Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (955 page)

IX

   ”Till, in Time’s stayless stealthy swing,
Uncompromising rude reality
Mangled the Monarch of our fashioning,
Who quavered, sank; and now has ceased to be.

X

   ”So, toward our myth’s oblivion,
Darkling, and languid-lipped, we creep and grope
Sadlier than those who wept in Babylon,
Whose Zion was a still abiding hope.

XI

   ”How sweet it was in years far hied
To start the wheels of day with trustful prayer,
To lie down liegely at the eventide
And feel a blest assurance he was there!

XII

   ”And who or what shall fill his place?
Whither will wanderers turn distracted eyes
For some fixed star to stimulate their pace
Towards the goal of their enterprise?” . . .

XIII

   Some in the background then I saw,
Sweet women, youths, men, all incredulous,
Who chimed as one: “This figure is of straw,
This requiem mockery! Still he lives to us!”

XIV

   I could not prop their faith: and yet
Many I had known: with all I sympathized;
And though struck speechless, I did not forget
That what was mourned for, I, too, once had prized.

XV

   Still, how to bear such loss I deemed
The insistent question for each animate mind,
And gazing, to my growing sight there seemed
A pale yet positive gleam low down behind,

XVI

   Whereof to lift the general night,
A certain few who stood aloof had said,
“See you upon the horizon that small light -
Swelling somewhat?” Each mourner shook his head.

XVII

   And they composed a crowd of whom
Some were right good, and many nigh the best . . .
Thus dazed and puzzled ‘twixt the gleam and gloom
Mechanically I followed with the rest.

1908-10.

SPECTRES THAT GRIEVE

“It is not death that harrows us,” they lipped,
“The soundless cell is in itself relief,
For life is an unfenced flower, benumbed and nipped
At unawares, and at its best but brief.”

The speakers, sundry phantoms of the gone,
Had risen like filmy flames of phosphor dye,
As if the palest of sheet lightnings shone
From the sward near me, as from a nether sky.

And much surprised was I that, spent and dead,
They should not, like the many, be at rest,
But stray as apparitions; hence I said,
“Why, having slipped life, hark you back distressed?

“We are among the few death sets not free,
The hurt, misrepresented names, who come
At each year’s brink, and cry to History
To do them justice, or go past them dumb.

“We are stript of rights; our shames lie unredressed,
Our deeds in full anatomy are not shown,
Our words in morsels merely are expressed
On the scriptured page, our motives blurred, unknown.”

Then all these shaken slighted visitants sped
Into the vague, and left me musing there
On fames that well might instance what they had said,
Until the New-Year’s dawn strode up the air.

AH, ARE YOU DIGGING ON MY GRAVE?

“Ah, are you digging on my grave
   My loved one? — planting rue?”
- “No: yesterday he went to wed
One of the brightest wealth has bred.
‘It cannot hurt her now,’ he said,
   ’That I should not be true.’“

“Then who is digging on my grave?
   My nearest dearest kin?”
- “Ah, no; they sit and think, ‘What use!
What good will planting flowers produce?
No tendance of her mound can loose
   Her spirit from Death’s gin.’“

“But some one digs upon my grave?
   My enemy? — prodding sly?”
- “Nay: when she heard you had passed the Gate
That shuts on all flesh soon or late,
She thought you no more worth her hate,
   And cares not where you lie.”

“Then, who is digging on my grave?
   Say — since I have not guessed!”
- “O it is I, my mistress dear,
Your little dog, who still lives near,
And much I hope my movements here
   Have not disturbed your rest?”

“Ah, yes! YOU dig upon my grave . . .
   Why flashed it not on me
That one true heart was left behind!
What feeling do we ever find
To equal among human kind
   A dog’s fidelity!”

“Mistress, I dug upon your grave
   To bury a bone, in case
I should be hungry near this spot
When passing on my daily trot.
I am sorry, but I quite forgot
   It was your resting-place.”

SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCES IN FIFTEEN GLIMPSES

I — AT TEA

The kettle descants in a cozy drone,
And the young wife looks in her husband’s face,
And then at her guest’s, and shows in her own
Her sense that she fills an envied place;
And the visiting lady is all abloom,
And says there was never so sweet a room.

And the happy young housewife does not know
That the woman beside her was first his choice,
Till the fates ordained it could not be so . . .
Betraying nothing in look or voice
The guest sits smiling and sips her tea,
And he throws her a stray glance yearningly.

II — IN CHURCH

“And now to God the Father,” he ends,
And his voice thrills up to the topmost tiles:
Each listener chokes as he bows and bends,
And emotion pervades the crowded aisles.
Then the preacher glides to the vestry-door,
And shuts it, and thinks he is seen no more.

The door swings softly ajar meanwhile,
And a pupil of his in the Bible class,
Who adores him as one without gloss or guile,
Sees her idol stand with a satisfied smile
And re-enact at the vestry-glass
Each pulpit gesture in deft dumb-show
That had moved the congregation so.

III — BY HER AUNT’S GRAVE

“Sixpence a week,” says the girl to her lover,
“Aunt used to bring me, for she could confide
In me alone, she vowed. ‘Twas to cover
The cost of her headstone when she died.
And that was a year ago last June;
I’ve not yet fixed it. But I must soon.”

“And where is the money now, my dear?”
“O, snug in my purse . . . Aunt was SO slow
In saving it — eighty weeks, or near.” . . .
“Let’s spend it,” he hints. “For she won’t know.
There’s a dance to-night at the Load of Hay.”
She passively nods. And they go that way.

IV — IN THE ROOM OF THE BRIDE-ELECT

“Would it had been the man of our wish!”
Sighs her mother. To whom with vehemence she
In the wedding-dress — the wife to be -
“Then why were you so mollyish
As not to insist on him for me!”
The mother, amazed: “Why, dearest one,
Because you pleaded for this or none!”

“But Father and you should have stood out strong!
Since then, to my cost, I have lived to find
That you were right and that I was wrong;
This man is a dolt to the one declined . . .
Ah! — here he comes with his button-hole rose.
Good God — I must marry him I suppose!”

V — AT A WATERING-PLACE

They sit and smoke on the esplanade,
The man and his friend, and regard the bay
Where the far chalk cliffs, to the left displayed,
Smile sallowly in the decline of day.
And saunterers pass with laugh and jest -
A handsome couple among the rest.

“That smart proud pair,” says the man to his friend,
“Are to marry next week . . . How little he thinks
That dozens of days and nights on end
I have stroked her neck, unhooked the links
Of her sleeve to get at her upper arm . . .
Well, bliss is in ignorance: what’s the harm!”

VI — IN THE CEMETERY

“You see those mothers squabbling there?”
Remarks the man of the cemetery.
One says in tears, ‘‘Tis mine lies here!’
Another, ‘Nay, mine, you Pharisee!’
Another, ‘How dare you move my flowers
And put your own on this grave of ours!’
But all their children were laid therein
At different times, like sprats in a tin.

“And then the main drain had to cross,
And we moved the lot some nights ago,
And packed them away in the general foss
With hundreds more. But their folks don’t know,
And as well cry over a new-laid drain
As anything else, to ease your pain!”

VII — OUTSIDE THE WINDOW

“My stick!” he says, and turns in the lane
To the house just left, whence a vixen voice
Comes out with the firelight through the pane,
And he sees within that the girl of his choice
Stands rating her mother with eyes aglare
For something said while he was there.

“At last I behold her soul undraped!”
Thinks the man who had loved her more than himself;
“My God — ’tis but narrowly I have escaped. -
My precious porcelain proves it delf.”
His face has reddened like one ashamed,
And he steals off, leaving his stick unclaimed.

VIII — IN THE STUDY

He enters, and mute on the edge of a chair
Sits a thin-faced lady, a stranger there,
A type of decayed gentility;
And by some small signs he well can guess
That she comes to him almost breakfastless.

“I have called — I hope I do not err -
I am looking for a purchaser
Of some score volumes of the works
Of eminent divines I own, -
Left by my father — though it irks
My patience to offer them.” And she smiles
As if necessity were unknown;
“But the truth of it is that oftenwhiles
I have wished, as I am fond of art,
To make my rooms a little smart.”
And lightly still she laughs to him,
As if to sell were a mere gay whim,
And that, to be frank, Life were indeed
To her not vinegar and gall,
But fresh and honey-like; and Need
No household skeleton at all.

IX — AT THE ALTAR-RAIL

“My bride is not coming, alas!” says the groom,
And the telegram shakes in his hand. “I own
It was hurried! We met at a dancing-room
When I went to the Cattle-Show alone,
And then, next night, where the Fountain leaps,
And the Street of the Quarter-Circle sweeps.

“Ay, she won me to ask her to be my wife -
‘Twas foolish perhaps! — to forsake the ways
Of the flaring town for a farmer’s life.
She agreed. And we fixed it. Now she says:
‘It’s sweet of you, dear, to prepare me a nest,
But a swift, short, gay life suits me best.
What I really am you have never gleaned;
I had eaten the apple ere you were weaned.’“

X — IN THE NUPTIAL CHAMBER

“O that mastering tune?” And up in the bed
Like a lace-robed phantom springs the bride;
“And why?” asks the man she had that day wed,
With a start, as the band plays on outside.
“It’s the townsfolks’ cheery compliment
Because of our marriage, my Innocent.”

“O but you don’t know! ‘Tis the passionate air
To which my old Love waltzed with me,
And I swore as we spun that none should share
My home, my kisses, till death, save he!
And he dominates me and thrills me through,
And it’s he I embrace while embracing you!”

XI — IN THE RESTAURANT

“But hear. If you stay, and the child be born,
It will pass as your husband’s with the rest,
While, if we fly, the teeth of scorn
Will be gleaming at us from east to west;
And the child will come as a life despised;
I feel an elopement is ill-advised!”

“O you realise not what it is, my dear,
To a woman! Daily and hourly alarms
Lest the truth should out. How can I stay here,
And nightly take him into my arms!
Come to the child no name or fame,
Let us go, and face it, and bear the shame.”

XII — AT THE DRAPER’S

“I stood at the back of the shop, my dear,
   But you did not perceive me.
Well, when they deliver what you were shown
   
I
shall know nothing of it, believe me!”

And he coughed and coughed as she paled and said,
   ”O, I didn’t see you come in there -
Why couldn’t you speak?” — ”Well, I didn’t. I left
   That you should not notice I’d been there.

“You were viewing some lovely things. ‘Soon required
   For a widow, of latest fashion’;
And I knew ‘twould upset you to meet the man
   Who had to be cold and ashen

“And screwed in a box before they could dress you
   ’In the last new note in mourning,’
As they defined it. So, not to distress you,
   I left you to your adorning.”

XIII — ON THE DEATH-BED

“I’ll tell — being past all praying for -
Then promptly die . . . He was out at the war,
And got some scent of the intimacy
That was under way between her and me;
And he stole back home, and appeared like a ghost
One night, at the very time almost
That I reached her house. Well, I shot him dead,
And secretly buried him. Nothing was said.

“The news of the battle came next day;
He was scheduled missing. I hurried away,
Got out there, visited the field,
And sent home word that a search revealed
He was one of the slain; though, lying alone
  And stript, his body had not been known.

“But she suspected. I lost her love,
  Yea, my hope of earth, and of Heaven above;
And my time’s now come, and I’ll pay the score,
Though it be burning for evermore.”

XIV — OVER THE COFFIN

They stand confronting, the coffin between,
His wife of old, and his wife of late,
And the dead man whose they both had been
Seems listening aloof, as to things past date.
 — ”I have called,” says the first. “Do you marvel or not?”
“In truth,” says the second, “I do — somewhat.”

“Well, there was a word to be said by me! . . .
I divorced that man because of you -
It seemed I must do it, boundenly;
But now I am older, and tell you true,
For life is little, and dead lies he;
I would I had let alone you two!
And both of us, scorning parochial ways,
Had lived like the wives in the patriarchs’ days.”