Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (971 page)

“Alas, my friend,” he said with a smile,
“I am daily bound to foot ten mile -
Wet, dry, or dark — before I rest.
   Six months to live
   My doctors give
Me as my prospect here, at best,
Unless I vamp my sturdiest!”

His voice was that of a man refined,
A man, one well could feel, of mind,
Quite winning in its musical ease;
   But in mould maligned
   By some disease;
And I asked again. But he shook his head;
Then, as if more were due, he said:-

“A student was I — of Schopenhauer,
Kant, Hegel, — and the fountained bower
Of the Muses, too, knew my regard:
   But ah — I fear me
   The grave gapes near me! . . .
Would I could this gross sheath discard,
And rise an ethereal shape, unmarred!”

How I remember him! — his short breath,
His aspect, marked for early death,
As he dropped into the night for ever;
   One caught in his prime
   Of high endeavour;
From all philosophies soon to sever
Through an unconscienced trick of Time!

WHO’S IN THE NEXT ROOM?

   ”Who’s in the next room? — who?
      I seemed to see
Somebody in the dawning passing through,
      Unknown to me.”
“Nay: you saw nought. He passed invisibly.”

   ”Who’s in the next room? — who?
      I seem to hear
Somebody muttering firm in a language new
      That chills the ear.”
“No: you catch not his tongue who has entered there.”

   ”Who’s in the next room? — who?
      I seem to feel
His breath like a clammy draught, as if it drew
      From the Polar Wheel.”
“No: none who breathes at all does the door conceal.”

   ”Who’s in the next room? — who?
      A figure wan
With a message to one in there of something due?
      Shall I know him anon?”
“Yea he; and he brought such; and you’ll know him anon.”

AT A COUNTRY FAIR

At a bygone Western country fair
I saw a giant led by a dwarf
With a red string like a long thin scarf;
How much he was the stronger there
   The giant seemed unaware.

And then I saw that the giant was blind,
And the dwarf a shrewd-eyed little thing;
The giant, mild, timid, obeyed the string
As if he had no independent mind,
   Or will of any kind.

Wherever the dwarf decided to go
At his heels the other trotted meekly,
(Perhaps — I know not — reproaching weakly)
Like one Fate bade that it must be so,
   Whether he wished or no.

Various sights in various climes
I have seen, and more I may see yet,
But that sight never shall I forget,
And have thought it the sorriest of pantomimes,
   If once, a hundred times!

THE MEMORIAL BRASS: 186-

   ”Why do you weep there, O sweet lady,
   Why do you weep before that brass? -
(I’m a mere student sketching the mediaeval)
   Is some late death lined there, alas? -
Your father’s? . . . Well, all pay the debt that paid he!”

   ”Young man, O must I tell! — My husband’s! And under
   His name I set mine, and my DEATH! -
Its date left vacant till my heirs should fill it,
   Stating me faithful till my last breath.”
- “Madam, that you are a widow wakes my wonder!”

   ”O wait! For last month I — remarried!
   And now I fear ‘twas a deed amiss.
We’ve just come home. And I am sick and saddened
   At what the new one will say to this;
And will he think — think that I should have tarried?

   ”I may add, surely, — with no wish to harm him -
   That he’s a temper — yes, I fear!
And when he comes to church next Sunday morning,
   And sees that written . . . O dear, O dear!
- “Madam, I swear your beauty will disarm him!”

HER LOVE-BIRDS

When I looked up at my love-birds
   That Sunday afternoon,
   There was in their tiny tune
A dying fetch like broken words,
When I looked up at my love-birds
   That Sunday afternoon.

When he, too, scanned the love-birds
   On entering there that day,
   ’Twas as if he had nought to say
Of his long journey citywards,
When he, too, scanned the love-birds,
   On entering there that day.

And billed and billed the love-birds,
   As ‘twere in fond despair
   At the stress of silence where
Had once been tones in tenor thirds,
And billed and billed the love-birds
   As ‘twere in fond despair.

O, his speech that chilled the love-birds,
   And smote like death on me,
   As I learnt what was to be,
And knew my life was broke in sherds!
O, his speech that chilled the love-birds,
   And smote like death on me!

PAYING CALLS

I went by footpath and by stile
   Beyond where bustle ends,
Strayed here a mile and there a mile
   And called upon some friends.

On certain ones I had not seen
   For years past did I call,
And then on others who had been
   The oldest friends of all.

It was the time of midsummer
   When they had used to roam;
But now, though tempting was the air,
   I found them all at home.

I spoke to one and other of them
   By mound and stone and tree
Of things we had done ere days were dim,
   But they spoke not to me.

THE UPPER BIRCH-LEAVES

Warm yellowy-green
In the blue serene,
How they skip and sway
On this autumn day!
They cannot know
What has happened below, -
That their boughs down there
Are already quite bare,
That their own will be
When a week has passed, -
For they jig as in glee
To this very last.

But no; there lies
At times in their tune
A note that cries
What at first I fear
I did not hear:
“O we remember
At each wind’s hollo -
Though life holds yet -
We go hence soon,
For ‘tis November;
- But that you follow
You may forget!”

IT NEVER LOOKS LIKE SUMMER

“It never looks like summer here
   On Beeny by the sea.”
But though she saw its look as drear,
   Summer it seemed to me.

It never looks like summer now
   Whatever weather’s there;
But ah, it cannot anyhow,
   On Beeny or elsewhere!

BOSCASTLE,
March 8, 1913.

EVERYTHING COMES

“The house is bleak and cold
   Built so new for me!
All the winds upon the wold
   Search it through for me;
No screening trees abound,
And the curious eyes around
   Keep on view for me.”

“My Love, I am planting trees
   As a screen for you
Both from winds, and eyes that tease
   And peer in for you.
Only wait till they have grown,
No such bower will be known
   As I mean for you.”

“Then I will bear it, Love,
   And will wait,” she said.
- So, with years, there grew a grove.
   ”Skill how great!” she said.
“As you wished, Dear?” — ”Yes, I see!
But — I’m dying; and for me
   ’Tis too late,” she said.

THE MAN WITH A PAST

   There was merry-making
   When the first dart fell
   As a heralding, -
Till grinned the fully bared thing,
   And froze like a spell -
      Like a spell.

   Innocent was she,
   Innocent was I,
   Too simple we!
Before us we did not see,
   Nearing, aught wry -
      Aught wry!

   I can tell it not now,
   It was long ago;
   And such things cow;
But that is why and how
   Two lives were so -
      Were so.

   Yes, the years matured,
   And the blows were three
   That time ensured
On her, which she dumbly endured;
   And one on me -
      One on me.

HE FEARS HIS GOOD FORTUNE

There was a glorious time
At an epoch of my prime;
Mornings beryl-bespread,
And evenings golden-red;
   Nothing gray:
And in my heart I said,
“However this chanced to be,
It is too full for me,
Too rare, too rapturous, rash,
Its spell must close with a crash
   Some day!”

The radiance went on
Anon and yet anon,
And sweetness fell around
Like manna on the ground.
   ”I’ve no claim,”
Said I, “to be thus crowned:
I am not worthy this:-
Must it not go amiss? -
Well . . . let the end foreseen
Come duly! — I am serene.”
  — And it came.

HE WONDERS ABOUT HIMSELF

No use hoping, or feeling vext,
Tugged by a force above or under
Like some fantocine, much I wonder
What I shall find me doing next!

Shall I be rushing where bright eyes be?
Shall I be suffering sorrows seven?
Shall I be watching the stars of heaven,
Thinking one of them looks like thee?

P
art is mine of the general Will, Cannot my share in the sum of sources Bend a digit the poise of forces, And a fair desire fulfil?

Nov. 1893.

JUBILATE

“The very last time I ever was here,” he said,
“I saw much less of the quick than I saw of the dead.”
- He was a man I had met with somewhere before,
But how or when I now could recall no more.

“The hazy mazy moonlight at one in the morning
Spread out as a sea across the frozen snow,
Glazed to live sparkles like the great breastplate adorning
The priest of the Temple, with Urim and Thummim aglow.

“The yew-tree arms, glued hard to the stiff stark air,
Hung still in the village sky as theatre-scenes
When I came by the churchyard wall, and halted there
At a shut-in sound of fiddles and tambourines.

“And as I stood hearkening, dulcimers, haut-boys, and shawms,
And violoncellos, and a three-stringed double-bass,
Joined in, and were intermixed with a singing of psalms;
And I looked over at the dead men’s dwelling-place.

“Through the shine of the slippery snow I now could see,
As it were through a crystal roof, a great company
Of the dead minueting in stately step underground
To the tune of the instruments I had before heard sound.

“It was ‘Eden New,’ and dancing they sang in a chore,
‘We are out of it all! — yea, in Little-Ease cramped no more!’
And their shrouded figures pacing with joy I could see
As you see the stage from the gallery. And they had no heed of me.

“And I lifted my head quite dazed from the churchyard wall
And I doubted not that it warned I should soon have my call.
But — ” . . . Then in the ashes he emptied the dregs of his cup,
And onward he went, and the darkness swallowed him up.

HE REVISITS HIS FIRST SCHOOL

I should not have shown in the flesh,
I ought to have gone as a ghost;
It was awkward, unseemly almost,
Standing solidly there as when fresh,
   Pink, tiny, crisp-curled,
   My pinions yet furled
   From the winds of the world.

After waiting so many a year
To wait longer, and go as a sprite
From the tomb at the mid of some night
Was the right, radiant way to appear;
   Not as one wanzing weak
   From life’s roar and reek,
   His rest still to seek:

Yea, beglimpsed through the quaint quarried glass
Of green moonlight, by me greener made,
When they’d cry, perhaps, “There sits his shade
In his olden haunt — just as he was
   When in Walkingame he
   Conned the grand Rule-of-Three
   With the bent of a bee.”

But to show in the afternoon sun,
With an aspect of hollow-eyed care,
When none wished to see me come there,
Was a garish thing, better undone.
   Yes; wrong was the way;
   But yet, let me say,
   I may right it — some day.

I THOUGHT, MY HEART

I thought, my Heart, that you had healed
Of those sore smartings of the past,
And that the summers had oversealed
   All mark of them at last.
But closely scanning in the night
I saw them standing crimson-bright
      Just as she made them:
      Nothing could fade them;
      Yea, I can swear
      That there they were -
      They still were there!

Then the Vision of her who cut them came,
And looking over my shoulder said,
“I am sure you deal me all the blame
   For those sharp smarts and red;
But meet me, dearest, to-morrow night,
In the churchyard at the moon’s half-height,
      And so strange a kiss
      Shall be mine, I wis,
      That you’ll cease to know
      If the wounds you show
      Be there or no!”

FRAGMENT

At last I entered a long dark gallery,
   Catacomb-lined; and ranged at the side
   Were the bodies of men from far and wide
Who, motion past, were nevertheless not dead.

“The sense of waiting here strikes strong;
   Everyone’s waiting, waiting, it seems to me;
   What are you waiting for so long? -
What is to happen?” I said.

“O we are waiting for one called God,” said they,
   ”(Though by some the Will, or Force, or Laws;
   And, vaguely, by some, the Ultimate Cause;)
Waiting for him to see us before we are clay.
Yes; waiting, waiting, for God TO KNOW IT” . . .

   ”To know what?” questioned I.
“To know how things have been going on earth and below it:
   It is clear he must know some day.”
   I thereon asked them why.

“Since he made us humble pioneers
Of himself in consciousness of Life’s tears,
It needs no mighty prophecy
To tell that what he could mindlessly show
His creatures, he himself will know.