Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (977 page)

I

This is the weather the cuckoo likes,
   And so do I;
When showers betumble the chestnut spikes,
   And nestlings fly:
And the little brown nightingale bills his best,
And they sit outside at “The Travellers’ Rest,”
And maids come forth sprig-muslin drest,
And citizens dream of the south and west,
   And so do I.

II

This is the weather the shepherd shuns,
   And so do I;
When beeches drip in browns and duns,
   And thresh, and ply;
And hill-hid tides throb, throe on throe,
And meadow rivulets overflow,
And drops on gate-bars hang in a row,
And rooks in families homeward go,
   And so do I.

THE MAID OF KEINTON MANDEVILLE

(A TRIBUTE TO SIR H. BISHOP)

I hear that maiden still
Of Keinton Mandeville
Singing, in flights that played
As wind-wafts through us all,
Till they made our mood a thrall
To their aery rise and fall,
   ”Should he upbraid.”

Rose-necked, in sky-gray gown,
From a stage in Stower Town
Did she sing, and singing smile
As she blent that dexterous voice
With the ditty of her choice,
And banished our annoys
   Thereawhile.

One with such song had power
To wing the heaviest hour
Of him who housed with her.
Who did I never knew
When her spoused estate ondrew,
And her warble flung its woo
   In his ear.

Ah, she’s a beldame now,
Time-trenched on cheek and brow,
Whom I once heard as a maid
From Keinton Mandeville
Of matchless scope and skill
Sing, with smile and swell and trill,
   ”Should he upbraid!”

1915 or 1916.

SUMMER SCHEMES

When friendly summer calls again,
      Calls again
Her little fifers to these hills,
We’ll go - we two - to that arched fane
Of leafage where they prime their bills
Before they start to flood the plain
With quavers, minims, shakes, and trills.
   ” - We’ll go,” I sing; but who shall say
   What may not chance before that day!

And we shall see the waters spring,
      Waters spring
From chinks the scrubby copses crown;
And we shall trace their oncreeping
To where the cascade tumbles down
And sends the bobbing growths aswing,
And ferns not quite but almost drown.
   ” - We shall,” I say; but who may sing
   Of what another moon will bring!

EPEISODIA

I

Past the hills that peep
Where the leaze is smiling,
On and on beguiling
Crisply-cropping sheep;
Under boughs of brushwood
Linking tree and tree
In a shade of lushwood,
   There caressed we!

II

Hemmed by city walls
That outshut the sunlight,
In a foggy dun light,
Where the footstep falls
With a pit-pat wearisome
In its cadency
On the flagstones drearisome
   There pressed we!

III

Where in wild-winged crowds
Blown birds show their whiteness
Up against the lightness
Of the clammy clouds;
By the random river
Pushing to the sea,
Under bents that quiver
   There rest we.

FAINTHEART IN A RAILWAY TRAIN

At nine in the morning there passed a church,
At ten there passed me by the sea,
At twelve a town of smoke and smirch,
At two a forest of oak and birch,
   And then, on a platform, she:

A radiant stranger, who saw not me.
I queried, “Get out to her do I dare?”
But I kept my seat in my search for a plea,
And the wheels moved on. O could it but be
   That I had alighted there!

AT MOONRISE AND ONWARDS

      I thought you a fire
   On Heron-Plantation Hill,
Dealing out mischief the most dire
   To the chattels of men of hire
      There in their vill.

      But by and by
   You turned a yellow-green,
Like a large glow-worm in the sky;
   And then I could descry
      Your mood and mien.

      How well I know
   Your furtive feminine shape! 
As if reluctantly you show
   You nude of cloud, and but by favour throw
      Aside its drape . . .

      - How many a year
   Have you kept pace with me,
Wan Woman of the waste up there,
   Behind a hedge, or the bare
      Bough of a tree!

      No novelty are you,
   O Lady of all my time,
Veering unbid into my view
   Whether I near Death’s mew,
      Or Life’s top cyme!

THE GARDEN SEAT

Its former green is blue and thin,
And its once firm legs sink in and in;
Soon it will break down unaware,
Soon it will break down unaware.

At night when reddest flowers are black
Those who once sat thereon come back;
Quite a row of them sitting there,
Quite a row of them sitting there.

With them the seat does not break down,
Nor winter freeze them, nor floods drown,
For they are as light as upper air,
They are as light as upper air!

BARTHÉLÉMON AT VAUXHALL

François Hippolite Barthélémon, first-fiddler at Vauxhall Gardens, composed what was probably the most popular morning hymn-tune ever written.  It was formerly sung, full-voiced, every Sunday in most churches, to Bishop Ken’s words, but is now seldom heard.

He said: “Awake my soul, and with the sun,” . . .
And paused upon the bridge, his eyes due east,
Where was emerging like a full-robed priest
The irradiate globe that vouched the dark as done.

It lit his face - the weary face of one
Who in the adjacent gardens charged his string,
Nightly, with many a tuneful tender thing,
Till stars were weak, and dancing hours outrun.

And then were threads of matin music spun
In trial tones as he pursued his way:
“This is a morn,” he murmured, “well begun:
This strain to Ken will count when I am clay!”

And count it did; till, caught by echoing lyres,
It spread to galleried naves and mighty quires.

I SOMETIMES THINK

(FOR F. E. H.)

I sometimes think as here I sit
   Of things I have done,
Which seemed in doing not unfit
   To face the sun:
Yet never a soul has paused a whit
   On such - not one.

There was that eager strenuous press
   To sow good seed;
There was that saving from distress
   In the nick of need;
There were those words in the wilderness:
   Who cared to heed?

Yet can this be full true, or no? 
   For one did care,
And, spiriting into my house, to, fro,
   Like wind on the stair,
Cares still, heeds all, and will, even though
   I may despair.

JEZREEL

ON ITS SEIZURE BY THE ENGLISH UNDER ALLENBY, SEPTEMBER 1918

Did they catch as it were in a Vision at shut of the day -
When their cavalry smote through the ancient Esdraelon Plain,
And they crossed where the Tishbite stood forth in his enemy’s way -
His gaunt mournful Shade as he bade the King haste off amain?

On war-men at this end of time - even on Englishmen’s eyes -
Who slay with their arms of new might in that long-ago place,
Flashed he who drove furiously? . . . Ah, did the phantom arise
Of that queen, of that proud Tyrian woman who painted her face?

Faintly marked they the words “Throw her down!” rise from Night eerily,
Spectre-spots of the blood of her body on some rotten wall?
And the thin note of pity that came: “A King’s daughter is she,”
As they passed where she trodden was once by the chargers’ footfall?

Could such be the hauntings of men of to-day, at the cease
Of pursuit, at the dusk-hour, ere slumber their senses could seal?
Enghosted seers, kings - one on horseback who asked “Is it peace?” . . .
Yea, strange things and spectral may men have beheld in Jezreel!

September
24, 1918.

A JOG-TROT PAIR

   Who were the twain that trod this track
      So many times together
         Hither and back,
In spells of certain and uncertain weather?

   Commonplace in conduct they
      Who wandered to and fro here
         Day by day:
Two that few dwellers troubled themselves to know here.

   The very gravel-path was prim
      That daily they would follow:
         Borders trim:
Never a wayward sprout, or hump, or hollow.

   Trite usages in tamest style
      Had tended to their plighting.
         ”It’s just worth while,
Perhaps,” they had said.  “And saves much sad good-nighting.”

   And petty seemed the happenings
      That ministered to their joyance:
         Simple things,
Onerous to satiate souls, increased their buoyance.

   Who could those common people be,
      Of days the plainest, barest?
         They were we;
Yes; happier than the cleverest, smartest, rarest.

THE CURTAINS NOW ARE DRAWN

(SONG)

I

   The curtains now are drawn,
   And the spindrift strikes the glass,
   Blown up the jagged pass
   By the surly salt sou’-west,
   And the sneering glare is gone
   Behind the yonder crest,
      While she sings to me:
“O the dream that thou art my Love, be it thine,
And the dream that I am thy Love, be it mine,
And death may come, but loving is divine.”

II

   I stand here in the rain,
   With its smite upon her stone,
   And the grasses that have grown
   Over women, children, men,
   And their texts that “Life is vain”;
   But I hear the notes as when
      Once she sang to me:
“O the dream that thou art my Love, be it thine,
And the dream that I am thy Love, be it mine,
And death may come, but loving is divine.”

1913.

ACCORDING TO THE MIGHTY WORKING

I

When moiling seems at cease
   In the vague void of night-time,
   And heaven’s wide roomage stormless
   Between the dusk and light-time,
   And fear at last is formless,
We call the allurement Peace.

II

Peace, this hid riot, Change,
   This revel of quick-cued mumming,
   This never truly being,
   This evermore becoming,
   This spinner’s wheel onfleeing
Outside perception’s range.

1917.

I WAS NOT HE

(SONG)

   I was not he - the man
Who used to pilgrim to your gate,
At whose smart step you grew elate,
   And rosed, as maidens can,
      For a brief span.

   It was not I who sang
Beside the keys you touched so true
With note-bent eyes, as if with you
   It counted not whence sprang
      The voice that rang . . .

   Yet though my destiny
It was to miss your early sweet,
You still, when turned to you my feet,
   Had sweet enough to be
      A prize for me!

THE WEST-OF-WESSEX GIRL

A very West-of-Wessex girl,
   As blithe as blithe could be,
   Was once well-known to me,
And she would laud her native town,
   And hope and hope that we
Might sometime study up and down
   Its charms in company.

But never I squired my Wessex girl
   In jaunts to Hoe or street
   When hearts were high in beat,
Nor saw her in the marbled ways
   Where market-people meet
That in her bounding early days
   Were friendly with her feet.

Yet now my West-of-Wessex girl,
   When midnight hammers slow
   From Andrew’s, blow by blow,
As phantom draws me by the hand
   To the place - Plymouth Hoe -
Where side by side in life, as planned,
   We never were to go!

Begun in Plymouth,
March
1913.

WELCOME HOME

   To my native place
   Bent upon returning,
   Bosom all day burning
   To be where my race
Well were known, ‘twas much with me
There to dwell in amity.

   Folk had sought their beds,
   But I hailed: to view me
   Under the moon, out to me
   Several pushed their heads,
And to each I told my name,
Plans, and that therefrom I came.

   ”Did you? . . .  Ah, ‘tis true
   I once heard, back a long time,
   Here had spent his young time,
   Some such man as you . . .
Good-night.”  The casement closed again,
And I was left in the frosty lane.

GOING AND STAYING

I

The moving sun-shapes on the spray,
The sparkles where the brook was flowing,
Pink faces, plightings, moonlit May,
These were the things we wished would stay;
   But they were going.

II

Seasons of blankness as of snow,
The silent bleed of a world decaying,
The moan of multitudes in woe,
These were the things we wished would go;
   But they were staying.

III

Then we looked closelier at Time,
And saw his ghostly arms revolving
To sweep off woeful things with prime,
Things sinister with things sublime
   Alike dissolving.

READ BY MOONLIGHT

I paused to read a letter of hers
   By the moon’s cold shine,
Eyeing it in the tenderest way,
And edging it up to catch each ray
   Upon her light-penned line.
I did not know what years would flow
   Of her life’s span and mine
Ere I read another letter of hers
   By the moon’s cold shine!