Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (982 page)

“Though only three were impaled, you may know it didn’t pass off
So quietly as was wont?  That Galilee carpenter’s son
Who boasted he was king, incensed the rabble to scoff:
I heard the noise from my garden.  This piece is the one he was on . . .
Yes, it blazes up well if lit with a few dry chips and shroff;
And it’s worthless for much else, what with cuts and stains thereon.”

SAYING GOOD-BYE

(SONG)

We are always saying
   ”Good-bye, good-bye!”
In work, in playing,
In gloom, in gaying:
   At many a stage
   Of pilgrimage
   From youth to age
   We say, “Good-bye,
      Good-bye!”

We are undiscerning
   Which go to sigh,
Which will be yearning
For soon returning;
   And which no more
   Will dark our door,
   Or tread our shore,
   But go to die,
      To die.

Some come from roaming
   With joy again;
Some, who come homing
By stealth at gloaming,
   Had better have stopped
   Till death, and dropped
   By strange hands propped,
   Than come so fain,
      So fain.

So, with this saying,
   ”Good-bye, good-bye,”
We speed their waying
Without betraying
   Our grief, our fear
   No more to hear
   From them, close, clear,
   Again: “Good-bye,
      Good-bye!”

ON THE TUNE CALLED THE OLD-HUNDRED-AND-FOURTH

We never sang together
   Ravenscroft’s terse old tune
On Sundays or on weekdays,
In sharp or summer weather,
   At night-time or at noon.

Why did we never sing it,
   Why never so incline
On Sundays or on weekdays,
Even when soft wafts would wing it
   From your far floor to mine?

Shall we that tune, then, never
   Stand voicing side by side
On Sundays or on weekdays? . . .
Or shall we, when for ever
   In Sheol we abide,

Sing it in desolation,
   As we might long have done
On Sundays or on weekdays
With love and exultation
   Before our sands had run?

THE OPPORTUNITY

(FOR H. P.)

Forty springs back, I recall,
   We met at this phase of the Maytime:
We might have clung close through all,
   But we parted when died that daytime.

We parted with smallest regret;
   Perhaps should have cared but slightly,
Just then, if we never had met:
   Strange, strange that we lived so lightly!

Had we mused a little space
   At that critical date in the Maytime,
One life had been ours, one place,
   Perhaps, till our long cold daytime.

- This is a bitter thing
   For thee, O man: what ails it?
The tide of chance may bring
   Its offer; but nought avails it!

EVELYN G. OF CHRISTMINSTER

I can see the towers
In mind quite clear
Not many hours’
Faring from here;
But how up and go,
And briskly bear
Thither, and know
That are not there?

Though the birds sing small,
And apple and pear
On your trees by the wall
Are ripe and rare,
Though none excel them,
I have no care
To taste them or smell them
And you not there.

Though the College stones
Are smit with the sun,
And the graduates and Dons
Who held you as one
Of brightest brow
Still think as they did,
Why haunt with them now
Your candle is hid?

Towards the river
A pealing swells:
They cost me a quiver -
Those prayerful bells!
How go to God,
Who can reprove
With so heavy a rod
As your swift remove!

The chorded keys
Wait all in a row,
And the bellows wheeze
As long ago.
And the psalter lingers,
And organist’s chair;
But where are your fingers
That once wagged there?

Shall I then seek
That desert place
This or next week,
And those tracks trace
That fill me with cark
And cloy; nowhere
Being movement or mark
Of you now there!

THE RIFT

(SONG:
Minor Mode
)

‘Twas just at gnat and cobweb-time,
When yellow begins to show in the leaf,
That your old gamut changed its chime
From those true tones - of span so brief! -
That met my beats of joy, of grief,
   As rhyme meets rhyme.

So sank I from my high sublime!
We faced but chancewise after that,
And never I knew or guessed my crime. . .
Yes; ‘twas the date - or nigh thereat -
Of the yellowing leaf; at moth and gnat
   And cobweb-time.

VOICES FROM THINGS GROWING IN A CHURCHYARD

These flowers are I, poor Fanny Hurd,
   Sir or Madam,
A little girl here sepultured.
Once I flit-fluttered like a bird
Above the grass, as now I wave
In daisy shapes above my grave,
   All day cheerily,
   All night eerily!

- I am one Bachelor Bowring, “Gent,”
   Sir or Madam;
In shingled oak my bones were pent;
Hence more than a hundred years I spent
In my feat of change from a coffin-thrall
To a dancer in green as leaves on a wall.
   All day cheerily,
   All night eerily!

- I, these berries of juice and gloss,
   Sir or Madam,
Am clean forgotten as Thomas Voss;
Thin-urned, I have burrowed away from the moss
That covers my sod, and have entered this yew,
And turned to clusters ruddy of view,
   All day cheerily,
   All night eerily!

- The Lady Gertrude, proud, high-bred,
   Sir or Madam,
Am I - this laurel that shades your head;
Into its veins I have stilly sped,
And made them of me; and my leaves now shine,
As did my satins superfine,
   All day cheerily,
   All night eerily!

- I, who as innocent withwind climb,
   Sir or Madam.
Am one Eve Greensleeves, in olden time
Kissed by men from many a clime,
Beneath sun, stars, in blaze, in breeze,
As now by glowworms and by bees,
   All day cheerily,
   All night eerily!

- I’m old Squire Audeley Grey, who grew,
   Sir or Madam,
Aweary of life, and in scorn withdrew;
Till anon I clambered up anew
As ivy-green, when my ache was stayed,
And in that attire I have longtime gayed
   All day cheerily,
   All night eerily!

- And so they breathe, these masks, to each
   Sir or Madam
Who lingers there, and their lively speech
Affords an interpreter much to teach,
As their murmurous accents seem to come
Thence hitheraround in a radiant hum,
   All day cheerily,
   All night eerily!

ON THE WAY

   The trees fret fitfully and twist,
   Shutters rattle and carpets heave,
   Slime is the dust of yestereve,
      And in the streaming mist
Fishes might seem to fin a passage if they list.

         But to his feet,
         Drawing nigh and nigher
         A hidden seat,
         The fog is sweet
         And the wind a lyre.

   A vacant sameness grays the sky,
   A moisture gathers on each knop
   Of the bramble, rounding to a drop,
      That greets the goer-by
With the cold listless lustre of a dead man’s eye.

         But to her sight,
         Drawing nigh and nigher
         Its deep delight,
         The fog is bright
         And the wind a lyre.

SHE DID NOT TURN

   She did not turn,
But passed foot-faint with averted head
In her gown of green, by the bobbing fern,
Though I leaned over the gate that led
From where we waited with table spread;
      But she did not turn:
Why was she near there if love had fled?

   She did not turn,
Though the gate was whence I had often sped
In the mists of morning to meet her, and learn
Her heart, when its moving moods I read
As a book - she mine, as she sometimes said;
      But she did not turn,
And passed foot-faint with averted head.

GROWTH IN MAY

I enter a daisy-and-buttercup land,
   And thence thread a jungle of grass:
Hurdles and stiles scarce visible stand
   Above the lush stems as I pass.

Hedges peer over, and try to be seen,
   And seem to reveal a dim sense
That amid such ambitious and elbow-high green
   They make a mean show as a fence.

Elsewhere the mead is possessed of the neats,
   That range not greatly above
The rich rank thicket which brushes their teats,
   And
her
gown, as she waits for her Love.

NEAR CHARD.

THE CHILDREN AND SIR NAMELESS

Sir Nameless, once of Athelhall, declared:
“These wretched children romping in my park
Trample the herbage till the soil is bared,
And yap and yell from early morn till dark!
Go keep them harnessed to their set routines:
Thank God I’ve none to hasten my decay;
For green remembrance there are better means
Than offspring, who but wish their sires away.”

Sir Nameless of that mansion said anon:
“To be perpetuate for my mightiness
Sculpture must image me when I am gone.”
- He forthwith summoned carvers there express
To shape a figure stretching seven-odd feet
(For he was tall) in alabaster stone,
With shield, and crest, and casque, and word complete:
When done a statelier work was never known.

Three hundred years hied; Church-restorers came,
And, no one of his lineage being traced,
They thought an effigy so large in frame
Best fitted for the floor.  There it was placed,
Under the seats for schoolchildren.  And they
Kicked out his name, and hobnailed off his nose;
And, as they yawn through sermon-time, they say,
“Who was this old stone man beneath our toes?”

AT THE ROYAL ACADEMY

These summer landscapes - clump, and copse, and croft -
Woodland and meadowland - here hung aloft,
Gay with limp grass and leafery new and soft,

Seem caught from the immediate season’s yield
I saw last noonday shining over the field,
By rapid snatch, while still are uncongealed

The saps that in their live originals climb;
Yester’s quick greenage here set forth in mime
Just as it stands, now, at our breathing-time.

But these young foils so fresh upon each tree,
Soft verdures spread in sprouting novelty,
Are not this summer’s, though they feign to be.

Last year their May to Michaelmas term was run,
Last autumn browned and buried every one,
And no more know they sight of any sun.

HER TEMPLE

Dear, think not that they will forget you:
   - If craftsmanly art should be mine
I will build up a temple, and set you
      Therein as its shrine.

They may say: “Why a woman such honour?”
   - Be told, “O, so sweet was her fame,
That a man heaped this splendour upon her;
      None now knows his name.”

A TWO-YEARS’ IDYLL

      Yes; such it was;
   Just those two seasons unsought,
Sweeping like summertide wind on our ways;
      Moving, as straws,
   Hearts quick as ours in those days;
Going like wind, too, and rated as nought
   Save as the prelude to plays
   Soon to come - larger, life-fraught:
      Yes; such it was.

      ”Nought” it was called,
   Even by ourselves - that which springs
Out of the years for all flesh, first or last,
      Commonplace, scrawled
   Dully on days that go past.
Yet, all the while, it upbore us like wings
   Even in hours overcast:
   Aye, though this best thing of things,
      ”Nought” it was called!

      What seems it now?
   Lost: such beginning was all;
Nothing came after: romance straight forsook
      Quickly somehow
   Life when we sped from our nook,
Primed for new scenes with designs smart and tall . . .
   - A preface without any book,
   A trumpet uplipped, but no call;
      That seems it now.

BY HENSTRIDGE CROSS AT THE YEAR’S END

(From this centuries-old cross-road the highway leads east to London, north to Bristol and Bath, west to Exeter and the Land’s End, and south to the Channel coast.)

   Why go the east road now? . . .
That way a youth went on a morrow
After mirth, and he brought back sorrow
   Painted upon his brow
   Why go the east road now?

   Why go the north road now?
Torn, leaf-strewn, as if scoured by foemen,
Once edging fiefs of my forefolk yeomen,
   Fallows fat to the plough:
   Why go the north road now?

   Why go the west road now?
Thence to us came she, bosom-burning,
Welcome with joyousness returning . . .
   - She sleeps under the bough:
   Why go the west road now?

   Why go the south road now?
That way marched they some are forgetting,
Stark to the moon left, past regretting
   Loves who have falsed their vow . . .
   Why go the south road now?

   Why go any road now?
White stands the handpost for brisk on-bearers,
“Halt!” is the word for wan-cheeked farers
   Musing on Whither, and How . . .
   Why go any road now?

   ”Yea: we want new feet now”
Answer the stones.  “Want chit-chat, laughter:
Plenty of such to go hereafter
   By our tracks, we trow!
   We are for new feet now.

During the War.

PENANCE

“Why do you sit, O pale thin man,
   At the end of the room
By that harpsichord, built on the quaint old plan?
   - It is cold as a tomb,
And there’s not a spark within the grate;
   And the jingling wires
   Are as vain desires
   That have lagged too late.”