Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (966 page)

THE RIDDLE

I

Stretching eyes west
Over the sea,
Wind foul or fair,
Always stood she
Prospect-impressed;
Solely out there
Did her gaze rest,
Never elsewhere
Seemed charm to be.

II

Always eyes east
Ponders she now -
As in devotion -
Hills of blank brow
Where no waves plough.
Never the least
Room for emotion
Drawn from the ocean
Does she allow.

THE DUEL

      ”I am here to time, you see;
The glade is well-screened — eh? — against alarm;
   Fit place to vindicate by my arm
   The honour of my spotless wife,
   Who scorns your libel upon her life
      In boasting intimacy!

      ”‘All hush-offerings you’ll spurn,
My husband. Two must come; one only go,’
   She said. ‘That he’ll be you I know;
   To faith like ours Heaven will be just,
   And I shall abide in fullest trust
      Your speedy glad return.’“

   ”Good. Here am also I;
And we’ll proceed without more waste of words
   To warm your cockpit. Of the swords
   Take you your choice. I shall thereby
   Feel that on me no blame can lie,
      Whatever Fate accords.”

   So stripped they there, and fought,
And the swords clicked and scraped, and the onsets sped;
   Till the husband fell; and his shirt was red
   With streams from his heart’s hot cistern. Nought
   Could save him now; and the other, wrought
      Maybe to pity, said:

   ”Why did you urge on this?
Your wife assured you; and ‘t had better been
   That you had let things pass, serene
   In confidence of long-tried bliss,
   Holding there could be nought amiss
      In what my words might mean.”

   Then, seeing nor ruth nor rage
Could move his foeman more — now Death’s deaf thrall -
   He wiped his steel, and, with a call
   Like turtledove to dove, swift broke
   Into the copse, where under an oak
      His horse cropt, held by a page.

   ”All’s over, Sweet,” he cried
To the wife, thus guised; for the young page was she.
   ”‘Tis as we hoped and said ‘t would be.
   He never guessed . . . We mount and ride
   To where our love can reign uneyed.
      He’s clay, and we are free.”

AT MAYFAIR LODGINGS

How could I be aware,
The opposite window eyeing
As I lay listless there,
That through its blinds was dying
One I had rated rare
Before I had set me sighing
For another more fair?

Had the house-front been glass,
My vision unobscuring,
Could aught have come to pass
More happiness-insuring
To her, loved as a lass
When spouseless, all-alluring?
I reckon not, alas!

So, the square window stood,
Steadily night-long shining
In my close neighbourhood,
Who looked forth undivining
That soon would go for good
One there in pain reclining,
Unpardoned, unadieu’d.

Silently screened from view
Her tragedy was ending
That need not have come due
Had she been less unbending.
How near, near were we two
At that last vital rending, -
And neither of us knew!

TO MY FATHER’S VIOLIN

   Does he want you down there
   In the Nether Glooms where
The hours may be a dragging load upon him,
   As he hears the axle grind
      Round and round
   Of the great world, in the blind
      Still profound
Of the night-time? He might liven at the sound
Of your string, revealing you had not forgone him.

   In the gallery west the nave,
   But a few yards from his grave,
Did you, tucked beneath his chin, to his bowing
   Guide the homely harmony
      Of the quire
   Who for long years strenuously -
      Son and sire -
Caught the strains that at his fingering low or higher
From your four thin threads and eff-holes came outflowing.

   And, too, what merry tunes
   He would bow at nights or noons
That chanced to find him bent to lute a measure,
   When he made you speak his heart
      As in dream,
   Without book or music-chart,
      On some theme
Elusive as a jack-o’-lanthorn’s gleam,
And the psalm of duty shelved for trill of pleasure.

   Well, you can not, alas,
   The barrier overpass
That screens him in those Mournful Meads hereunder,
   Where no fiddling can be heard
      In the glades
   Of silentness, no bird
      Thrills the shades;
Where no viol is touched for songs or serenades,
No bowing wakes a congregation’s wonder.

   He must do without you now,
   Stir you no more anyhow
To yearning concords taught you in your glory;
   While, your strings a tangled wreck,
      Once smart drawn,
   Ten worm-wounds in your neck,
      Purflings wan
With dust-hoar, here alone I sadly con
Your present dumbness, shape your olden story.

1916.

THE STATUE OF LIBERTY

   This statue of Liberty, busy man,
      Here erect in the city square,
I have watched while your scrubbings, this early morning,
         Strangely wistful,
         And half tristful,
      Have turned her from foul to fair;

   With your bucket of water, and mop, and brush,
      Bringing her out of the grime
That has smeared her during the smokes of winter
         With such glumness
         In her dumbness,
      And aged her before her time.

   You have washed her down with motherly care -
      Head, shoulders, arm, and foot,
To the very hem of the robes that drape her -
         All expertly
         And alertly,
      Till a long stream, black with soot,

   Flows over the pavement to the road,
      And her shape looms pure as snow:
I read you are hired by the City guardians -
         May be yearly,
         Or once merely -
      To treat the statues so?

   ”Oh, I’m not hired by the Councilmen
      To cleanse the statues here.
I do this one as a self-willed duty,
         Not as paid to,
         Or at all made to,
      But because the doing is dear.”

   Ah, then I hail you brother and friend!
      Liberty’s knight divine.
What you have done would have been my doing,
         Yea, most verily,
         Well, and thoroughly,
      Had but your courage been mine!

   ”Oh I care not for Liberty’s mould,
      Liberty charms not me;
What’s Freedom but an idler’s vision,
         Vain, pernicious,
         Often vicious,
      Of things that cannot be!

   ”Memory it is that brings me to this -
      Of a daughter — my one sweet own.
She grew a famous carver’s model,
         One of the fairest
         And of the rarest:-
      She sat for the figure as shown.

   ”But alas, she died in this distant place
      Before I was warned to betake
Myself to her side! . . . And in love of my darling,
         In love of the fame of her,
         And the good name of her,
      I do this for her sake.”

   Answer I gave not. Of that form
      The carver was I at his side;
His child, my model, held so saintly,
         Grand in feature,
         Gross in nature,
      In the dens of vice had died.

THE BACKGROUND AND THE FIGURE

(Lover’s Ditty)

I think of the slope where the rabbits fed,
   Of the periwinks’ rockwork lair,
Of the fuchsias ringing their bells of red -
   And the something else seen there.

Between the blooms where the sod basked bright,
   By the bobbing fuchsia trees,
Was another and yet more eyesome sight -
   The sight that richened these.

I shall seek those beauties in the spring,
   When the days are fit and fair,
But only as foils to the one more thing
   That also will flower there!

THE CHANGE

   Out of the past there rises a week -
      Who shall read the years O! -
   Out of the past there rises a week
      Enringed with a purple zone.
   Out of the past there rises a week
   When thoughts were strung too thick to speak,
And the magic of its lineaments remains with me alone.

   In that week there was heard a singing -
      Who shall spell the years, the years! -
   In that week there was heard a singing,
      And the white owl wondered why.
   In that week, yea, a voice was ringing,
   And forth from the casement were candles flinging
Radiance that fell on the deodar and lit up the path thereby.

   Could that song have a mocking note? -
      Who shall unroll the years O! -
   Could that song have a mocking note
      To the white owl’s sense as it fell?
   Could that song have a mocking note
   As it trilled out warm from the singer’s throat,
And who was the mocker and who the mocked when two felt all was well?

   In a tedious trampling crowd yet later -
      Who shall bare the years, the years! -
   In a tedious trampling crowd yet later,
      When silvery singings were dumb;
   In a crowd uncaring what time might fate her,
   Mid murks of night I stood to await her,
And the twanging of iron wheels gave out the signal that she was
come.

   She said with a travel-tired smile -
      Who shall lift the years O! -
   She said with a travel-tired smile,
      Half scared by scene so strange;
   She said, outworn by mile on mile,
   The blurred lamps wanning her face the while,
“O Love, I am here; I am with you!” . . . Ah, that there should have
come a change!

   O the doom by someone spoken -
      Who shall unseal the years, the years! -
   O the doom that gave no token,
      When nothing of bale saw we:
   O the doom by someone spoken,
   O the heart by someone broken,
The heart whose sweet reverberances are all time leaves to me.

Jan.-Feb. 1913.

SITTING ON THE BRIDGE

(Echo of an old song)

   Sitting on the bridge
   Past the barracks, town and ridge,
At once the spirit seized us
To sing a song that pleased us -
As “The Fifth” were much in rumour;
It was “Whilst I’m in the humour,
   Take me, Paddy, will you now?”
   And a lancer soon drew nigh,
   And his Royal Irish eye
   Said, “Willing, faith, am I,
O, to take you anyhow, dears,
   To take you anyhow.”

   But, lo! — dad walking by,
   Cried, “What, you lightheels! Fie!
   Is this the way you roam
   And mock the sunset gleam?”
   And he marched us straightway home,
Though we said, “We are only, daddy,
Singing, ‘Will you take me, Paddy?’“
  — Well, we never saw from then
   If we sang there anywhen,
   The soldier dear again,
Except at night in dream-time,
   Except at night in dream.

Perhaps that soldier’s fighting
   In a land that’s far away,
Or he may be idly plighting
   Some foreign hussy gay;
Or perhaps his bones are whiting
   In the wind to their decay! . . .
   Ah! — does he mind him how
   The girls he saw that day
On the bridge, were sitting singing
At the time of curfew-ringing,
“Take me, Paddy; will you now, dear?
   Paddy, will you now?”

GREY’S BRIDGE.

THE YOUNG CHURCHWARDEN

When he lit the candles there,
And the light fell on his hand,
And it trembled as he scanned
Her and me, his vanquished air
Hinted that his dream was done,
And I saw he had begun
   To understand.

When Love’s viol was unstrung,
Sore I wished the hand that shook
Had been mine that shared her book
While that evening hymn was sung,
His the victor’s, as he lit
Candles where he had bidden us sit
   With vanquished look.

Now her dust lies listless there,
His afar from tending hand,
What avails the victory scanned?
Does he smile from upper air:
“Ah, my friend, your dream is done;
And ‘tis YOU who have begun
   To understand!

I TRAVEL AS A PHANTOM NOW

I travel as a phantom now,
For people do not wish to see
In flesh and blood so bare a bough
   As Nature makes of me.

And thus I visit bodiless
Strange gloomy households often at odds,
And wonder if Man’s consciousness
   Was a mistake of God’s.

And next I meet you, and I pause,
And think that if mistake it were,
As some have said, O then it was
   One that I well can bear!

1915.

LINES TO A MOVEMENT IN MOZART’S E-FLAT SYMPHONY

      Show me again the time
      When in the Junetide’s prime
   We flew by meads and mountains northerly! -
Yea, to such freshness, fairness, fulness, fineness, freeness,
      Love lures life on.

      Show me again the day
      When from the sandy bay
   We looked together upon the pestered sea! -
Yea, to such surging, swaying, sighing, swelling, shrinking,
      Love lures life on.

      Show me again the hour
      When by the pinnacled tower
   We eyed each other and feared futurity! -
Yea, to such bodings, broodings, beatings, blanchings, blessings,
      Love lures life on.

      Show me again just this:
      The moment of that kiss
   Away from the prancing folk, by the strawberry-tree! -
Yea, to such rashness, ratheness, rareness, ripeness, richness,
      Love lures life on.