Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (960 page)

It took a rare one, true, to do it; for she was surely rare -
As rare a soul at that sweet time of her life as she was fair.
And urging motives, too, were strong, for ours was a passionate
case,
Yea, passionate enough to lead to freaking with that young face.

I have told no one about it, should perhaps make few believe,
But I think it over now that life looms dull and years bereave,
How blank we stood at our bright wits’ end, two frail barks in
distress,
How self-regard in her was slain by her large tenderness.

I said: “The only chance for us in a crisis of this kind
Is going it thorough!” — ”Yes,” she calmly breathed. “Well, I don’t
mind.”
And we blanched her dark locks ruthlessly: set wrinkles on her
brow;
Ay — she was a right rare woman then, whatever she may be now.

That night we heard a coach drive up, and questions asked below.
“A gent with an elderly wife, sir,” was returned from the bureau.
And the wheels went rattling on, and free at last from public ken
We washed all off in her chamber and restored her youth again.

How many years ago it was! Some fifty can it be
Since that adventure held us, and she played old wife to me?
But in time convention won her, as it wins all women at last,
And now she is rich and respectable, and time has buried the past.

I ROSE UP AS MY CUSTOM IS

I rose up as my custom is
   On the eve of All-Souls’ day,
And left my grave for an hour or so
To call on those I used to know
   Before I passed away.

I visited my former Love
   As she lay by her husband’s side;
I asked her if life pleased her, now
She was rid of a poet wrung in brow,
   And crazed with the ills he eyed;

Who used to drag her here and there
   Wherever his fancies led,
And point out pale phantasmal things,
And talk of vain vague purposings
   That she discredited.

She was quite civil, and replied,
   ”Old comrade, is that you?
Well, on the whole, I like my life. -
I know I swore I’d be no wife,
   But what was I to do?

“You see, of all men for my sex
   A poet is the worst;
Women are practical, and they
Crave the wherewith to pay their way,
   And slake their social thirst.

“You were a poet — quite the ideal
   That we all love awhile:
But look at this man snoring here -
He’s no romantic chanticleer,
   Yet keeps me in good style.

“He makes no quest into my thoughts,
   But a poet wants to know
What one has felt from earliest days,
Why one thought not in other ways,
   And one’s Loves of long ago.”

Her words benumbed my fond frail ghost;
   The nightmares neighed from their stalls
The vampires screeched, the harpies flew,
And under the dim dawn I withdrew
   To Death’s inviolate halls.

A WEEK

On Monday night I closed my door,
And thought you were not as heretofore,
And little cared if we met no more.

I seemed on Tuesday night to trace
Something beyond mere commonplace
In your ideas, and heart, and face.

On Wednesday I did not opine
Your life would ever be one with mine,
Though if it were we should well combine.

On Thursday noon I liked you well,
And fondly felt that we must dwell
Not far apart, whatever befell.

On Friday it was with a thrill
In gazing towards your distant vill
I owned you were my dear one still.

I saw you wholly to my mind
On Saturday — even one who shrined
All that was best of womankind.

As wing-clipt sea-gull for the sea
On Sunday night I longed for thee,
Without whom life were waste to me!

HAD YOU WEPT

Had you wept; had you but neared me with a frail uncertain ray,
Dewy as the face of the dawn, in your large and luminous eye,
Then would have come back all the joys the tidings had slain that
day,
And a new beginning, a fresh fair heaven, have smoothed the things
awry.
But you were less feebly human, and no passionate need for clinging
Possessed your soul to overthrow reserve when I came near;
Ay, though you suffer as much as I from storms the hours are
bringing
Upon your heart and mine, I never see you shed a tear.

The deep strong woman is weakest, the weak one is the strong;
The weapon of all weapons best for winning, you have not used;
Have you never been able, or would you not, through the evil times
and long?
Has not the gift been given you, or such gift have you refused?
When I bade me not absolve you on that evening or the morrow,
Why did you not make war on me with those who weep like rain?
You felt too much, so gained no balm for all your torrid sorrow,
And hence our deep division, and our dark undying pain.

BEREFT, SHE THINKS SHE DREAMS

I dream that the dearest I ever knew
   Has died and been entombed.
I am sure it’s a dream that cannot be true,
   But I am so overgloomed
By its persistence, that I would gladly
   Have quick death take me,
Rather than longer think thus sadly;
   So wake me, wake me!

It has lasted days, but minute and hour
   I expect to get aroused
And find him as usual in the bower
   Where we so happily housed.
Yet stays this nightmare too appalling,
   And like a web shakes me,
And piteously I keep on calling,
   And no one wakes me!

IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM

“What do you see in that time-touched stone,
   When nothing is there
But ashen blankness, although you give it
   A rigid stare?

“You look not quite as if you saw,
   But as if you heard,
Parting your lips, and treading softly
   As mouse or bird.

“It is only the base of a pillar, they’ll tell you,
   That came to us
From a far old hill men used to name
   Areopagus.”

- “I know no art, and I only view
   A stone from a wall,
But I am thinking that stone has echoed
   The voice of Paul,

“Paul as he stood and preached beside it
   Facing the crowd,
A small gaunt figure with wasted features,
   Calling out loud

“Words that in all their intimate accents
   Pattered upon
That marble front, and were far reflected,
   And then were gone.

“I’m a labouring man, and know but little,
   Or nothing at all;
But I can’t help thinking that stone once echoed
   The voice of Paul.”

IN THE SERVANTS’ QUARTERS

“Man, you too, aren’t you, one of these rough followers of the
criminal?
All hanging hereabout to gather how he’s going to bear
Examination in the hall.” She flung disdainful glances on
The shabby figure standing at the fire with others there,
   Who warmed them by its flare.

“No indeed, my skipping maiden: I know nothing of the trial here,
Or criminal, if so he be. — I chanced to come this way,
And the fire shone out into the dawn, and morning airs are cold now;
I, too, was drawn in part by charms I see before me play,
   That I see not every day.”

“Ha, ha!” then laughed the constables who also stood to warm
themselves,
The while another maiden scrutinized his features hard,
As the blaze threw into contrast every line and knot that wrinkled
them,
Exclaiming, “Why, last night when he was brought in by the guard,
   You were with him in the yard!”

“Nay, nay, you teasing wench, I say! You know you speak mistakenly.
Cannot a tired pedestrian who has footed it afar
Here on his way from northern parts, engrossed in humble marketings,
Come in and rest awhile, although judicial doings are
   Afoot by morning star?”

“O, come, come!” laughed the constables. “Why, man, you speak the
dialect
He uses in his answers; you can hear him up the stairs.
So own it. We sha’n’t hurt ye. There he’s speaking now! His
syllables
Are those you sound yourself when you are talking unawares,
   As this pretty girl declares.”

“And you shudder when his chain clinks!” she rejoined. “O yes, I
noticed it.
And you winced, too, when those cuffs they gave him echoed to us
here.
They’ll soon be coming down, and you may then have to defend
yourself
Unless you hold your tongue, or go away and keep you clear
   When he’s led to judgment near!”

“No! I’ll be damned in hell if I know anything about the man!
No single thing about him more than everybody knows!
Must not I even warm my hands but I am charged with blasphemies?” .
. .
- His face convulses as the morning cock that moment crows,
   And he stops, and turns, and goes.

THE OBLITERATE TOMB

   ”More than half my life long
Did they weigh me falsely, to my bitter wrong,
But they all have shrunk away into the silence
   Like a lost song.

   ”And the day has dawned and come
For forgiveness, when the past may hold it dumb
On the once reverberate words of hatred uttered
   Half in delirium . . .

   ”With folded lips and hands
They lie and wait what next the Will commands,
And doubtless think, if think they can: ‘Let discord
   Sink with Life’s sands!’

   ”By these late years their names,
Their virtues, their hereditary claims,
May be as near defacement at their grave-place
   As are their fames.”

  — Such thoughts bechanced to seize
A traveller’s mind — a man of memories -
As he set foot within the western city
   Where had died these

   Who in their lifetime deemed
Him their chief enemy — one whose brain had schemed
To get their dingy greatness deeplier dingied
   And disesteemed.

   So, sojourning in their town,
He mused on them and on their once renown,
And said, “I’ll seek their resting-place to-morrow
   Ere I lie down,

   ”And end, lest I forget,
Those ires of many years that I regret,
Renew their names, that men may see some liegeness
   Is left them yet.”

   Duly next day he went
And sought the church he had known them to frequent,
And wandered in the precincts, set on eyeing
   Where they lay pent,

   Till by remembrance led
He stood at length beside their slighted bed,
Above which, truly, scarce a line or letter
   Could now be read.

   ”Thus years obliterate
Their graven worth, their chronicle, their date!
At once I’ll garnish and revive the record
   Of their past state,

   ”That still the sage may say
In pensive progress here where they decay,
‘This stone records a luminous line whose talents
   Told in their day.’“

   While speaking thus he turned,
For a form shadowed where they lay inurned,
And he beheld a stranger in foreign vesture,
   And tropic-burned.

   ”Sir, I am right pleased to view
That ancestors of mine should interest you,
For I have come of purpose here to trace them . . .
   They are time-worn, true,

   ”But that’s a fault, at most,
Sculptors can cure. On the Pacific coast
I have vowed for long that relics of my forbears
   I’d trace ere lost,

   ”And hitherward I come,
Before this same old Time shall strike me numb,
To carry it out.” — ”Strange, this is!” said the other;
   ”What mind shall plumb

   ”Coincident design!
Though these my father’s enemies were and mine,
I nourished a like purpose — to restore them
   Each letter and line.”

   ”Such magnanimity
Is now not needed, sir; for you will see
That since I am here, a thing like this is, plainly,
   Best done by me.”

   The other bowed, and left,
Crestfallen in sentiment, as one bereft
Of some fair object he had been moved to cherish,
   By hands more deft.

   And as he slept that night
The phantoms of the ensepulchred stood up-right
Before him, trembling that he had set him seeking
   Their charnel-site.

   And, as unknowing his ruth,
Asked as with terrors founded not on truth
Why he should want them. “Ha,” they hollowly hackered,
   ”You come, forsooth,

   ”By stealth to obliterate
Our graven worth, our chronicle, our date,
That our descendant may not gild the record
   Of our past state,

   ”And that no sage may say
In pensive progress near where we decay:
‘This stone records a luminous line whose talents
   Told in their day.’“

   Upon the morrow he went
And to that town and churchyard never bent
His ageing footsteps till, some twelvemonths onward,
   An accident

   Once more detained him there;
And, stirred by hauntings, he must needs repair
To where the tomb was. Lo, it stood still wasting
   In no man’s care.

   ”The travelled man you met
The last time,” said the sexton, “has not yet
Appeared again, though wealth he had in plenty.
  — Can he forget?

   ”The architect was hired
And came here on smart summons as desired,
But never the descendant came to tell him
   What he required.”

   And so the tomb remained
Untouched, untended, crumbling, weather-stained,
And though the one-time foe was fain to right it
   He still refrained.

   ”I’ll set about it when
I am sure he’ll come no more. Best wait till then.”
But so it was that never the stranger entered
   That city again.