Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (984 page)

I went where my friend had lectioned
   The prophets in high declaim,
   That my soul’s ear the same
Full tones should catch as aforetime;
But silenced by gear of the Present
   Was the voice that once there came!

Where the ocean had sprayed our banquet
   I stood, to recall it as then:
   The same eluding again!
No vision.  Shows contingent
Affrighted it further from me
   Even than from my home-den.

When I found them no responders,
   But fugitives prone to flee
   From where they had used to be,
It vouched I had been led hither
As by night wisps in bogland,
   And bruised the heart of me!

AFTER A ROMANTIC DAY

   The railway bore him through
      An earthen cutting out from a city:
   There was no scope for view,
Though the frail light shed by a slim young moon
   Fell like a friendly tune.

   Fell like a liquid ditty,
And the blank lack of any charm
   Of landscape did no harm.
The bald steep cutting, rigid, rough,
   And moon-lit, was enough
For poetry of place: its weathered face
Formed a convenient sheet whereon
The visions of his mind were drawn.

THE TWO WIVES

(SMOKER’S CLUB-STORY)

I waited at home all the while they were boating together -
      My wife and my near neighbour’s wife:
   Till there entered a woman I loved more than life,
And we sat and sat on, and beheld the uprising dark weather,
      With a sense that some mischief was rife.

Tidings came that the boat had capsized, and that one of the ladies
      Was drowned - which of them was unknown:
   And I marvelled - my friend’s wife? - or was it my own
Who had gone in such wise to the land where the sun as the shade is?
      - We learnt it was
his
had so gone.

Then I cried in unrest: “He is free!  But no good is releasing
      To him as it would be to me!”
   ” - But it is,” said the woman I loved, quietly.
“How?” I asked her.  “ - Because he has long loved me too without ceasing,
      And it’s just the same thing, don’t you see.”

I KNEW A LADY

(CLUB SONG)

I knew a lady when the days
   Grew long, and evenings goldened;
   But I was not emboldened
By her prompt eyes and winning ways.

And when old Winter nipt the haws,
   ”Another’s wife I’ll be,
   And then you’ll care for me,”
She said, “and think how sweet I was!”

And soon she shone as another’s wife:
   As such I often met her,
   And sighed, “How I regret her!
My folly cuts me like a knife!”

And then, to-day, her husband came,
   And moaned, “Why did you flout her?
   Well could I do without her!
For both our burdens you are to blame!”

A HOUSE WITH A HISTORY

There is a house in a city street
   Some past ones made their own;
Its floors were criss-crossed by their feet,
      And their babblings beat
   From ceiling to white hearth-stone.

And who are peopling its parlours now?
   Who talk across its floor?
Mere freshlings are they, blank of brow,
      Who read not how
   Its prime had passed before

Their raw equipments, scenes, and says
   Afflicted its memoried face,
That had seen every larger phase
      Of human ways
   Before these filled the place.

To them that house’s tale is theirs,
   No former voices call
Aloud therein.  Its aspect bears
      Their joys and cares
   Alone, from wall to wall.

A PROCESSION OF DEAD DAYS

I see the ghost of a perished day;
I know his face, and the feel of his dawn:
‘Twas he who took me far away
   To a spot strange and gray:
Look at me, Day, and then pass on,
But come again: yes, come anon!

Enters another into view;
His features are not cold or white,
But rosy as a vein seen through:
   Too soon he smiles adieu.
Adieu, O ghost-day of delight;
But come and grace my dying sight.

Enters the day that brought the kiss:
He brought it in his foggy hand
To where the mumbling river is,
   And the high clematis;
It lent new colour to the land,
And all the boy within me manned.

Ah, this one.  Yes, I know his name,
He is the day that wrought a shine
Even on a precinct common and tame,
   As ‘twere of purposed aim.
He shows him as a rainbow sign
Of promise made to me and mine.

The next stands forth in his morning clothes,
And yet, despite their misty blue,
They mark no sombre custom-growths
   That joyous living loathes,
But a meteor act, that left in its queue
A train of sparks my lifetime through.

I almost tremble at his nod -
This next in train - who looks at me
As I were slave, and he were god
   Wielding an iron rod.
I close my eyes; yet still is he
In front there, looking mastery.

In the similitude of a nurse
The phantom of the next one comes:
I did not know what better or worse
   Chancings might bless or curse
When his original glossed the thrums
Of ivy, bringing that which numbs.

Yes; trees were turning in their sleep
Upon their windy pillows of gray
When he stole in.  Silent his creep
   On the grassed eastern steep . . .
I shall not soon forget that day,
And what his third hour took away!

HE FOLLOWS HIMSELF

In a heavy time I dogged myself
   Along a louring way,
Till my leading self to my following self
   Said: “Why do you hang on me
      So harassingly?”

“I have watched you, Heart of mine,” I cried,
   ”So often going astray
And leaving me, that I have pursued,
   Feeling such truancy
      Ought not to be.”

He said no more, and I dogged him on
   From noon to the dun of day
By prowling paths, until anew
   He begged: “Please turn and flee! -
      What do you see?”

“Methinks I see a man,” said I,
   ”Dimming his hours to gray.
I will not leave him while I know
   Part of myself is he
      Who dreams such dree!”

“I go to my old friend’s house,” he urged,
   ”So do not watch me, pray!”
“Well, I will leave you in peace,” said I,
   ”Though of this poignancy
      You should fight free:

“Your friend, O other me, is dead;
   You know not what you say.”
- “That do I!  And at his green-grassed door
   By night’s bright galaxy
      I bend a knee.”

- The yew-plumes moved like mockers’ beards,
   Though only boughs were they,
And I seemed to go; yet still was there,
   And am, and there haunt we
      Thus bootlessly.

THE SINGING WOMAN

   There was a singing woman
      Came riding across the mead
   At the time of the mild May weather,
         Tameless, tireless;
This song she sung: “I am fair, I am young!”
      And many turned to heed.

   And the same singing woman
      Sat crooning in her need
   At the time of the winter weather;
         Friendless, fireless,
She sang this song: “Life, thou’rt too long!”
      And there was none to heed.

WITHOUT, NOT WITHIN HER

It was what you bore with you, Woman,
   Not inly were,
That throned you from all else human,
   However fair!

It was that strange freshness you carried
   Into a soul
Whereon no thought of yours tarried
   Two moments at all.

And out from his spirit flew death,
   And bale, and ban,
Like the corn-chaff under the breath
   Of the winnowing-fan.

O I WON’T LEAD A HOMELY LIFE

(
To an old air
)

“O I won’t lead a homely life
As father’s Jack and mother’s Jill,
But I will be a fiddler’s wife,
   With music mine at will!
      Just a little tune,
      Another one soon,
   As I merrily fling my fill!”

And she became a fiddler’s Dear,
And merry all day she strove to be;
And he played and played afar and near,
   But never at home played he
      Any little tune
      Or late or soon;
   And sunk and sad was she!

IN THE SMALL HOURS

I lay in my bed and fiddled
   With a dreamland viol and bow,
And the tunes flew back to my fingers
   I had melodied years ago.
It was two or three in the morning
   When I fancy-fiddled so
Long reels and country-dances,
   And hornpipes swift and slow.

And soon anon came crossing
   The chamber in the gray
Figures of jigging fieldfolk -
   Saviours of corn and hay -
To the air of “Haste to the Wedding,”
   As after a wedding-day;
Yea, up and down the middle
   In windless whirls went they!

There danced the bride and bridegroom,
   And couples in a train,
Gay partners time and travail
   Had longwhiles stilled amain! . . .
It seemed a thing for weeping
   To find, at slumber’s wane
And morning’s sly increeping,
   That Now, not Then, held reign.

THE LITTLE OLD TABLE

Creak, little wood thing, creak,
When I touch you with elbow or knee;
That is the way you speak
Of one who gave you to me!

You, little table, she brought -
Brought me with her own hand,
As she looked at me with a thought
That I did not understand.

- Whoever owns it anon,
And hears it, will never know
What a history hangs upon
This creak from long ago.

VAGG HOLLOW

Vagg Hollow is a marshy spot on the old Roman Road near Ilchester, where “things” are seen.  Merchandise was formerly fetched inland from the canal-boats at Load-Bridge by waggons this way.

“What do you see in Vagg Hollow,
Little boy, when you go
In the morning at five on your lonely drive?”
“ - I see men’s souls, who follow
Till we’ve passed where the road lies low,
When they vanish at our creaking!

“They are like white faces speaking
Beside and behind the waggon -
One just as father’s was when here.
The waggoner drinks from his flagon,
(Or he’d flinch when the Hollow is near)
But he does not give me any.

“Sometimes the faces are many;
But I walk along by the horses,
He asleep on the straw as we jog;
And I hear the loud water-courses,
And the drops from the trees in the fog,
And watch till the day is breaking.

“And the wind out by Tintinhull waking;
I hear in it father’s call
As he called when I saw him dying,
And he sat by the fire last Fall,
And mother stood by sighing;
But I’m not afraid at all!”

THE DREAM IS - WHICH?

I am laughing by the brook with her,
   Splashed in its tumbling stir;
And then it is a blankness looms
   As if I walked not there,
Nor she, but found me in haggard rooms,
   And treading a lonely stair.

With radiant cheeks and rapid eyes
   We sit where none espies;
Till a harsh change comes edging in
   As no such scene were there,
But winter, and I were bent and thin,
   And cinder-gray my hair.

We dance in heys around the hall,
   Weightless as thistleball;
And then a curtain drops between,
   As if I danced not there,
But wandered through a mounded green
   To find her, I knew where.

March
1913.

THE COUNTRY WEDDING

(A FIDDLER’S STORY)

Little fogs were gathered in every hollow,
But the purple hillocks enjoyed fine weather
As we marched with our fiddles over the heather
- How it comes back! - to their wedding that day.

Our getting there brought our neighbours and all, O!
Till, two and two, the couples stood ready.
And her father said: “Souls, for God’s sake, be steady!”
And we strung up our fiddles, and sounded out “A.”

The groomsman he stared, and said, “You must follow!”
But we’d gone to fiddle in front of the party,
(Our feelings as friends being true and hearty)
And fiddle in front we did - all the way.

Yes, from their door by Mill-tail-Shallow,
And up Styles-Lane, and by Front-Street houses,
Where stood maids, bachelors, and spouses,
Who cheered the songs that we knew how to play.

I bowed the treble before her father,
Michael the tenor in front of the lady,
The bass-viol Reub - and right well played he! -
The serpent Jim; ay, to church and back.

I thought the bridegroom was flurried rather,
As we kept up the tune outside the chancel,
While they were swearing things none can cancel
Inside the walls to our drumstick’s whack.

“Too gay!” she pleaded.  “Clouds may gather,
And sorrow come.”  But she gave in, laughing,
And by supper-time when we’d got to the quaffing
Her fears were forgot, and her smiles weren’t slack.

A grand wedding ‘twas!  And what would follow
We never thought.  Or that we should have buried her
On the same day with the man that married her,
A day like the first, half hazy, half clear.

Yes: little fogs were in every hollow,
Though the purple hillocks enjoyed fine weather,
When we went to play ‘em to church together,
And carried ‘em there in an after year.