Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (969 page)

What became of that light? I wonder still its fate!
   Was it quenched ere its full apogee?
Did it struggle frail and frailer to a beam emaciate?
   Did it thrive till matured in verity?
Or did it travel on, to be a new young dreamer’s freight,
   And thence on infinitely?

1915.

THE HEAD ABOVE THE FOG

   Something do I see
Above the fog that sheets the mead,
A figure like to life indeed,
Moving along with spectre-speed,
   Seen by none but me.

   O the vision keen! -
Tripping along to me for love
As in the flesh it used to move,
Only its hat and plume above
   The evening fog-fleece seen.

   In the day-fall wan,
When nighted birds break off their song,
Mere ghostly head it skims along,
Just as it did when warm and strong,
   Body seeming gone.

   Such it is I see
Above the fog that sheets the mead -
Yea, that which once could breathe and plead! -
Skimming along with spectre-speed
   To a last tryst with me.

OVERLOOKING THE RIVER STOUR

The swallows flew in the curves of an eight
   Above the river-gleam
   In the wet June’s last beam:
Like little crossbows animate
The swallows flew in the curves of an eight
   Above the river-gleam.

Planing up shavings of crystal spray
   A moor-hen darted out
   From the bank thereabout,
And through the stream-shine ripped his way;
Planing up shavings of crystal spray
   A moor-hen darted out.

Closed were the kingcups; and the mead
   Dripped in monotonous green,
   Though the day’s morning sheen
Had shown it golden and honeybee’d;
Closed were the kingcups; and the mead
   Dripped in monotonous green.

And never I turned my head, alack,
   While these things met my gaze
   Through the pane’s drop-drenched glaze,
To see the more behind my back . . .
O never I turned, but let, alack,
   These less things hold my gaze!

THE MUSICAL BOX

   Lifelong to be
Seemed the fair colour of the time;
That there was standing shadowed near
A spirit who sang to the gentle chime
Of the self-struck notes, I did not hear,
   I did not see.

   Thus did it sing
To the mindless lyre that played indoors
As she came to listen for me without:
“O value what the nonce outpours -
This best of life — that shines about
   Your welcoming!”

   I had slowed along
After the torrid hours were done,
Though still the posts and walls and road
Flung back their sense of the hot-faced sun,
And had walked by Stourside Mill, where broad
   Stream-lilies throng.

   And I descried
The dusky house that stood apart,
And her, white-muslined, waiting there
In the porch with high-expectant heart,
While still the thin mechanic air
   Went on inside.

   At whiles would flit
Swart bats, whose wings, be-webbed and tanned,
Whirred like the wheels of ancient clocks:
She laughed a hailing as she scanned
Me in the gloom, the tuneful box
   Intoning it.

   Lifelong to be
I thought it. That there watched hard by
A spirit who sang to the indoor tune,
“O make the most of what is nigh!”
I did not hear in my dull soul-swoon -
   I did not see.

ON STURMINSTER FOOT-BRIDGE (ONOMATOPOEIC)

Reticulations creep upon the slack stream’s face
   When the wind skims irritably past,
The current clucks smartly into each hollow place
That years of flood have scrabbled in the pier’s sodden base;
   The floating-lily leaves rot fast.

On a roof stand the swallows ranged in wistful waiting rows,
   Till they arrow off and drop like stones
Among the eyot-withies at whose foot the river flows;
And beneath the roof is she who in the dark world shows
   As a lattice-gleam when midnight moans.

ROYAL SPONSORS

“The king and the queen will stand to the child;
   ’Twill be handed down in song;
And it’s no more than their deserving,
With my lord so faithful at Court so long,
      And so staunch and strong.

“O never before was known such a thing!
   ’Twill be a grand time for all;
And the beef will be a whole-roast bullock,
And the servants will have a feast in the hall,
      And the ladies a ball.

“While from Jordan’s stream by a traveller,
   In a flagon of silver wrought,
And by caravan, stage-coach, wain, and waggon
A precious trickle has been brought,
      Clear as when caught.”

The morning came. To the park of the peer
   The royal couple bore;
And the font was filled with the Jordan water,
And the household awaited their guests before
      The carpeted door.

But when they went to the silk-lined cot
   The child was found to have died.
“What’s now to be done? We can disappoint not
The king and queen!” the family cried
      With eyes spread wide.

“Even now they approach the chestnut-drive!
   The service must be read.”
“Well, since we can’t christen the child alive,
By God we shall have to christen him dead!”
      The marquis said.

Thus, breath-forsaken, a corpse was taken
   To the private chapel — yea -
And the king knew not, nor the queen, God wot,
That they answered for one returned to clay
      At the font that day.

OLD FURNITURE

I know not how it may be with others
   Who sit amid relics of householdry
That date from the days of their mothers’ mothers,
   But well I know how it is with me
      Continually.

I see the hands of the generations
   That owned each shiny familiar thing
In play on its knobs and indentations,
   And with its ancient fashioning
      Still dallying:

Hands behind hands, growing paler and paler,
   As in a mirror a candle-flame
Shows images of itself, each frailer
   As it recedes, though the eye may frame
      Its shape the same.

On the clock’s dull dial a foggy finger,
   Moving to set the minutes right
With tentative touches that lift and linger
   In the wont of a moth on a summer night,
      Creeps to my sight.

On this old viol, too, fingers are dancing -
   As whilom — just over the strings by the nut,
The tip of a bow receding, advancing
   In airy quivers, as if it would cut
      The plaintive gut.

And I see a face by that box for tinder,
   Glowing forth in fits from the dark,
And fading again, as the linten cinder
   Kindles to red at the flinty spark,
      Or goes out stark.

Well, well. It is best to be up and doing,
   The world has no use for one to-day
Who eyes things thus — no aim pursuing!
   He should not continue in this stay,
      But sink away.

A THOUGHT IN TWO MOODS

I saw it — pink and white — revealed
   Upon the white and green;
The white and green was a daisied field,
   The pink and white Ethleen.

And as I looked it seemed in kind
   That difference they had none;
The two fair bodiments combined
   As varied miens of one.

A sense that, in some mouldering year,
   As one they both would lie,
Made me move quickly on to her
   To pass the pale thought by.

She laughed and said: “Out there, to me,
   You looked so weather-browned,
And brown in clothes, you seemed to be
   Made of the dusty ground!”

THE LAST PERFORMANCE

“I am playing my oldest tunes,” declared she,
   ”All the old tunes I know, -
Those I learnt ever so long ago.”
- Why she should think just then she’d play them
   Silence cloaks like snow.

When I returned from the town at nightfall
   Notes continued to pour
As when I had left two hours before:
It’s the very last time,” she said in closing;
   ”From now I play no more.”

A few morns onward found her fading,
   And, as her life outflew,
I thought of her playing her tunes right through;
And I felt she had known of what was coming,
   And wondered how she knew.

1912.

YOU ON THE TOWER

I

“You on the tower of my factory -
   What do you see up there?
Do you see Enjoyment with wide wings
   Advancing to reach me here?”
- “Yea; I see Enjoyment with wide wings
   Advancing to reach you here.”

II

“Good. Soon I’ll come and ask you
   To tell me again thereon . . .
Well, what is he doing now? Hoi, there!”
  — ”He still is flying on.”
“Ah, waiting till I have full-finished.
   Good. Tell me again anon . . .

III

Hoi, Watchman! I’m here. When comes he?
   Between my sweats I am chill.”
  — ”Oh, you there, working still?
Why, surely he reached you a time back,
   And took you miles from your mill?
He duly came in his winging,
   And now he has passed out of view.
How can it be that you missed him?
   He brushed you by as he flew.”

THE INTERLOPER

“And I saw the figure and visage of Madness seeking for a home.”

There are three folk driving in a quaint old chaise,
And the cliff-side track looks green and fair;
I view them talking in quiet glee
As they drop down towards the puffins’ lair
By the roughest of ways;
But another with the three rides on, I see,
   Whom I like not to be there!

No: it’s not anybody you think of. Next
A dwelling appears by a slow sweet stream
Where two sit happy and half in the dark:
They read, helped out by a frail-wick’d gleam,
Some rhythmic text;
But one sits with them whom they don’t mark,
   One I’m wishing could not be there.

No: not whom you knew and name. And now
I discern gay diners in a mansion-place,
And the guests dropping wit — pert, prim, or choice,
And the hostess’s tender and laughing face,
And the host’s bland brow;
I cannot help hearing a hollow voice,
   And I’d fain not hear it there.

No: it’s not from the stranger you met once. Ah,
Yet a goodlier scene than that succeeds;
People on a lawn — quite a crowd of them. Yes,
And they chatter and ramble as fancy leads;
And they say, “Hurrah!”
To a blithe speech made; save one, mirthless,
   Who ought not to be there.

Nay: it’s not the pale Form your imagings raise,
That waits on us all at a destined time,
It is not the Fourth Figure the Furnace showed,
O that it were such a shape sublime;
In these latter days!
It is that under which best lives corrode;
   Would, would it could not be there!

LOGS ON THE HEARTH A MEMORY OF A SISTER

   The fire advances along the log
      Of the tree we felled,
Which bloomed and bore striped apples by the peck
   Till its last hour of bearing knelled.

   The fork that first my hand would reach
      And then my foot
In climbings upward inch by inch, lies now
   Sawn, sapless, darkening with soot.

   Where the bark chars is where, one year,
      It was pruned, and bled -
Then overgrew the wound. But now, at last,
   Its growings all have stagnated.

   My fellow-climber rises dim
      From her chilly grave -
Just as she was, her foot near mine on the bending limb,
   Laughing, her young brown hand awave.

December 1915.

THE SUNSHADE

Ah — it’s the skeleton of a lady’s sunshade,
   Here at my feet in the hard rock’s chink,
   Merely a naked sheaf of wires! -
   Twenty years have gone with their livers and diers
   Since it was silked in its white or pink.

Noonshine riddles the ribs of the sunshade,
   No more a screen from the weakest ray;
   Nothing to tell us the hue of its dyes,
   Nothing but rusty bones as it lies
   In its coffin of stone, unseen till to-day.

Where is the woman who carried that sun-shade
   Up and down this seaside place? -
   Little thumb standing against its stem,
   Thoughts perhaps bent on a love-stratagem,
   Softening yet more the already soft face!

Is the fair woman who carried that sunshade
   A skeleton just as her property is,
   Laid in the chink that none may scan?
   And does she regret — if regret dust can -
   The vain things thought when she flourished this?

SWANAGE CLIFFS.

THE AGEING HOUSE

   When the walls were red
   That now are seen
   To be overspread
   With a mouldy green,
   A fresh fair head
   Would often lean
   From the sunny casement
   And scan the scene,
While blithely spoke the wind to the little sycamore tree.

   But storms have raged
   Those walls about,
   And the head has aged
   That once looked out;
   And zest is suaged
   And trust is doubt,
   And slow effacement
   Is rife throughout,
While fiercely girds the wind at the long-limbed sycamore tree!

THE CAGED GOLDFINCH

Within a churchyard, on a recent grave,
   I saw a little cage
That jailed a goldfinch. All was silence save
   Its hops from stage to stage.

There was inquiry in its wistful eye,
   And once it tried to sing;
Of him or her who placed it there, and why,
   No one knew anything.