Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (979 page)

In woodlands I have known her,
   When boughs were mourning loud,
In the rain-reek she has shown her
   Wild-haired and watery-browed.
And once or twice she has cast me
   As she pomped along the street
Court-clad, ere quite she had passed me,
   A glance from her chariot-seat.

But in my memoried passion
   For evermore stands she
In the gown of fading fashion
   She wore that night when we,
Doomed long to part, assembled
   In the snug small room; yea, when
She sang with lips that trembled,
   ”Shall I see his face again?”

A NIGHT IN NOVEMBER

I marked when the weather changed,
And the panes began to quake,
And the winds rose up and ranged,
That night, lying half-awake.

Dead leaves blew into my room,
And alighted upon my bed,
And a tree declared to the gloom
Its sorrow that they were shed.

One leaf of them touched my hand,
And I thought that it was you
There stood as you used to stand,
And saying at last you knew!

(?) 1913.

A DUETTIST TO HER PIANOFORTE

SONG OF SILENCE
(E. L. H. - H. C. H.)

Since every sound moves memories,
   How can I play you
Just as I might if you raised no scene,
By your ivory rows, of a form between
My vision and your time-worn sheen,
      As when each day you
Answered our fingers with ecstasy?
So it’s hushed, hushed, hushed, you are for me!

And as I am doomed to counterchord
   Her notes no more
In those old things I used to know,
In a fashion, when we practised so,
“Good-night! - Good-bye!” to your pleated show
      Of silk, now hoar,
Each nodding hammer, and pedal and key,
For dead, dead, dead, you are to me!

I fain would second her, strike to her stroke,
   As when she was by,
Aye, even from the ancient clamorous “Fall
Of Paris,” or “Battle of Prague” withal,
To the “Roving Minstrels,” or “Elfin Call”
      Sung soft as a sigh:
But upping ghosts press achefully,
And mute, mute, mute, you are for me!

Should I fling your polyphones, plaints, and quavers
   Afresh on the air,
Too quick would the small white shapes be here
Of the fellow twain of hands so dear;
And a black-tressed profile, and pale smooth ear;
      - Then how shall I bear
Such heavily-haunted harmony?
Nay: hushed, hushed, hushed you are for me!

WHERE THREE ROADS JOINED

Where three roads joined it was green and fair,
And over a gate was the sun-glazed sea,
And life laughed sweet when I halted there;
Yet there I never again would be.

I am sure those branchways are brooding now,
With a wistful blankness upon their face,
While the few mute passengers notice how
Spectre-beridden is the place;

Which nightly sighs like a laden soul,
And grieves that a pair, in bliss for a spell
Not far from thence, should have let it roll
Away from them down a plumbless well

While the phasm of him who fared starts up,
And of her who was waiting him sobs from near,
As they haunt there and drink the wormwood cup
They filled for themselves when their sky was clear.

Yes, I see those roads - now rutted and bare,
While over the gate is no sun-glazed sea;
And though life laughed when I halted there,
It is where I never again would be.

AND THERE WAS A GREAT CALM

(ON THE SIGNING OF THE ARMISTICE, Nov. 11, 1918)

I

There had been years of Passion - scorching, cold,
And much Despair, and Anger heaving high,
Care whitely watching, Sorrows manifold,
Among the young, among the weak and old,
And the pensive Spirit of Pity whispered, “Why?”

II

Men had not paused to answer.  Foes distraught
Pierced the thinned peoples in a brute-like blindness,
Philosophies that sages long had taught,
And Selflessness, were as an unknown thought,
And “Hell!” and “Shell!” were yapped at Lovingkindness.

III

The feeble folk at home had grown full-used
To “dug-outs,” “snipers,” “Huns,” from the war-adept
In the mornings heard, and at evetides perused;
To day - dreamt men in millions, when they mused -
To nightmare-men in millions when they slept.

IV

Waking to wish existence timeless, null,
Sirius they watched above where armies fell;
He seemed to check his flapping when, in the lull
Of night a boom came thencewise, like the dull
Plunge of a stone dropped into some deep well.

V

So, when old hopes that earth was bettering slowly
Were dead and damned, there sounded “War is done!”
One morrow.  Said the bereft, and meek, and lowly,
“Will men some day be given to grace? yea, wholly,
And in good sooth, as our dreams used to run?”

VI

Breathless they paused.  Out there men raised their glance
To where had stood those poplars lank and lopped,
As they had raised it through the four years’ dance
Of Death in the now familiar flats of France;
And murmured, “Strange, this!  How?  All firing stopped?”

VII

Aye; all was hushed.  The about-to-fire fired not,
The aimed-at moved away in trance-lipped song.
One checkless regiment slung a clinching shot
And turned.  The Spirit of Irony smirked out, “What?
Spoil peradventures woven of Rage and Wrong?”

VIII

Thenceforth no flying fires inflamed the gray,
No hurtlings shook the dewdrop from the thorn,
No moan perplexed the mute bird on the spray;
Worn horses mused: “We are not whipped to-day”;
No weft-winged engines blurred the moon’s thin horn.

IX

Calm fell.  From Heaven distilled a clemency;
There was peace on earth, and silence in the sky;
Some could, some could not, shake off misery:
The Sinister Spirit sneered: “It had to be!”
And again the Spirit of Pity whispered, “Why?”

HAUNTING FINGERS

A PHANTASY IN A MUSEUM OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS

         ”Are you awake,
      Comrades, this silent night?
   Well ‘twere if all of our glossy gluey make
Lay in the damp without, and fell to fragments quite!”

         ”O viol, my friend,
      I watch, though Phosphor nears,
   And I fain would drowse away to its utter end
This dumb dark stowage after our loud melodious years!”

And they felt past handlers clutch them,
   Though none was in the room,
Old players’ dead fingers touch them,
      Shrunk in the tomb.

         ”‘Cello, good mate,
      You speak my mind as yours:
   Doomed to this voiceless, crippled, corpselike state,
Who, dear to famed Amphion, trapped here, long endures?”

         ”Once I could thrill
      The populace through and through,
   Wake them to passioned pulsings past their will.” . . .
(A contra-basso spake so, and the rest sighed anew.)

And they felt old muscles travel
   Over their tense contours,
And with long skill unravel
      Cunningest scores.

         ”The tender pat
      Of her aery finger-tips
   Upon me daily - I rejoiced thereat!”
(Thuswise a harpsicord, as from dampered lips.)

         ”My keys’ white shine,
      Now sallow, met a hand
   Even whiter. . . .  Tones of hers fell forth with mine
In sowings of sound so sweet no lover could withstand!”

And its clavier was filmed with fingers
   Like tapering flames - wan, cold -
Or the nebulous light that lingers
      In charnel mould.

         ”Gayer than most
      Was I,” reverbed a drum;
   ”The regiments, marchings, throngs, hurrahs!  What a host
I stirred - even when crape mufflings gagged me well-nigh dumb!”

         Trilled an aged viol:
      ”Much tune have I set free
   To spur the dance, since my first timid trial
Where I had birth - far hence, in sun-swept Italy!”

And he feels apt touches on him
   From those that pressed him then;
Who seem with their glance to con him,
      Saying, “Not again!”

         ”A holy calm,”
      Mourned a shawm’s voice subdued,
   ”Steeped my Cecilian rhythms when hymn and psalm
Poured from devout souls met in Sabbath sanctitude.”

         ”I faced the sock
      Nightly,” twanged a sick lyre,
   ”Over ranked lights!  O charm of life in mock,
O scenes that fed love, hope, wit, rapture, mirth, desire!”

Thus they, till each past player
   Stroked thinner and more thin,
And the morning sky grew grayer
      And day crawled in.

THE WOMAN I MET

A stranger, I threaded sunken-hearted
      A lamp-lit crowd;
And anon there passed me a soul departed,
      Who mutely bowed.
In my far-off youthful years I had met her,
Full-pulsed; but now, no more life’s debtor,
      Onward she slid
   In a shroud that furs half-hid.

“Why do you trouble me, dead woman,
      Trouble me;
You whom I knew when warm and human?
      - How it be
That you quitted earth and are yet upon it
Is, to any who ponder on it,
      Past being read!”
   ”Still, it is so,” she said.

“These were my haunts in my olden sprightly
      Hours of breath;
Here I went tempting frail youth nightly
      To their death;
But you deemed me chaste - me, a tinselled sinner!
How thought you one with pureness in her
      Could pace this street
   Eyeing some man to greet?

“Well; your very simplicity made me love you
      Mid such town dross,
Till I set not Heaven itself above you,
      Who grew my Cross;
For you’d only nod, despite how I sighed for you;
So you tortured me, who fain would have died for you!
      - What I suffered then
   Would have paid for the sins of ten!

“Thus went the days.  I feared you despised me
      To fling me a nod
Each time, no more: till love chastised me
      As with a rod
That a fresh bland boy of no assurance
Should fire me with passion beyond endurance,
      While others all
   I hated, and loathed their call.

“I said: ‘It is his mother’s spirit
      Hovering around
To shield him, maybe!’  I used to fear it,
      As still I found
My beauty left no least impression,
And remnants of pride withheld confession
      Of my true trade
   By speaking; so I delayed.

“I said: ‘Perhaps with a costly flower
      He’ll be beguiled.’
I held it, in passing you one late hour,
      To your face: you smiled,
Keeping step with the throng; though you did not see there
A single one that rivalled me there! . . .
      Well: it’s all past.
   I died in the Lock at last.”

So walked the dead and I together
      The quick among,
Elbowing our kind of every feather
      Slowly and long;
Yea, long and slowly.  That a phantom should stalk there
With me seemed nothing strange, and talk there
      That winter night
   By flaming jets of light.

She showed me Juans who feared their call-time,
      Guessing their lot;
She showed me her sort that cursed their fall-time,
      And that did not.
Till suddenly murmured she: “Now, tell me,
Why asked you never, ere death befell me,
      To have my love,
   Much as I dreamt thereof?”

I could not answer.  And she, well weeting
      All in my heart,
Said: “God your guardian kept our fleeting
      Forms apart!”
Sighing and drawing her furs around her
Over the shroud that tightly bound her,
      With wafts as from clay
   She turned and thinned away.

LONDON, 1918.

IF IT’S EVER SPRING AGAIN

(SONG)

If it’s ever spring again,
   Spring again,
I shall go where went I when
Down the moor-cock splashed, and hen,
Seeing me not, amid their flounder,
Standing with my arm around her;
If it’s ever spring again,
   Spring again,
I shall go where went I then.

If it’s ever summer-time,
   Summer-time,
With the hay crop at the prime,
And the cuckoos - two - in rhyme,
As they used to be, or seemed to,
We shall do as long we’ve dreamed to,
If it’s ever summer-time,
   Summer-time,
With the hay, and bees achime.

THE TWO HOUSES

         In the heart of night,
      When farers were not near,
   The left house said to the house on the right,
“I have marked your rise, O smart newcomer here.”

         Said the right, cold-eyed:
      ”Newcomer here I am,
   Hence haler than you with your cracked old hide,
Loose casements, wormy beams, and doors that jam.

         ”Modern my wood,
      My hangings fair of hue;
   While my windows open as they should,
And water-pipes thread all my chambers through.

         ”Your gear is gray,
      Your face wears furrows untold.”
   ” - Yours might,” mourned the other, “if you held, brother,
The Presences from aforetime that I hold.

         ”You have not known
      Men’s lives, deaths, toils, and teens;
   You are but a heap of stick and stone:
A new house has no sense of the have-beens.

         ”Void as a drum
      You stand: I am packed with these,
   Though, strangely, living dwellers who come
See not the phantoms all my substance sees!