Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (967 page)

Begun November 1898.

IN THE SEVENTIES

“Qui deridetur ab amico suo sicut ego.” — JOB.

In the seventies I was bearing in my breast,
         Penned tight,
Certain starry thoughts that threw a magic light
On the worktimes and the soundless hours of rest
In the seventies; aye, I bore them in my breast
         Penned tight.

In the seventies when my neighbours — even my friend -
         Saw me pass,
Heads were shaken, and I heard the words, “Alas,
For his onward years and name unless he mend!”
In the seventies, when my neighbours and my friend
      Saw me pass.

In the seventies those who met me did not know
      Of the vision
That immuned me from the chillings of mis-prision
And the damps that choked my goings to and fro
In the seventies; yea, those nodders did not know
      Of the vision.

In the seventies nought could darken or destroy it,
      Locked in me,
Though as delicate as lamp-worm’s lucency;
Neither mist nor murk could weaken or alloy it
In the seventies! — could not darken or destroy it,
      Locked in me.

THE PEDIGREE

I

         I bent in the deep of night
      Over a pedigree the chronicler gave
      As mine; and as I bent there, half-unrobed,
The uncurtained panes of my window-square let in the watery light
         Of the moon in its old age:
And green-rheumed clouds were hurrying past where mute and cold it
globed
   Like a drifting dolphin’s eye seen through a lapping wave.

II

         So, scanning my sire-sown tree,
      And the hieroglyphs of this spouse tied to that,
         With offspring mapped below in lineage,
         Till the tangles troubled me,
The branches seemed to twist into a seared and cynic face
   Which winked and tokened towards the window like a Mage
      Enchanting me to gaze again thereat.

III

         It was a mirror now,
      And in it a long perspective I could trace
   Of my begetters, dwindling backward each past each
         All with the kindred look,
      Whose names had since been inked down in their place
         On the recorder’s book,
Generation and generation of my mien, and build, and brow.

IV

         And then did I divine
      That every heave and coil and move I made
      Within my brain, and in my mood and speech,
         Was in the glass portrayed
      As long forestalled by their so making it;
   The first of them, the primest fuglemen of my line,
Being fogged in far antiqueness past surmise and reason’s reach.

V

         Said I then, sunk in tone,
   ”I am merest mimicker and counterfeit! -
         Though thinking, I AM I
   AND WHAT I DO I DO MYSELF ALONE.”
  — The cynic twist of the page thereat unknit
Back to its normal figure, having wrought its purport wry,
   The Mage’s mirror left the window-square,
And the stained moon and drift retook their places there.

1916.

THIS HEART A WOMAN’S DREAM

   At midnight, in the room where he lay dead
   Whom in his life I had never clearly read,
I thought if I could peer into that citadel
   His heart, I should at last know full and well

   What hereto had been known to him alone,
   Despite our long sit-out of years foreflown,
“And if,” I said, “I do this for his memory’s sake,
   It would not wound him, even if he could wake.”

   So I bent over him. He seemed to smile
   With a calm confidence the whole long while
That I, withdrawing his heart, held it and, bit by bit,
   Perused the unguessed things found written on it.

   It was inscribed like a terrestrial sphere
   With quaint vermiculations close and clear -
His graving. Had I known, would I have risked the stroke
   Its reading brought, and my own heart nigh broke!

   Yes, there at last, eyes opened, did I see
   His whole sincere symmetric history;
There were his truth, his simple singlemindedness,
   Strained, maybe, by time’s storms, but there no less.

   There were the daily deeds from sun to sun
   In blindness, but good faith, that he had done;
There were regrets, at instances wherein he swerved
   (As he conceived) from cherishings I had deserved.

   There were old hours all figured down as bliss -
   Those spent with me — (how little had I thought this!)
There those when, at my absence, whether he slept or waked,
   (Though I knew not ‘twas so!) his spirit ached.

   There that when we were severed, how day dulled
   Till time joined us anew, was chronicled:
And arguments and battlings in defence of me
   That heart recorded clearly and ruddily.

   I put it back, and left him as he lay
   While pierced the morning pink and then the gray
Into each dreary room and corridor around,
   Where I shall wait, but his step will not sound.

WHERE THEY LIVED

   Dishevelled leaves creep down
   Upon that bank to-day,
Some green, some yellow, and some pale brown;
   The wet bents bob and sway;
The once warm slippery turf is sodden
   Where we laughingly sat or lay.

   The summerhouse is gone,
   Leaving a weedy space;
The bushes that veiled it once have grown
   Gaunt trees that interlace,
Through whose lank limbs I see too clearly
   The nakedness of the place.

   And where were hills of blue,
   Blind drifts of vapour blow,
And the names of former dwellers few,
   If any, people know,
And instead of a voice that called, “Come in, Dears,”
   Time calls, “Pass below!”

THE OCCULTATION

When the cloud shut down on the morning shine,
   And darkened the sun,
I said, “So ended that joy of mine
   Years back begun.”

But day continued its lustrous roll
   In upper air;
And did my late irradiate soul
   Live on somewhere?

LIFE LAUGHS ONWARD

Rambling I looked for an old abode
Where, years back, one had lived I knew;
Its site a dwelling duly showed,
   But it was new.

I went where, not so long ago,
The sod had riven two breasts asunder;
Daisies throve gaily there, as though
   No grave were under.

I walked along a terrace where
Loud children gambolled in the sun;
The figure that had once sat there
   Was missed by none.

Life laughed and moved on unsubdued,
I saw that Old succumbed to Young:
‘Twas well. My too regretful mood
   Died on my tongue.

THE PEACE-OFFERING

It was but a little thing,
Yet I knew it meant to me
Ease from what had given a sting
To the very birdsinging
   Latterly.

But I would not welcome it;
And for all I then declined
O the regrettings infinite
When the night-processions flit
   Through the mind!

SOMETHING TAPPED

Something tapped on the pane of my room
   When there was never a trace
Of wind or rain, and I saw in the gloom
   My weary Beloved’s face.

“O I am tired of waiting,” she said,
   ”Night, morn, noon, afternoon;
So cold it is in my lonely bed,
   And I thought you would join me soon!”

I rose and neared the window-glass,
   But vanished thence had she:
Only a pallid moth, alas,
   Tapped at the pane for me.

August 1913.

THE WOUND

I climbed to the crest,
   And, fog-festooned,
The sun lay west
   Like a crimson wound:

Like that wound of mine
   Of which none knew,
For I’d given no sign
   That it pierced me through.

A MERRYMAKING IN QUESTION

“I will get a new string for my fiddle,
   And call to the neighbours to come,
And partners shall dance down the middle
   Until the old pewter-wares hum:
   And we’ll sip the mead, cyder, and rum!”

From the night came the oddest of answers:
   A hollow wind, like a bassoon,
And headstones all ranged up as dancers,
   And cypresses droning a croon,
   And gurgoyles that mouthed to the tune.

I SAID AND SANG HER EXCELLENCE

(Fickle Lover’s Song)

I said and sang her excellence:
   They called it laud undue.
      (Have your way, my heart, O!)
Yet what was homage far above
The plain deserts of my olden Love
   Proved verity of my new.

“She moves a sylph in picture-land,
   Where nothing frosts the air:”
      (Have your way, my heart, O!)
“To all winged pipers overhead
She is known by shape and song,” I said,
   Conscious of licence there.

I sang of her in a dim old hall
   Dream-built too fancifully,
      (Have your way, my heart, O!)
But lo, the ripe months chanced to lead
My feet to such a hall indeed,
   Where stood the very She.

Strange, startling, was it then to learn
   I had glanced down unborn time,
      (Have your way, my heart, O!)
And prophesied, whereby I knew
That which the years had planned to do
   In warranty of my rhyme.

BY RUSHY-POND.

A JANUARY NIGHT (1879)

The rain smites more and more,
The east wind snarls and sneezes;
Through the joints of the quivering door
   The water wheezes.

The tip of each ivy-shoot
Writhes on its neighbour’s face;
There is some hid dread afoot
   That we cannot trace.

Is it the spirit astray
Of the man at the house below
Whose coffin they took in to-day?
   We do not know.

A KISS

By a wall the stranger now calls his,
Was born of old a particular kiss,
Without forethought in its genesis;
Which in a trice took wing on the air.
And where that spot is nothing shows:
   There ivy calmly grows,
   And no one knows
   What a birth was there!

That kiss is gone where none can tell -
Not even those who felt its spell:
It cannot have died; that know we well.
Somewhere it pursues its flight,
One of a long procession of sounds
   Travelling aethereal rounds
   Far from earth’s bounds
   In the infinite.

THE ANNOUNCEMENT

They came, the brothers, and took two chairs
   In their usual quiet way;
And for a time we did not think
      They had much to say.

And they began and talked awhile
   Of ordinary things,
Till spread that silence in the room
      A pent thought brings.

And then they said: “The end has come.
   Yes: it has come at last.”
And we looked down, and knew that day
      A spirit had passed.

THE OXEN

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
   ”Now they are all on their knees,”
An elder said as we sat in a flock
   By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
   They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
   To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
   In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
   ”Come; see the oxen kneel

“In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
   Our childhood used to know,”
I should go with him in the gloom,
   Hoping it might be so.

1915.

THE TRESSES

   ”When the air was damp
It made my curls hang slack
As they kissed my neck and back
While I footed the salt-aired track
   I loved to tramp.

   ”When it was dry
They would roll up crisp and tight
As I went on in the light
Of the sun, which my own sprite
   Seemed to outvie.

   ”Now I am old;
And have not one gay curl
As I had when a girl
For dampness to unfurl
   Or sun uphold!”

THE PHOTOGRAPH

The flame crept up the portrait line by line
As it lay on the coals in the silence of night’s profound,
   And over the arm’s incline,
And along the marge of the silkwork superfine,
And gnawed at the delicate bosom’s defenceless round.

Then I vented a cry of hurt, and averted my eyes;
The spectacle was one that I could not bear,
   To my deep and sad surprise;
But, compelled to heed, I again looked furtive-wise
Till the flame had eaten her breasts, and mouth, and hair.

“Thank God, she is out of it now!” I said at last,
In a great relief of heart when the thing was done
   That had set my soul aghast,
And nothing was left of the picture unsheathed from the past
But the ashen ghost of the card it had figured on.

She was a woman long hid amid packs of years,
She might have been living or dead; she was lost to my sight,
   And the deed that had nigh drawn tears
Was done in a casual clearance of life’s arrears;
But I felt as if I had put her to death that night! . . .

* * *

- Well; she knew nothing thereof did she survive,
And suffered nothing if numbered among the dead;
   Yet — yet — if on earth alive
Did she feel a smart, and with vague strange anguish strive?
If in heaven, did she smile at me sadly and shake her head?