Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (985 page)

FIRST OR LAST

(SONG)

   If grief come early
   Joy comes late,
   If joy come early
   Grief will wait;
      Aye, my dear and tender!

Wise ones joy them early
While the cheeks are red,
Banish grief till surly
Time has dulled their dread.

   And joy being ours
   Ere youth has flown,
   The later hours
   May find us gone;
      Aye, my dear and tender!

LONELY DAYS

Lonely her fate was,
Environed from sight
In the house where the gate was
Past finding at night.
None there to share it,
No one to tell:
Long she’d to bear it,
And bore it well.

Elsewhere just so she
Spent many a day;
Wishing to go she
Continued to stay.
And people without
Basked warm in the air,
But none sought her out,
Or knew she was there.
Even birthdays were passed so,
Sunny and shady:
Years did it last so
For this sad lady.
Never declaring it,
No one to tell,
Still she kept bearing it -
Bore it well.

The days grew chillier,
And then she went
To a city, familiar
In years forespent,
When she walked gaily
Far to and fro,
But now, moving frailly,
Could nowhere go.
The cheerful colour
Of houses she’d known
Had died to a duller
And dingier tone.
Streets were now noisy
Where once had rolled
A few quiet coaches,
Or citizens strolled.
Through the party-wall
Of the memoried spot
They danced at a ball
Who recalled her not.
Tramlines lay crossing
Once gravelled slopes,
Metal rods clanked,
And electric ropes.
So she endured it all,
Thin, thinner wrought,
Until time cured it all,
And she knew nought.

Versified from a Diary.

Versified from a Diary.

WHAT DID IT MEAN?

What did it mean that noontide, when
You bade me pluck the flower
Within the other woman’s bower,
   Whom I knew nought of then?

I thought the flower blushed deeplier - aye,
And as I drew its stalk to me
It seemed to breathe: “I am, I see,
Made use of in a human play.”

And while I plucked, upstarted sheer
As phantom from the pane thereby
A corpse-like countenance, with eye
That iced me by its baleful peer -
   Silent, as from a bier . . .

When I came back your face had changed,
   It was no face for me;
O did it speak of hearts estranged,
   And deadly rivalry

   In times before
   I darked your door,
   To seise me of
   Mere second love,
Which still the haunting first deranged?

AT THE DINNER-TABLE

I sat at dinner in my prime,
And glimpsed my face in the sideboard-glass,
And started as if I had seen a crime,
And prayed the ghastly show might pass.

Wrenched wrinkled features met my sight,
Grinning back to me as my own;
I well-nigh fainted with affright
At finding me a haggard crone.

My husband laughed.  He had slily set
A warping mirror there, in whim
To startle me.  My eyes grew wet;
I spoke not all the eve to him.

He was sorry, he said, for what he had done,
And took away the distorting glass,
Uncovering the accustomed one;
And so it ended?  No, alas,

Fifty years later, when he died,
I sat me in the selfsame chair,
Thinking of him.  Till, weary-eyed,
I saw the sideboard facing there;

And from its mirror looked the lean
Thing I’d become, each wrinkle and score
The image of me that I had seen
In jest there fifty years before.

THE MARBLE TABLET

There it stands, though alas, what a little of her
   Shows in its cold white look!
Not her glance, glide, or smile; not a tittle of her
   Voice like the purl of a brook;
   Not her thoughts, that you read like a book.

It may stand for her once in November
   When first she breathed, witless of all;
Or in heavy years she would remember
   When circumstance held her in thrall;
   Or at last, when she answered her call!

Nothing more.  The still marble, date-graven,
   Gives all that it can, tersely lined;
That one has at length found the haven
   Which every one other will find;
   With silence on what shone behind.

St. Juliot:
September
8, 1916.

THE MASTER AND THE LEAVES

I

We are budding, Master, budding,
   We of your favourite tree;
March drought and April flooding
   Arouse us merrily,
Our stemlets newly studding;
   And yet you do not see!

II

We are fully woven for summer
   In stuff of limpest green,
The twitterer and the hummer
   Here rest of nights, unseen,
While like a long-roll drummer
   The nightjar thrills the treen.

III

We are turning yellow, Master,
   And next we are turning red,
And faster then and faster
   Shall seek our rooty bed,
All wasted in disaster!
   But you lift not your head.

IV

- “I mark your early going,
   And that you’ll soon be clay,
I have seen your summer showing
   As in my youthful day;
But why I seem unknowing
   Is too sunk in to say!”

1917.

LAST WORDS TO A DUMB FRIEND

Pet was never mourned as you,
Purrer of the spotless hue,
Plumy tail, and wistful gaze
While you humoured our queer ways,
Or outshrilled your morning call
Up the stairs and through the hall -
Foot suspended in its fall -
While, expectant, you would stand
Arched, to meet the stroking hand;
Till your way you chose to wend
Yonder, to your tragic end.

Never another pet for me!
Let your place all vacant be;
Better blankness day by day
Than companion torn away.
Better bid his memory fade,
Better blot each mark he made,
Selfishly escape distress
By contrived forgetfulness,
Than preserve his prints to make
Every morn and eve an ache.

From the chair whereon he sat
Sweep his fur, nor wince thereat;
Rake his little pathways out
Mid the bushes roundabout;
Smooth away his talons’ mark
From the claw-worn pine-tree bark,
Where he climbed as dusk embrowned,
Waiting us who loitered round.

Strange it is this speechless thing,
Subject to our mastering,
Subject for his life and food
To our gift, and time, and mood;
Timid pensioner of us Powers,
His existence ruled by ours,
Should - by crossing at a breath
Into safe and shielded death,
By the merely taking hence
Of his insignificance -
Loom as largened to the sense,
Shape as part, above man’s will,
Of the Imperturbable.

As a prisoner, flight debarred,
Exercising in a yard,
Still retain I, troubled, shaken,
Mean estate, by him forsaken;
And this home, which scarcely took
Impress from his little look,
By his faring to the Dim
Grows all eloquent of him.

Housemate, I can think you still
Bounding to the window-sill,
Over which I vaguely see
Your small mound beneath the tree,
Showing in the autumn shade
That you moulder where you played.

October
2, 1904.

A DRIZZLING EASTER MORNING

And he is risen?  Well, be it so . . .
And still the pensive lands complain,
And dead men wait as long ago,
As if, much doubting, they would know
What they are ransomed from, before
They pass again their sheltering door.

I stand amid them in the rain,
While blusters vex the yew and vane;
And on the road the weary wain
Plods forward, laden heavily;
And toilers with their aches are fain
For endless rest - though risen is he.

ON ONE WHO LIVED AND DIED WHERE HE WAS BORN

When a night in November
   Blew forth its bleared airs
An infant descended
   His birth-chamber stairs
   For the very first time,
   At the still, midnight chime;
All unapprehended
   His mission, his aim. -
Thus, first, one November,
An infant descended
   The stairs.

On a night in November
   Of weariful cares,
A frail aged figure
   Ascended those stairs
   For the very last time:
   All gone his life’s prime,
All vanished his vigour,
   And fine, forceful frame:
Thus, last, one November
Ascended that figure
   Upstairs.

On those nights in November -
   Apart eighty years -
The babe and the bent one
   Who traversed those stairs
   From the early first time
   To the last feeble climb -
That fresh and that spent one -
   Were even the same:
Yea, who passed in November
As infant, as bent one,
      Those stairs.

Wise child of November!
   From birth to blanched hairs
Descending, ascending,
   Wealth-wantless, those stairs;
   Who saw quick in time
   As a vain pantomime
Life’s tending, its ending,
   The worth of its fame.
Wise child of November,
Descending, ascending
      Those stairs!

THE SECOND NIGHT

(BALLAD)

I missed one night, but the next I went;
   It was gusty above, and clear;
She was there, with the look of one ill-content,
   And said: “Do not come near!”

- “I am sorry last night to have failed you here,
   And now I have travelled all day;
And it’s long rowing back to the West-Hoe Pier,
   So brief must be my stay.”

- “O man of mystery, why not say
   Out plain to me all you mean?
Why you missed last night, and must now away
   Is - another has come between!”

- “ O woman so mocking in mood and mien,
   So be it!” I replied:
“And if I am due at a differing scene
   Before the dark has died,

“‘Tis that, unresting, to wander wide
   Has ever been my plight,
And at least I have met you at Cremyll side
   If not last eve, to-night.”

- “You get small rest - that read I quite;
   And so do I, maybe;
Though there’s a rest hid safe from sight
   Elsewhere awaiting me!”

A mad star crossed the sky to the sea,
   Wasting in sparks as it streamed,
And when I looked to where stood she
   She had changed, much changed, it seemed:

The sparks of the star in her pupils gleamed,
   She was vague as a vapour now,
And ere of its meaning I had dreamed
   She’d vanished - I knew not how.

I stood on, long; each cliff-top bough,
   Like a cynic nodding there,
Moved up and down, though no man’s brow
   But mine met the wayward air.

Still stood I, wholly unaware
   Of what had come to pass,
Or had brought the secret of my new Fair
   To my old Love, alas!

I went down then by crag and grass
   To the boat wherein I had come.
Said the man with the oars: “This news of the lass
   Of Edgcumbe, is sharp for some!

“Yes: found this daybreak, stiff and numb
   On the shore here, whither she’d sped
To meet her lover last night in the glum,
   And he came not, ‘tis said.

“And she leapt down, heart-hit.  Pity she’s dead:
   So much for the faithful-bent!” . . .
I looked, and again a star overhead
   Shot through the firmament.

SHE WHO SAW NOT

   ”Did you see something within the house
That made me call you before the red sunsetting?
Something that all this common scene endows
With a richened impress there can be no forgetting?”

   ” - I have found nothing to see therein,
O Sage, that should have made you urge me to enter,
Nothing to fire the soul, or the sense to win:
I rate you as a rare misrepresenter!”

   ” - Go anew, Lady, - in by the right . . .
Well: why does your face not shine like the face of Moses?”
“ - I found no moving thing there save the light
And shadow flung on the wall by the outside roses.”

   ” - Go yet once more, pray.  Look on a seat.”
“ - I go . . . O Sage, it’s only a man that sits there
With eyes on the sun.  Mute, - average head to feet.”
“ - No more?” - “No more.  Just one the place befits there,

   ”As the rays reach in through the open door,
And he looks at his hand, and the sun glows through his fingers,
While he’s thinking thoughts whose tenour is no more
To me than the swaying rose-tree shade that lingers.”

   No more.  And years drew on and on
Till no sun came, dank fogs the house enfolding;
And she saw inside, when the form in the flesh had gone,
As a vision what she had missed when the real beholding.

THE OLD WORKMAN

“Why are you so bent down before your time,
Old mason?  Many have not left their prime
So far behind at your age, and can still
   Stand full upright at will.”

He pointed to the mansion-front hard by,
And to the stones of the quoin against the sky;
“Those upper blocks,” he said, “that there you see,
   It was that ruined me.”

There stood in the air up to the parapet
Crowning the corner height, the stones as set
By him - ashlar whereon the gales might drum
   For centuries to come.

“I carried them up,” he said, “by a ladder there;
The last was as big a load as I could bear;
But on I heaved; and something in my back
   Moved, as ‘twere with a crack.