Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (987 page)

Do signs on its face
Declare how far
Feet have to trace
Before they gain
Some blest champaign
Where no gins are?

THE LAMENT OF THE LOOKING-GLASS

Words from the mirror softly pass
   To the curtains with a sigh:
“Why should I trouble again to glass
   These smileless things hard by,
Since she I pleasured once, alas,
   Is now no longer nigh!”

“I’ve imaged shadows of coursing cloud,
   And of the plying limb
On the pensive pine when the air is loud
   With its aerial hymn;
But never do they make me proud
   To catch them within my rim!

“I flash back phantoms of the night
   That sometimes flit by me,
I echo roses red and white -
   The loveliest blooms that be -
But now I never hold to sight
   So sweet a flower as she.”

CROSS-CURRENTS

They parted - a pallid, trembling I pair,
   And rushing down the lane
He left her lonely near me there;
   - I asked her of their pain.

“It is for ever,” at length she said,
   ”His friends have schemed it so,
That the long-purposed day to wed
   Never shall we two know.”

“In such a cruel case,” said I,
   ”Love will contrive a course?”
“ - Well, no . . . A thing may underlie,
   Which robs that of its force;

“A thing I could not tell him of,
   Though all the year I have tried;
This: never could I have given him love,
   Even had I been his bride.

“So, when his kinsfolk stop the way
   Point-blank, there could not be
A happening in the world to-day
   More opportune for me!

“Yet hear - no doubt to your surprise -
   I am sorry, for his sake,
That I have escaped the sacrifice
   I was prepared to make!”

THE OLD NEIGHBOUR AND THE NEW

‘Twas to greet the new rector I called I here,
   But in the arm-chair I see
My old friend, for long years installed here,
   Who palely nods to me.

The new man explains what he’s planning
   In a smart and cheerful tone,
And I listen, the while that I’m scanning
   The figure behind his own.

The newcomer urges things on me;
   I return a vague smile thereto,
The olden face gazing upon me
   Just as it used to do!

And on leaving I scarcely remember
   Which neighbour to-day I have seen,
The one carried out in September,
   Or him who but entered yestreen.

THE CHOSEN

“‘Ĺű µÃĹŠ±»»·³¿Á¿Å¼µ½±

“A woman for whom great gods might strive!”
   I said, and kissed her there:
And then I thought of the other five,
   And of how charms outwear.

I thought of the first with her eating eyes,
And I thought of the second with hers, green-gray,
And I thought of the third, experienced, wise,
And I thought of the fourth who sang all day.

And I thought of the fifth, whom I’d called a jade,
   And I thought of them all, tear-fraught;
And that each had shown her a passable maid,
   Yet not of the favour sought.

So I traced these words on the bark of a beech,
Just at the falling of the mast:
“After scanning five; yes, each and each,
I’ve found the woman desired - at last!”

“ - I feel a strange benumbing spell,
   As one ill-wished!” said she.
And soon it seemed that something fell
   Was starving her love for me.

“I feel some curse.  O,
five
were there?”
And wanly she swerved, and went away.
I followed sick: night numbed the air,
And dark the mournful moorland lay.

I cried: “O darling, turn your head!”
   But never her face I viewed;
“O turn, O turn!” again I said,
   And miserably pursued.

At length I came to a Christ-cross stone
Which she had passed without discern;
And I knelt upon the leaves there strown,
And prayed aloud that she might turn.

I rose, and looked; and turn she did;
   I cried, “My heart revives!”
“Look more,” she said.  I looked as bid;
   Her face was all the five’s.

All the five women, clear come back,
I saw in her - with her made one,
The while she drooped upon the track,
And her frail term seemed well-nigh run.

She’d half forgot me in her change;
   ”Who are you?  Won’t you say
Who you may be, you man so strange,
   Following since yesterday?”

I took the composite form she was,
And carried her to an arbour small,
Not passion-moved, but even because
In one I could atone to all.

And there she lies, and there I tend,
   Till my life’s threads unwind,
A various womanhood in blend -
   Not one, but all combined.

THE INSCRIPTION

(A TALE)

Sir John was entombed, and the crypt was closed, and she,
Like a soul that could meet no more the sight of the sun,
Inclined her in weepings and prayings continually,
   As his widowed one.

And to pleasure her in her sorrow, and fix his name
As a memory Time’s fierce frost should never kill,
She caused to be richly chased a brass to his fame,
   Which should link them still;

For she bonded her name with his own on the brazen page,
As if dead and interred there with him, and cold, and numb,
(Omitting the day of her dying and year of her age
   Till her end should come;)

And implored good people to pray “Of their Charytie
For these twaine Soules,” - yea, she who did last remain
Forgoing Heaven’s bliss if ever with spouse should she
   Again have lain.

Even there, as it first was set, you may see it now,
Writ in quaint Church text, with the date of her death left bare,
In the aged Estminster aisle, where the folk yet bow
   Themselves in prayer.

Thereafter some years slid, till there came a day
When it slowly began to be marked of the standers-by
That she would regard the brass, and would bend away
   With a drooping sigh.

Now the lady was fair as any the eye might scan
Through a summer day of roving - a type at whose lip
Despite her maturing seasons, no meet man
   Would be loth to sip.

And her heart was stirred with a lightning love to its pith
For a newcomer who, while less in years, was one
Full eager and able to make her his own forthwith,
   Restrained of none.

But she answered Nay, death-white; and still as he urged
She adversely spake, overmuch as she loved the while,
Till he pressed for why, and she led with the face of one scourged
   To the neighbouring aisle,

And showed him the words, ever gleaming upon her pew,
Memorizing her there as the knight’s eternal wife,
Or falsing such, debarred inheritance due
   Of celestial life.

He blenched, and reproached her that one yet undeceased
Should bury her future - that future which none can spell;
And she wept, and purposed anon to inquire of the priest
   If the price were hell

Of her wedding in face of the record.  Her lover agreed,
And they parted before the brass with a shudderful kiss,
For it seemed to flash out on their impulse of passionate need,
   ”Mock ye not this!”

Well, the priest, whom more perceptions moved than one,
Said she erred at the first to have written as if she were dead
Her name and adjuration; but since it was done
   Nought could be said

Save that she must abide by the pledge, for the peace of her soul,
And so, by her life, maintain the apostrophe good,
If she wished anon to reach the coveted goal
   Of beatitude.

To erase from the consecrate text her prayer as there prayed
Would aver that, since earth’s joys most drew her, past doubt,
Friends’ prayers for her joy above by Jesu’s aid
   Could be done without.

Moreover she thought of the laughter, the shrug, the jibe
That would rise at her back in the nave when she should pass
As another’s avowed by the words she had chosen to inscribe
   On the changeless brass.

And so for months she replied to her Love: “No, no”;
While sorrow was gnawing her beauties ever and more,
Till he, long-suffering and weary, grew to show
   Less warmth than before.

And, after an absence, wrote words absolute:
That he gave her till Midsummer morn to make her mind clear;
And that if, by then, she had not said Yea to his suit,
   He should wed elsewhere.

Thence on, at unwonted times through the lengthening days
She was seen in the church - at dawn, or when the sun dipt
And the moon rose, standing with hands joined, blank of gaze,
   Before the script.

She thinned as he came not; shrank like a creature that cowers
As summer drew nearer; but still had not promised to wed,
When, just at the zenith of June, in the still night hours,
   She was missed from her bed.

“The church!” they whispered with qualms; “where often she sits.”
They found her: facing the brass there, else seeing none,
But feeling the words with her finger, gibbering in fits;
   And she knew them not one.

And so she remained, in her handmaids’ charge; late, soon,
Tracing words in the air with her finger, as seen that night -
Those incised on the brass - till at length unwatched one noon,
   She vanished from sight.

And, as talebearers tell, thence on to her last-taken breath
Was unseen, save as wraith that in front of the brass made moan;
So that ever the way of her life and the time of her death
   Remained unknown.

And hence, as indited above, you may read even now
The quaint church-text, with the date of her death left bare,
In the aged Estminster aisle, where folk yet bow
   Themselves in prayer.

October
30, 1907.

THE MARBLE-STREETED TOWN

I reach the marble-streeted town,
   Whose “Sound” outbreathes its air
      Of sharp sea-salts;
I see the movement up and down
      As when she was there.
Ships of all countries come and go,
   The bandsmen boom in the sun
      A throbbing waltz;
The schoolgirls laugh along the Hoe
      As when she was one.

I move away as the music rolls:
   The place seems not to mind
      That she - of old
The brightest of its native souls -
      Left it behind!
Over this green aforedays she
   On light treads went and came,
      Yea, times untold;
Yet none here knows her history -
      Has heard her name.

PLYMOUTH (1914?).

A WOMAN DRIVING

How she held up the horses’ heads,
   Firm-lipped, with steady rein,
Down that grim steep the coastguard treads,
   Till all was safe again!

With form erect and keen contour
   She passed against the sea,
And, dipping into the chine’s obscure,
   Was seen no more by me.

To others she appeared anew
   At times of dusky light,
But always, so they told, withdrew
   From close and curious sight.

Some said her silent wheels would roll
   Rutless on softest loam,
And even that her steeds’ footfall
   Sank not upon the foam.

Where drives she now?  It may be where
   No mortal horses are,
But in a chariot of the air
   Towards some radiant star.

A WOMAN’S TRUST

If he should live a thousand years
   He’d find it not again
   That scorn of him by men
Could less disturb a woman’s trust
In him as a steadfast star which must
Rise scathless from the nether spheres:
If he should live a thousand years
   He’d find it not again.

She waited like a little child,
   Unchilled by damps of doubt,
   While from her eyes looked out
A confidence sublime as Spring’s
When stressed by Winter’s loiterings.
Thus, howsoever the wicked wiled,
She waited like a little child
   Unchilled by damps of doubt.

Through cruel years and crueller
   Thus she believed in him
   And his aurore, so dim;
That, after fenweeds, flowers would blow;
And above all things did she show
Her faith in his good faith with her;
Through cruel years and crueller
   Thus she believed in him!

BEST TIMES

We went a day’s excursion to the stream,
Basked by the bank, and bent to the ripple-gleam,
      And I did not know
      That life would show,
However it might flower, no finer glow.

I walked in the Sunday sunshine by the road
That wound towards the wicket of your abode,
      And I did not think
      That life would shrink
To nothing ere it shed a rosier pink.

Unlooked for I arrived on a rainy night,
And you hailed me at the door by the swaying light,
      And I full forgot
      That life might not
Again be touching that ecstatic height.

And that calm eve when you walked up the stair,
After a gaiety prolonged and rare,
      No thought soever
      That you might never
Walk down again, struck me as I stood there.

Rewritten from an old draft.

THE CASUAL ACQUAINTANCE

While he was here in breath and bone,
   To speak to and to see,
Would I had known - more clearly known -
   What that man did for me

When the wind scraped a minor lay,
   And the spent west from white
To gray turned tiredly, and from gray
   To broadest bands of night!