Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (997 page)

And the joyous springs and summers,
And the jaunts with blithe newcomers,
And my plans and appearances; drives and rides
That fanned my face to a lively red;
And the grays and blues
Of the far-off views,
That nobody else discerned outspread;
And little achievements for blame or praise;
Things left undone; things left unsaid;
In brief, my days!

Compressed here in six feet by two,
In secrecy
To lie with me
Till the Call shall be,
Are all these things I knew,
Which cannot be handed on;
Strange happenings quite unrecorded,
Lost to the world and disregarded,
That only thinks: “Here moulders till Doom’s-dawn
A woman’s skeleton.”

SHE SAW HIM, SHE SAID

“Why, I saw you with the sexton, outside the church-door,
So I did not hurry me home,
Thinking you’d not be come,
Having something to him to say. —
Yes: ‘twas you, Dear, though you seemed sad, heart-sore;
How fast you’ve got therefrom!”

“I’ve not been out. I’ve watched the moon through the birch,
And heard the bell toll. Yes,
Like a passing soul in distress!”
“ — But no bell’s tolled to-day?” . . .
His face looked strange, like the face of him seen by the church,
And she sank to musefulness.

ONCE AT SWANAGE

The spray sprang up across the cusps of the moon,
And all its light loomed green
As a witch-flame’s weirdsome sheen
At the minute of an incantation scene;
And it greened our gaze — that night at demilune.

Roaring high and roaring low was the sea
Behind the headland shores:
It symboled the slamming of doors,
Or a regiment hurrying over hollow floors. . . .
And there we two stood, hands clasped; I and she!

THE FLOWER’S TRAGEDY

In the bedchamber window, near the glass,
Stood the little flower in the little vase,
Unnoticed quite
For a whole fortnight,
And withered for lack of watering
To a skeleton mere — a mummied thing.

But it was not much, mid a world of teen,
That a flower should waste in a nook unseen!

One needed no thought to ascertain
How it happened; that when she went in the rain
To return here not,
She was mindless what
She had left here to perish. — Ah, well: for an hour
I wished I had not found the flower!

Yet it was not much. And she never had known
Of the flower’s fate; nor it of her own.

AT THE AQUATIC SPORTS

With their backs to the sea two fiddlers stand
Facing the concourse on the strand,
And a third man who sings.
The sports proceed; there are crab-catchings;
The people laugh as levity spreads;
Yet these three do not turn their heads
To see whence the merriment springs.

They cease their music, but even then
They stand as before, do those three men,
Though pausing, nought to do:
They never face to the seaward view
To enjoy the contests, add their cheer,
So wholly is their being here
A business they pursue.

A WATCHER’S REGRET

J. E.’S STORY

I slept across the front of the clock,
Close to the long case-door;
The hours were brought by their brazen knock
To my ear as the slow nights wore.

Thus did I, she being sick to death,
That each hour as it belled
Should wake me to rise, and learn by her breath
Whether her strength still held.

Yet though throughout life’s midnights all
I would have watched till spent
For her dear sake, I missed the call
Of the hour in which she went.

HORSES ABOARD

Horses in horsecloths stand in a row
On board the huge ship that at last lets go:
Whither are they sailing? They do not know,
Nor what for, nor how. —
They are horses of war,
And are going to where there is fighting afar;
But they gaze through their eye-holes unwitting they are,
And that in some wilderness, gaunt and ghast,
Their bones will bleach ere a year has passed,
And the item be as “war-waste” classed. —
And when the band booms, and the folk say “Good-bye!”
And the shore slides astern, they appear wrenched awry
From the scheme Nature planned for them, — wondering why.

THE HISTORY OF AN HOUR

Vain is the wish to try rhyming it, writing it!
Pen cannot weld into words what it was;
Time will be squandered in toil at inditing it;
Clear is the cause!

Yea, ‘twas too satiate with soul, too ethereal;
June-morning scents of a rose-bush in flower
Catch in a clap-net of hempen material;
So catch that hour!

THE MISSED TRAIN

How I was caught
Hieing home, after days of allure,
And forced to an inn — small, obscure —
At the junction, gloom-fraught.

How civil my face
To get them to chamber me there —
A roof I had scorned, scarce aware
That it stood at the place.

And how all the night
I had dreams of the unwitting cause
Of my lodgment. How lonely I was;
How consoled by her sprite!

Thus onetime to me . . .
Dim wastes of dead years bar away
Then from now. But such happenings to-day
Fall to lovers, may be!

Years, years as shoaled seas,
Truly, stretch now between! Less and less
Shrink the visions then vast in me. — Yes,
Then in me: Now in these.

UNDER HIGH-STOY HILL

Four climbed High-Stoy from Ivelwards,
Where hedge meets hedge, and cart-ruts wind,
Chattering like birds,
And knowing not what lay behind.

We laughed beneath the moonlight blink,
Said supper would be to our mind,
And did not think
Of Time, and what might lie behind. . . .

The moon still meets that tree-tipped height,
The road — as then — still trails inclined;
But since that night
We have well learnt what lay behind!

For all of the four then climbing here
But one are ghosts, and he brow-lined;
With him they fare,
Yet speak not of what lies behind.

AT THE MILL

O Miller Knox, whom we knew well,
And the mill, and the floury floors,
And the corn, — and those two women,
And infants — yours!

The sun was shining when you rode
To market on that day:
The sun was set when home-along
You ambled in the gray,
And gathered what had taken place
While you were away.

O Miller Knox, ‘twas grief to see
Your good wife hanging there
By her own rash and passionate hand,
In a throe of despair;

And those two children, one by her,
And one by the waiting-maid,
Borne the same hour, and you afar,
And she past aid.

And though sometimes you walk of nights,
Sleepless, to Yalbury Brow,
And glance the graveyard way, and grunt,
“‘Twas not much, anyhow:
She shouldn’t ha’ minded!” nought it helps
To say that now.

And the water dribbles down your wheel,
Your mead blooms green and gold,
And birds ‘twit in your apple-boughs
Just as of old.

ALIKE AND UNLIKE

(GREAT-ORME’S HEAD)

We watched the selfsame scene on that long drive,
Saw the magnificent purples, as one eye,
Of those near mountains; saw the storm arrive;
Laid up the sight in memory, you and I,
As if for joint recallings by and by.

But our eye-records, like in hue and line,
Had superimposed on them, that very day,
Gravings on your side deep, but slight on mine! —
Tending to sever us thenceforth alway;
Mine commonplace; yours tragic, gruesome, gray.

THE THING UNPLANNED

The white winter sun struck its stroke on the bridge,
The meadow-rills rippled and gleamed
As I left the thatched post-office, just by the ridge,
And dropped in my pocket her long tender letter,
With: “This must be snapped! it is more than it seemed;
And now is the opportune time!”

But against what I willed worked the surging sublime
Of the thing that I did — the thing better!

THE SHEEP-BOY

A yawning, sunned concave
Of purple, spread as an ocean wave
Entroughed on a morning of swell and sway
After a night when wind-fiends have been heard to rave:
Thus was the Heath called “Draäts,” on an August day.

Suddenly there intunes a hum:
This side, that side, it seems to come.
From the purple in myriads rise the bees
With consternation mid their rapt employ.
So headstrongly each speeds him past, and flees,
As to strike the face of the shepherd-boy.
Awhile he waits, and wonders what they mean;
Till none is left upon the shagged demesne.

To learn what ails, the sheep-boy looks around;
Behind him, out of the sea in swirls
Flexuous and solid, clammy vapour-curls
Are rolling over Pokeswell Hills to the inland ground,
Into the heath they sail,
And travel up the vale
Like the moving pillar of cloud raised by the Israelite: —
In a trice the lonely sheep-boy seen so late ago,
Draäts’-Hollow in gorgeous blow,
And Kite-Hill’s regal glow,
Are viewless — folded into those creeping scrolls of white.

On Rainbarrows.

RETTY’S PHASES

I

Retty used to shake her head,
Look with wicked eye;
Say, “I’d tease you, simple Ned,
If I cared to try!”
Then she’d hot-up scarlet red,
Stilly step away,
Much afraid that what she’d said
Sounded bold to say.

II

Retty used to think she loved
(Just a little) me.
Not untruly, as it proved
Afterwards to be.

For, when weakness forced her rest
If we walked a mile,
She would whisper she was blest
By my clasp awhile.

III

Retty used at last to say
When she neared the Vale,
“Mind that you, Dear, on that day
Ring my wedding peal!”
And we all, with pulsing pride,
Vigorous sounding gave
Those six bells, the while outside
John filled in her grave.

IV

Retty used to draw me down
To the turfy heaps,
Where, with yeoman, squire, and clown
Noticeless she sleeps.
Now her silent slumber-place
Seldom do I know,
For when last I saw her face
Was so long ago!

From an old draft of 1868.

In many villages it was customary after the funeral of an unmarried young woman to ring a peal as for her wedding while the grave was being filled in, as if Death were not to be allowed to balk her of bridal honours. Young unmarried men were always her bearers.

A POOR MAN AND A LADY

We knew it was not a valid thing,
And only sanct in the sight of God
(To use your phrase), as with fervent nod
You swore your assent when I placed the ring

On your pale slim hand. Our whispering
Was soft as the fan of a turtledove
That round our heads might have seemed to wing;
So solemn were we; so sincere our love.

We could do no better; and thus it stood
Through a time of timorous secret bliss,
Till we were divided, and never a kiss
Of mine could touch you, or likelihood
Illumed our sky that we might, or should
Be each to each in the world’s wide eye
What we were unviewed; and our vows make good
In the presence of parents and standers by.

I was a striver with deeds to do,
And little enough to do them with,
And a comely woman of noble kith,
With a courtly match to make, were you;
And we both were young; and though sterling-true
You had proved to our pledge under previous strains,
Our “union,” as we called it, grew
Less grave to your eyes in your town campaigns.

Well: the woeful neared, you needn’t be told:
The current news-sheets clarioned soon
That you would be wived on a summer noon
By a man of illustrious line and old:
Nor better nor worse than the manifold
Of marriages made, had there not been
Our faith-swearing when fervent-souled,
Which, to me, seemed a breachless bar between.

We met in a Mayfair church, alone:
(The request was mine, which you yielded to.)
“But we were not married at all!” urged you:
“Why, of course we were!” I said. Your tone,
I noted, was world-wise. You went on:
“‘Twas sweet while it lasted. But you well know
That law is law. He’ll be, anon,
My husband
really
. You, Dear, weren’t so.”

“I wished — but to learn if — ” faltered I,
And stopped. “But I’ll sting you not. Farewell!”
And we parted. — Do you recall the bell
That tolled by chance as we said good-bye? . . .
I saw you no more. The track of a high,
Sweet, liberal lady you’ve doubtless trod.
 — All’s past! No heart was burst thereby,
And no one knew, unless it was God.

The foregoing was intended to preserve an episode in the story of “The Poor Man and the Lady,” written in 1868, and, like these lines, in the first person; but never printed, and ultimately destroyed.

AN EXPOSTULATION

Why want to go afar
Where pitfalls are,
When all we swains adore
Your featness more and more
As heroine of our artless masquings here,
And count few Wessex’ daughters half so dear?

Why paint your appealing face,
When its born grace
Is such no skill can match
With powder, puff, or patch,
Whose every touch defames your bloomfulness,
And with each stain increases our distress?