And many another wayside tap
   Where folk might sit unseen.

V

Now as we trudged — O deadly day,
      O deadly day! -
I teased my fancy-man in play
   And wanton idleness.
I walked alongside jeering John,
I laid his hand my waist upon;
I would not bend my glances on
   My lover’s dark distress.

VI

Thus Poldon top at last we won,
      At last we won,
And gained the inn at sink of sun
   Far-famed as “Marshal’s Elm.”
Beneath us figured tor and lea,
From Mendip to the western sea -
I doubt if finer sight there be
   Within this royal realm.

VII

Inside the settle all a-row -
      All four a-row
We sat, I next to John, to show
   That he had wooed and won.
And then he took me on his knee,
And swore it was his turn to be
My favoured mate, and Mother Lee
   Passed to my former one.

VIII

Then in a voice I had never heard,
      I had never heard,
My only Love to me: “One word,
   My lady, if you please!
Whose is the child you are like to bear? -
HIS? After all my months o’ care?”
God knows ‘twas not! But, O despair!
   I nodded — still to tease.

IX

Then up he sprung, and with his knife -
      And with his knife
He let out jeering Johnny’s life,
   Yes; there, at set of sun.
The slant ray through the window nigh
Gilded John’s blood and glazing eye,
Ere scarcely Mother Lee and I
   Knew that the deed was done.

X

The taverns tell the gloomy tale,
      The gloomy tale,
How that at Ivel-chester jail
   My Love, my sweetheart swung;
Though stained till now by no misdeed
Save one horse ta’en in time o’ need;
(Blue Jimmy stole right many a steed
   Ere his last fling he flung.)

XI

Thereaft I walked the world alone,
      Alone, alone!
On his death-day I gave my groan
   And dropt his dead-born child.
‘Twas nigh the jail, beneath a tree,
None tending me; for Mother Lee
Had died at Glaston, leaving me
   Unfriended on the wild.

XII

And in the night as I lay weak,
      As I lay weak,
The leaves a-falling on my cheek,
  The red moon low declined -
The ghost of him I’d die to kiss
Rose up and said: “Ah, tell me this!
Was the child mine, or was it his?
   Speak, that I rest may find!”

XIII

O doubt not but I told him then,
      I told him then,
That I had kept me from all men
  Since we joined lips and swore.
Whereat he smiled, and thinned away
As the wind stirred to call up day . . .
- ‘Tis past! And here alone I stray
   Haunting the Western Moor.

NOTES. — ”Windwhistle” (Stanza iv.). The highness and dryness of Windwhistle Inn was impressed upon the writer two or three years ago, when, after climbing on a hot afternoon to the beautiful spot near which it stands and entering the inn for tea, he was informed by the landlady that none could be had, unless he would fetch water from a valley half a mile off, the house containing not a drop, owing to its situation. However, a tantalising row of full barrels behind her back testified to a wetness of a certain sort, which was not at that time desired.

“Marshal’s Elm” (Stanza vi.) so picturesquely situated, is no longer an inn, though the house, or part of it, still remains. It used to exhibit a fine old swinging sign.

“Blue Jimmy” (Stanza x.) was a notorious horse-stealer of Wessex in those days, who appropriated more than a hundred horses before he was caught, among others one belonging to a neighbour of the writer’s grandfather. He was hanged at the now demolished Ivel-chester or Ilchester jail above mentioned — that building formerly of so many sinister associations in the minds of the local peasantry, and the continual haunt of fever, which at last led to its condemnation. Its site is now an innocent-looking green meadow.

April 1902.

THE TWO ROSALINDS

I

   The dubious daylight ended,
And I walked the Town alone, unminding whither bound and why,
As from each gaunt street and gaping square a mist of light ascended
   And dispersed upon the sky.

II

   Files of evanescent faces
Passed each other without heeding, in their travail, teen, or joy,
Some in void unvisioned listlessness inwrought with pallid traces
   Of keen penury’s annoy.

III

   Nebulous flames in crystal cages
Leered as if with discontent at city movement, murk, and grime,
And as waiting some procession of great ghosts from bygone ages
   To exalt the ignoble time.

IV

   In a colonnade high-lighted,
By a thoroughfare where stern utilitarian traffic dinned,
On a red and white emblazonment of players and parts, I sighted
   The name of “Rosalind,”

V

   And her famous mates of “Arden,”
Who observed no stricter customs than “the seasons’ difference” bade,
Who lived with running brooks for books in Nature’s wildwood garden,
   And called idleness their trade . . .

VI

   Now the poster stirred an ember
Still remaining from my ardours of some forty years before,
When the selfsame portal on an eve it thrilled me to remember
   A like announcement bore;

VII

   And expectantly I had entered,
And had first beheld in human mould a Rosalind woo and plead,
On whose transcendent figuring my speedy soul had centred
   As it had been she indeed . . .

VIII

   So; all other plans discarding,
I resolved on entrance, bent on seeing what I once had seen,
And approached the gangway of my earlier knowledge, disregarding
   The tract of time between.

IX

   ”The words, sir?” cried a creature
Hovering mid the shine and shade as ‘twixt the live world and the tomb;
But the well-known numbers needed not for me a text or teacher
   To revive and re-illume.

X

   Then the play . . . But how unfitted
Was THIS Rosalind! — a mammet quite to me, in memories nurst,
And with chilling disappointment soon I sought the street I had quitted,
   To re-ponder on the first.

XI

   The hag still hawked, — I met her
Just without the colonnade. “So you don’t like her, sir?” said she.
“Ah —
I
was once that Rosalind! — I acted her — none better -
   Yes — in eighteen sixty-three.

XII

   ”Thus I won Orlando to me
In my then triumphant days when I had charm and maidenhood,
Now some forty years ago. — I used to say, COME WOO ME, WOO ME!”
   And she struck the attitude.

XIII

   It was when I had gone there nightly;
And the voice — though raucous now — was yet the old one. — Clear as noon
My Rosalind was here . . . Thereon the band withinside lightly
   Beat up a merry tune.

A SUNDAY MORNING TRAGEDY (circa 186-)

I bore a daughter flower-fair,
In Pydel Vale, alas for me;
I joyed to mother one so rare,
But dead and gone I now would be.

Men looked and loved her as she grew,
And she was won, alas for me;
She told me nothing, but I knew,
And saw that sorrow was to be.

I knew that one had made her thrall,
A thrall to him, alas for me;
And then, at last, she told me all,
And wondered what her end would be.

She owned that she had loved too well,
Had loved too well, unhappy she,
And bore a secret time would tell,
Though in her shroud she’d sooner be.

I plodded to her sweetheart’s door
In Pydel Vale, alas for me:
I pleaded with him, pleaded sore,
To save her from her misery.

He frowned, and swore he could not wed,
Seven times he swore it could not be;
“Poverty’s worse than shame,” he said,
Till all my hope went out of me.

“I’ve packed my traps to sail the main” -
Roughly he spake, alas did he -
“Wessex beholds me not again,
‘Tis worse than any jail would be!”

- There was a shepherd whom I knew,
A subtle man, alas for me:
I sought him all the pastures through,
Though better I had ceased to be.

I traced him by his lantern light,
And gave him hint, alas for me,
Of how she found her in the plight
That is so scorned in Christendie.

“Is there an herb . . . ?” I asked. “Or none?”
Yes, thus I asked him desperately.
“ — There is,” he said; “a certain one . . . “
Would he had sworn that none knew he!

“To-morrow I will walk your way,”
He hinted low, alas for me. -
Fieldwards I gazed throughout next day;
Now fields I never more would see!

The sunset-shine, as curfew strook,
As curfew strook beyond the lea,
Lit his white smock and gleaming crook,
While slowly he drew near to me.

He pulled from underneath his smock
The herb I sought, my curse to be -
“At times I use it in my flock,”
He said, and hope waxed strong in me.

“‘Tis meant to balk ill-motherings” -
(Ill-motherings! Why should they be?) -
“If not, would God have sent such things?”
So spoke the shepherd unto me.

That night I watched the poppling brew,
With bended back and hand on knee:
I stirred it till the dawnlight grew,
And the wind whiffled wailfully.

“This scandal shall be slain,” said I,
“That lours upon her innocency:
I’ll give all whispering tongues the lie;” -
But worse than whispers was to be.

“Here’s physic for untimely fruit,”
I said to her, alas for me,
Early that morn in fond salute;
And in my grave I now would be.

- Next Sunday came, with sweet church chimes
In Pydel Vale, alas for me:
I went into her room betimes;
No more may such a Sunday be!

“Mother, instead of rescue nigh,”
She faintly breathed, alas for me,
“I feel as I were like to die,
And underground soon, soon should be.”

From church that noon the people walked
In twos and threes, alas for me,
Showed their new raiment — smiled and talked,
Though sackcloth-clad I longed to be.

Came to my door her lover’s friends,
And cheerly cried, alas for me,
“Right glad are we he makes amends,
For never a sweeter bride can be.”

My mouth dried, as ‘twere scorched within,
Dried at their words, alas for me:
More and more neighbours crowded in,
(O why should mothers ever be!)

“Ha-ha! Such well-kept news!” laughed they,
Yes — so they laughed, alas for me.
“Whose banns were called in church to-day?” -
Christ, how I wished my soul could flee!

“Where is she? O the stealthy miss,”
Still bantered they, alas for me,
“To keep a wedding close as this . . .”
Ay, Fortune worked thus wantonly!