Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (973 page)

   She found herself a striver,
      All liberal gifts debarred,
With days of gloom, and movements stressed,
      And early visions marred,
   And got no man to wive her
      But one whose lot was hard.

   Yet in the moony night-time
      She steals to stile and lea
During his heavy slumberous rest
      When homecome wearily,
   And dreams of some blest bright-time
      She knows can never be.

ON THE DOORSTEP

The rain imprinted the step’s wet shine
With target-circles that quivered and crossed
As I was leaving this porch of mine;
When from within there swelled and paused
      A song’s sweet note;
   And back I turned, and thought,
      ”Here I’ll abide.”

The step shines wet beneath the rain,
Which prints its circles as heretofore;
I watch them from the porch again,
But no song-notes within the door
      Now call to me
   To shun the dripping lea
      And forth I stride.

Jan. 1914.

SIGNS AND TOKENS

Said the red-cloaked crone
In a whispered moan:

“The dead man was limp
When laid in his chest;
Yea, limp; and why
But to signify
That the grave will crimp
Ere next year’s sun
Yet another one
Of those in that house -
It may be the best -
For its endless drowse!”

Said the brown-shawled dame
To confirm the same:

“And the slothful flies
On the rotting fruit
Have been seen to wear
While crawling there
Crape scarves, by eyes
That were quick and acute;
As did those that had pitched
On the cows by the pails,
And with flaps of their tails
Were far away switched.”

Said the third in plaid,
Each word being weighed:

“And trotting does
In the park, in the lane,
And just outside
The shuttered pane,
Have also been heard -
Quick feet as light
As the feet of a sprite -
And the wise mind knows
What things may betide
When such has occurred.”

Cried the black-craped fourth,
Cold faced as the north:

“O, though giving such
Some head-room, I smile
At your falterings
When noting those things
Round your domicile!
For what, what can touch
One whom, riven of all
That makes life gay,
No hints can appal
Of more takings away!”

PATHS OF FORMER TIME

      No; no;
   It must not be so:
They are the ways we do not go.

      Still chew
   The kine, and moo
In the meadows we used to wander through;

      Still purl
   The rivulets and curl
Towards the weirs with a musical swirl;

      Haymakers
   As in former years
Rake rolls into heaps that the pitchfork rears;

      Wheels crack
   On the turfy track
The waggon pursues with its toppling pack.

      ”Why then shun -
   Since summer’s not done -
All this because of the lack of one?”

      Had you been
   Sharer of that scene
You would not ask while it bites in keen

      Why it is so
   We can no more go
By the summer paths we used to know!

1913.

THE CLOCK OF THE YEARS

“A spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up.”

   And the Spirit said,
“I can make the clock of the years go backward,
But am loth to stop it where you will.”
   And I cried, “Agreed
   To that. Proceed:
   It’s better than dead!”

   He answered, “Peace”;
And called her up — as last before me;
Then younger, younger she freshed, to the year
   I first had known
   Her woman-grown,
   And I cried, “Cease! -

   ”Thus far is good -
It is enough — let her stay thus always!”
But alas for me. He shook his head:
   No stop was there;
   And she waned child-fair,
   And to babyhood.

   Still less in mien
To my great sorrow became she slowly,
And smalled till she was nought at all
   In his checkless griff;
   And it was as if
   She had never been.

   ”Better,” I plained,
“She were dead as before! The memory of her
Had lived in me; but it cannot now!”
   And coldly his voice:
   ”It was your choice
   To mar the ordained.”

1916.

AT THE PIANO

A woman was playing,
   A man looking on;
   And the mould of her face,
   And her neck, and her hair,
   Which the rays fell upon
   Of the two candles there,
Sent him mentally straying
   In some fancy-place
   Where pain had no trace.

A cowled Apparition
   Came pushing between;
   And her notes seemed to sigh,
   And the lights to burn pale,
   As a spell numbed the scene.
   But the maid saw no bale,
And the man no monition;
   And Time laughed awry,
   And the Phantom hid nigh.

THE SHADOW ON THE STONE

      I went by the Druid stone
   That broods in the garden white and lone,
And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows
   That at some moments fall thereon
   From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing,
   And they shaped in my imagining
To the shade that a well-known head and shoulders
   Threw there when she was gardening.

      I thought her behind my back,
   Yea, her I long had learned to lack,
And I said: “I am sure you are standing behind me,
   Though how do you get into this old track?”
   And there was no sound but the fall of a leaf
   As a sad response; and to keep down grief
I would not turn my head to discover
   That there was nothing in my belief.

      Yet I wanted to look and see
   That nobody stood at the back of me;
But I thought once more: “Nay, I’ll not unvision
   A shape which, somehow, there may be.”
   So I went on softly from the glade,
   And left her behind me throwing her shade,
As she were indeed an apparition -
   My head unturned lest my dream should fade.

Begun 1913: finished 1916.

IN THE GARDEN (M. H.)

We waited for the sun
To break its cloudy prison
(For day was not yet done,
And night still unbegun)
Leaning by the dial.

After many a trial -
We all silent there -
It burst as new-arisen,
Throwing a shade to where
Time travelled at that minute.

Little saw we in it,
But this much I know,
Of lookers on that shade,
Her towards whom it made
Soonest had to go.

1915.

THE TREE AND THE LADY

      I have done all I could
For that lady I knew! Through the heats I have shaded her,
Drawn to her songsters when summer has jaded her,
   Home from the heath or the wood.

      At the mirth-time of May,
When my shadow first lured her, I’d donned my new bravery
Of greenth: ‘twas my all. Now I shiver in slavery,
   Icicles grieving me gray.

      Plumed to every twig’s end
I could tempt her chair under me. Much did I treasure her
During those days she had nothing to pleasure her;
   Mutely she used me as friend.

      I’m a skeleton now,
And she’s gone, craving warmth. The rime sticks like a skin to me;
Through me Arcturus peers; Nor’lights shoot into me;
   Gone is she, scorning my bough!

AN UPBRAIDING

Now I am dead you sing to me
   The songs we used to know,
But while I lived you had no wish
   Or care for doing so.

Now I am dead you come to me
   In the moonlight, comfortless;
Ah, what would I have given alive
   To win such tenderness!

When you are dead, and stand to me
   Not differenced, as now,
But like again, will you be cold
   As when we lived, or how?

THE YOUNG GLASS-STAINER

“These Gothic windows, how they wear me out
With cusp and foil, and nothing straight or square,
Crude colours, leaden borders roundabout,
And fitting in Peter here, and Matthew there!

“What a vocation! Here do I draw now
The abnormal, loving the Hellenic norm;
Martha I paint, and dream of Hera’s brow,
Mary, and think of Aphrodite’s form.”

Nov. 1893.

LOOKING AT A PICTURE ON AN ANNIVERSARY

But don’t you know it, my dear,
   Don’t you know it,
That this day of the year
(What rainbow-rays embow it!)
We met, strangers confessed,
   But parted — blest?

Though at this query, my dear,
   There in your frame
Unmoved you still appear,
You must be thinking the same,
But keep that look demure
   Just to allure.

And now at length a trace
   I surely vision
Upon that wistful face
Of old-time recognition,
Smiling forth, “Yes, as you say,
   It is the day.”

For this one phase of you
   Now left on earth
This great date must endue
With pulsings of rebirth? -
I see them vitalise
   Those two deep eyes!

But if this face I con
   Does not declare
Consciousness living on
Still in it, little I care
To live myself, my dear,
   Lone-labouring here!

Spring 1913.

THE CHOIRMASTER’S BURIAL

He often would ask us
That, when he died,
After playing so many
To their last rest,
If out of us any
Should here abide,
And it would not task us,
We would with our lutes
Play over him
By his grave-brim
The psalm he liked best -
The one whose sense suits
“Mount Ephraim” -
And perhaps we should seem
To him, in Death’s dream,
Like the seraphim.

As soon as I knew
That his spirit was gone
I thought this his due,
And spoke thereupon.
“I think,” said the vicar,
“A read service quicker
Than viols out-of-doors
In these frosts and hoars.
That old-fashioned way
Requires a fine day,
And it seems to me
It had better not be.”

Hence, that afternoon,
Though never knew he
That his wish could not be,
To get through it faster
They buried the master
Without any tune.

But ‘twas said that, when
At the dead of next night
The vicar looked out,
There struck on his ken
Thronged roundabout,
Where the frost was graying
The headstoned grass,
A band all in white
Like the saints in church-glass,
Singing and playing
The ancient stave
By the choirmaster’s grave.

Such the tenor man told
When he had grown old.

THE MAN WHO FORGOT

At a lonely cross where bye-roads met
   I sat upon a gate;
I saw the sun decline and set,
   And still was fain to wait.

A trotting boy passed up the way
   And roused me from my thought;
I called to him, and showed where lay
   A spot I shyly sought.

“A summer-house fair stands hidden where
   You see the moonlight thrown;
Go, tell me if within it there
   A lady sits alone.”

He half demurred, but took the track,
   And silence held the scene;
I saw his figure rambling back;
   I asked him if he had been.

“I went just where you said, but found
   No summer-house was there:
Beyond the slope ‘tis all bare ground;
   Nothing stands anywhere.

“A man asked what my brains were worth;
   The house, he said, grew rotten,
And was pulled down before my birth,
   And is almost forgotten!”

My right mind woke, and I stood dumb;
   Forty years’ frost and flower
Had fleeted since I’d used to come
   To meet her in that bower.

WHILE DRAWING IN A CHURCH-YARD

   ”It is sad that so many of worth,
   Still in the flesh,” soughed the yew,
“Misjudge their lot whom kindly earth
      Secludes from view.

   ”They ride their diurnal round
   Each day-span’s sum of hours
In peerless ease, without jolt or bound
      Or ache like ours.

   ”If the living could but hear
   What is heard by my roots as they creep
Round the restful flock, and the things said there,
      No one would weep.”

   ”‘Now set among the wise,’
   They say: ‘Enlarged in scope,
That no God trumpet us to rise
      We truly hope.’“

   I listened to his strange tale
   In the mood that stillness brings,
And I grew to accept as the day wore pale
      That show of things.

FOR LIFE I HAD NEVER CARED GREATLY

   For Life I had never cared greatly,
      As worth a man’s while;
      Peradventures unsought,
   Peradventures that finished in nought,
Had kept me from youth and through manhood till lately
      Unwon by its style.

   In earliest years — why I know not -
      I viewed it askance;
      Conditions of doubt,
   Conditions that leaked slowly out,
May haply have bent me to stand and to show not
      Much zest for its dance.

   With symphonies soft and sweet colour
      It courted me then,
      Till evasions seemed wrong,
   Till evasions gave in to its song,
And I warmed, until living aloofly loomed duller
      Than life among men.

   Anew I found nought to set eyes on,
      When, lifting its hand,
      It uncloaked a star,
   Uncloaked it from fog-damps afar,
And showed its beams burning from pole to horizon
      As bright as a brand.