Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (945 page)

I

Who now remembers Almack’s balls -
   Willis’s sometime named -
In those two smooth-floored upper halls
   For faded ones so famed?
Where as we trod to trilling sound
The fancied phantoms stood around,
   Or joined us in the maze,
Of the powdered Dears from Georgian years,
Whose dust lay in sightless sealed-up biers,
   The fairest of former days.

II

Who now remembers gay Cremorne,
   And all its jaunty jills,
And those wild whirling figures born
   Of Jullien’s grand quadrilles?
With hats on head and morning coats
There footed to his prancing notes
   Our partner-girls and we;
And the gas-jets winked, and the lustres clinked,
And the platform throbbed as with arms enlinked
   We moved to the minstrelsy.

III

Who now recalls those crowded rooms
   Of old yclept “The Argyle,”
Where to the deep Drum-polka’s booms
   We hopped in standard style?
Whither have danced those damsels now!
Is Death the partner who doth moue
   Their wormy chaps and bare?
Do their spectres spin like sparks within
The smoky halls of the Prince of Sin
   To a thunderous Jullien air?

THE DEAD MAN WALKING

They hail me as one living,
   But don’t they know
That I have died of late years,
   Untombed although?

I am but a shape that stands here,
   A pulseless mould,
A pale past picture, screening
   Ashes gone cold.

Not at a minute’s warning,
   Not in a loud hour,
For me ceased Time’s enchantments
   In hall and bower.

There was no tragic transit,
   No catch of breath,
When silent seasons inched me
   On to this death . . .

- A Troubadour-youth I rambled
   With Life for lyre,
The beats of being raging
   In me like fire.

But when I practised eyeing
   The goal of men,
It iced me, and I perished
   A little then.

When passed my friend, my kinsfolk
   Through the Last Door,
And left me standing bleakly,
   I died yet more;

And when my Love’s heart kindled
   In hate of me,
Wherefore I knew not, died I
   One more degree.

And if when I died fully
   I cannot say,
And changed into the corpse-thing
   I am to-day;

Yet is it that, though whiling
   The time somehow
In walking, talking, smiling,
   I live not now.

MORE LOVE LYRICS

1967

In five-score summers! All new eyes,
New minds, new modes, new fools, new wise;
New woes to weep, new joys to prize;

With nothing left of me and you
In that live century’s vivid view
Beyond a pinch of dust or two;

A century which, if not sublime,
Will show, I doubt not, at its prime,
A scope above this blinkered time.

- Yet what to me how far above?
For I would only ask thereof
That thy worm should be my worm, Love!

16 WESTBOURNE PARK VILLAS, 1867.

HER DEFINITION

I lingered through the night to break of day,
Nor once did sleep extend a wing to me,
Intently busied with a vast array
Of epithets that should outfigure thee.

Full-featured terms — all fitless — hastened by,
And this sole speech remained: “That maiden mine!” -
Debarred from due description then did I
Perceive the indefinite phrase could yet define.

As common chests encasing wares of price
Are borne with tenderness through halls of state,
For what they cover, so the poor device
Of homely wording I could tolerate,
Knowing its unadornment held as freight
The sweetest image outside Paradise.

W. P. V.,
Summer 1866.

THE DIVISION

Rain on the windows, creaking doors,
   With blasts that besom the green,
And I am here, and you are there,
   And a hundred miles between!

O were it but the weather, Dear,
   O were it but the miles
That summed up all our severance,
   There might be room for smiles.

But that thwart thing betwixt us twain,
   Which nothing cleaves or clears,
Is more than distance, Dear, or rain,
   And longer than the years!

1893.

ON THE DEPARTURE PLATFORM

We kissed at the barrier; and passing through
She left me, and moment by moment got
Smaller and smaller, until to my view
   She was but a spot;

A wee white spot of muslin fluff
That down the diminishing platform bore
Through hustling crowds of gentle and rough
   To the carriage door.

Under the lamplight’s fitful glowers,
Behind dark groups from far and near,
Whose interests were apart from ours,
   She would disappear,

Then show again, till I ceased to see
That flexible form, that nebulous white;
And she who was more than my life to me
   Had vanished quite . . .

We have penned new plans since that fair fond day,
And in season she will appear again -
Perhaps in the same soft white array -
   But never as then!

- “And why, young man, must eternally fly
A joy you’ll repeat, if you love her well?”
 — O friend, nought happens twice thus; why,
   I cannot tell!

IN A CATHEDRAL CITY

These people have not heard your name;
No loungers in this placid place
Have helped to bruit your beauty’s fame.

The grey Cathedral, towards whose face
Bend eyes untold, has met not yours;
Your shade has never swept its base,

Your form has never darked its doors,
Nor have your faultless feet once thrown
A pensive pit-pat on its floors.

Along the street to maids well known
Blithe lovers hum their tender airs,
But in your praise voice not a tone.

- Since nought bespeaks you here, or bears,
As I, your imprint through and through,
Here might I rest, till my heart shares
The spot’s unconsciousness of you!

S
ALISBURY.

I SAY I’LL SEEK HER

I say, “I’ll seek her side
   Ere hindrance interposes;”
   But eve in midnight closes,
And here I still abide.

When darkness wears I see
   Her sad eyes in a vision;
   They ask, “What indecision
Detains you, Love, from me? -

“The creaking hinge is oiled,
   I have unbarred the backway,
   But you tread not the trackway;
And shall the thing be spoiled?

“Far cockcrows echo shrill,
   The shadows are abating,
   And I am waiting, waiting;
But O, you tarry still!”

HER FATHER

I met her, as we had privily planned,
Where passing feet beat busily:
She whispered: “Father is at hand!
   He wished to walk with me.”

His presence as he joined us there
Banished our words of warmth away;
We felt, with cloudings of despair,
   What Love must lose that day.

Her crimson lips remained unkissed,
Our fingers kept no tender hold,
His lack of feeling made the tryst
   Embarrassed, stiff, and cold.

A cynic ghost then rose and said,
“But is his love for her so small
That, nigh to yours, it may be read
   As of no worth at all?

“You love her for her pink and white;
But what when their fresh splendours close?
His love will last her in despite
   Of Time, and wrack, and foes.”

WEYMOUTH.

AT WAKING

   When night was lifting,
And dawn had crept under its shade,
   Amid cold clouds drifting
Dead-white as a corpse outlaid,
      With a sudden scare
      I seemed to behold
      My Love in bare
      Hard lines unfold.

   Yea, in a moment,
An insight that would not die
   Killed her old endowment
Of charm that had capped all nigh,
      Which vanished to none
      Like the gilt of a cloud,
      And showed her but one
      Of the common crowd.

   She seemed but a sample
Of earth’s poor average kind,
   Lit up by no ample
Enrichments of mien or mind.
      I covered my eyes
      As to cover the thought,
      And unrecognize
      What the morn had taught.

   O vision appalling
When the one believed-in thing
   Is seen falling, falling,
With all to which hope can cling.
      Off: it is not true;
      For it cannot be
      That the prize I drew
      Is a blank to me!

W
EYMOUTH, 1869.

FOUR FOOTPRINTS

Here are the tracks upon the sand
Where stood last evening she and I -
Pressed heart to heart and hand to hand;
The morning sun has baked them dry.

I kissed her wet face — wet with rain,
For arid grief had burnt up tears,
While reached us as in sleeping pain
The distant gurgling of the weirs.

“I have married him — yes; feel that ring;
‘Tis a week ago that he put it on . . .
A dutiful daughter does this thing,
And resignation succeeds anon!

“But that I body and soul was yours
Ere he’d possession, he’ll never know.
He’s a confident man. ‘The husband scores,’
He says, ‘in the long run’ . . . Now, Dear, go!”

I went. And to-day I pass the spot;
It is only a smart the more to endure;
And she whom I held is as though she were not,
For they have resumed their honeymoon tour.

IN THE VAULTED WAY

In the vaulted way, where the passage turned
To the shadowy corner that none could see,
You paused for our parting, — plaintively;
Though overnight had come words that burned
My fond frail happiness out of me.

And then I kissed you, — despite my thought
That our spell must end when reflection came
On what you had deemed me, whose one long aim
Had been to serve you; that what I sought
Lay not in a heart that could breathe such blame.

But yet I kissed you; whereon you again
As of old kissed me. Why, why was it so?
Do you cleave to me after that light-tongued blow?
If you scorned me at eventide, how love then?
The thing is dark, Dear. I do not know.

IN THE MIND’S EYE

That was once her casement,
   And the taper nigh,
Shining from within there,
   Beckoned, “Here am I!”

Now, as then, I see her
   Moving at the pane;
Ah; ‘tis but her phantom
   Borne within my brain! -

Foremost in my vision
   Everywhere goes she;
Change dissolves the landscapes,
   She abides with me.

Shape so sweet and shy, Dear,
   Who can say thee nay?
Never once do I, Dear,
   Wish thy ghost away.

THE END OF THE EPISODE

   Indulge no more may we
In this sweet-bitter pastime:
The love-light shines the last time
   Between you, Dear, and me.

   There shall remain no trace
Of what so closely tied us,
And blank as ere love eyed us
   Will be our meeting-place.

   The flowers and thymy air,
Will they now miss our coming?
The dumbles thin their humming
   To find we haunt not there?

   Though fervent was our vow,
Though ruddily ran our pleasure,
Bliss has fulfilled its measure,
   And sees its sentence now.

   Ache deep; but make no moans:
Smile out; but stilly suffer:
The paths of love are rougher
   Than thoroughfares of stones.

THE SIGH

Little head against my shoulder,
Shy at first, then somewhat bolder,
   And up-eyed;
Till she, with a timid quaver,
Yielded to the kiss I gave her;
   But, she sighed.

That there mingled with her feeling
Some sad thought she was concealing
   It implied.
- Not that she had ceased to love me,
None on earth she set above me;
   But she sighed.

She could not disguise a passion,
Dread, or doubt, in weakest fashion
   If she tried:
Nothing seemed to hold us sundered,
Hearts were victors; so I wondered
   Why she sighed.

Afterwards I knew her throughly,
And she loved me staunchly, truly,
   Till she died;
But she never made confession
Why, at that first sweet concession,
   She had sighed.

It was in our May, remember;
And though now I near November,
   And abide
Till my appointed change, unfretting,
Sometimes I sit half regretting
   That she sighed.

IN THE NIGHT SHE CAME

I told her when I left one day
That whatsoever weight of care
Might strain our love, Time’s mere assault
   Would work no changes there.
And in the night she came to me,
   Toothless, and wan, and old,
With leaden concaves round her eyes,
   And wrinkles manifold.

I tremblingly exclaimed to her,
“O wherefore do you ghost me thus!
I have said that dull defacing Time
   Will bring no dreads to us.”
“And is that true of YOU?” she cried
   In voice of troubled tune.
I faltered: “Well . . . I did not think
   You would test me quite so soon!”

She vanished with a curious smile,
Which told me, plainlier than by word,
That my staunch pledge could scarce beguile
   The fear she had averred.
Her doubts then wrought their shape in me,
   And when next day I paid
My due caress, we seemed to be
   Divided by some shade.