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diff --git a/old/tmsls10.txt b/old/tmsls10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cb7c60a --- /dev/null +++ b/old/tmsls10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,5053 @@ +Project Gutenberg's Time's Laughingstocks etc., by Thomas Hardy +#12 in our series by Thomas Hardy + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the laws for your country before redistributing these files!!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. + +Please do not remove this. + +This should be the first thing seen when anyone opens the book. +Do not change or edit it without written permission. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.07.00*END* + + + + + +This etext was prepared from the 1919 Macmillan and Co. edition by +David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk. + + + + + +TIME'S LAUGHINGSTOCKS AND OTHER VERSES + +by Thomas Hardy + + + + +Contents: + +Preface +TIME'S LAUGHINGSTOCKS - + The Revisitation + A Trampwoman's Tragedy + The Two Rosalinds + A Sunday Morning Tragedy + The House of Hospitalities + Bereft + John and Jane + The Curate's Kindness + The Flirt's Tragedy + The Rejected Member's Wife + The Farm-Woman's Winter + Autumn in King's Hintock Park + Shut out that Moon + Reminiscences of a Dancing Man + The Dead Man Walking +MORE LOVE LYRICS - + 1967 + Her Definition + The Division + On the Departure Platform + In a Cathedral City + "I say I'll seek Her" + Her Father + At Waking + Four Footprints + In the Vaulted Way + In the Mind's Eye + The End of the Episode + The Sigh + "In the Night She Came" + The Conformers + The Dawn after the Dance + The Sun on the Letter + The Night of the Dance + Misconception + The Voice of the Thorn + From Her in the Country + Her Confession + To an Impersonator of Rosalind + To an Actress + The Minute before Meeting + He abjures Love +A SET OF COUNTRY SONGS - + Let me Enjoy + At Casterbridge Fair: + I. The Ballad-Singer + II. Former Beauties + III. After the Club Dance + IV. The Market-Girl + V. The Inquiry + VI. A Wife Waits + VII. After the Fair + The Dark-eyed Gentleman + To Carrey Clavel + The Orphaned Old Maid + The Spring Call + Julie-Jane + News for Her Mother + The Fiddler + The Husband's View + Rose-Ann + The Homecoming +PIECES OCCASIONAL AND VARIOUS - + A Church Romance + The Rash Bride + The Dead Quire + The Christening + A Dream Question + By the Barrows + A Wife and Another + The Roman Road + The Vampirine Fair + The Reminder + The Rambler + Night in the Old Home + After the Last Breath + In Childbed + The Pine Planters + The Dear + One We Knew + She Hears the Storm + A Wet Night + Before Life and After + New Year's Eve + God's Education + To Sincerity + Panthera + The Unborn + The Man He Killed + Geographical Knowledge + One Ralph Blossom Soliloquizes + The Noble Lady's Tale + Unrealized + Wagtail and Baby + Aberdeen: 1905 + George Meredith, 1828-1909 + Yell'ham-wood's Story + A Young Man's Epigram on Existence + + + +PREFACE + + + +In collecting the following poems I have to thank the editors and +proprietors of the periodicals in which certain of them have appeared for +permission to reclaim them. + +Now that the miscellany is brought together, some lack of concord in pieces +written at widely severed dates, and in contrasting moods and circumstances, +will be obvious enough. This I cannot help, but the sense of disconnection, +particularly in respect of those lyrics penned in the first person, will be +immaterial when it is borne in mind that they are to be regarded, in the +main, as dramatic monologues by different characters. + +As a whole they will, I hope, take the reader forward, even if not far, +rather than backward. I should add that some lines in the early-dated poems +have been rewritten, though they have been left substantially unchanged. + +T. H. +September 1909. + + + +THE REVISITATION + + + + As I lay awake at night-time +In an ancient country barrack known to ancient cannoneers, +And recalled the hopes that heralded each seeming brave and bright time + Of my primal purple years, + + Much it haunted me that, nigh there, +I had borne my bitterest loss--when One who went, came not again; +In a joyless hour of discord, in a joyless-hued July there - + A July just such as then. + + And as thus I brooded longer, +With my faint eyes on the feeble square of wan-lit window frame, +A quick conviction sprung within me, grew, and grew yet stronger, + That the month-night was the same, + + Too, as that which saw her leave me +On the rugged ridge of Waterstone, the peewits plaining round; +And a lapsing twenty years had ruled that--as it were to grieve me - + I should near the once-loved ground. + + Though but now a war-worn stranger +Chance had quartered here, I rose up and descended to the yard. +All was soundless, save the troopers' horses tossing at the manger, + And the sentry keeping guard. + + Through the gateway I betook me +Down the High Street and beyond the lamps, across the battered bridge, +Till the country darkness clasped me and the friendly shine forsook me, + And I bore towards the Ridge, + + With a dim unowned emotion +Saying softly: "Small my reason, now at midnight, to be here . . . +Yet a sleepless swain of fifty with a brief romantic notion + May retrace a track so dear." + + Thus I walked with thoughts half-uttered +Up the lane I knew so well, the grey, gaunt, lonely Lane of Slyre; +And at whiles behind me, far at sea, a sullen thunder muttered + As I mounted high and higher. + + Till, the upper roadway quitting, +I adventured on the open drouthy downland thinly grassed, +While the spry white scuts of conies flashed before me, earthward flitting, + And an arid wind went past. + + Round about me bulged the barrows +As before, in antique silence--immemorial funeral piles - +Where the sleek herds trampled daily the remains of flint-tipt arrows + Mid the thyme and chamomiles; + + And the Sarsen stone there, dateless, +On whose breast we had sat and told the zephyrs many a tender vow, +Held the heat of yester sun, as sank thereon one fated mateless + From those far fond hours till now. + + Maybe flustered by my presence +Rose the peewits, just as all those years back, wailing soft and loud, +And revealing their pale pinions like a fitful phosphorescence + Up against the cope of cloud, + + Where their dolesome exclamations +Seemed the voicings of the self-same throats I had heard when life was +green, +Though since that day uncounted frail forgotten generations + Of their kind had flecked the scene. - + + And so, living long and longer +In a past that lived no more, my eyes discerned there, suddenly, +That a figure broke the skyline--first in vague contour, then stronger, + And was crossing near to me. + + Some long-missed familiar gesture, +Something wonted, struck me in the figure's pause to list and heed, +Till I fancied from its handling of its loosely wrapping vesture + That it might be She indeed. + + 'Twas not reasonless: below there +In the vale, had been her home; the nook might hold her even yet, +And the downlands were her father's fief; she still might come and go there; +- + So I rose, and said, "Agnette!" + + With a little leap, half-frightened, +She withdrew some steps; then letting intuition smother fear +In a place so long-accustomed, and as one whom thought enlightened, + She replied: "What--THAT voice?--here!" + + "Yes, Agnette!--And did the occasion +Of our marching hither make you think I MIGHT walk where we two--' +"O, I often come," she murmured with a moment's coy evasion, + "('Tis not far),--and--think of you." + + Then I took her hand, and led her +To the ancient people's stone whereon I had sat. There now sat we; +And together talked, until the first reluctant shyness fled her, + And she spoke confidingly. + + "It is JUST as ere we parted!" +Said she, brimming high with joy.--"And when, then, came you here, and why?" +"--Dear, I could not sleep for thinking of our trystings when twin-hearted." + She responded, "Nor could I. + + "There are few things I would rather +Than be wandering at this spirit-hour--lone-lived, my kindred dead - +On this wold of well-known feature I inherit from my father: + Night or day, I have no dread . . . + + "O I wonder, wonder whether +Any heartstring bore a signal-thrill between us twain or no? - +Some such influence can, at times, they say, draw severed souls together." + I said, "Dear, we'll dream it so." + + Each one's hand the other's grasping, +And a mutual forgiveness won, we sank to silent thought, +A large content in us that seemed our rended lives reclasping, + And contracting years to nought. + + Till I, maybe overweary +From the lateness, and a wayfaring so full of strain and stress +For one no longer buoyant, to a peak so steep and eery, + Sank to slow unconsciousness . . . + + How long I slept I knew not, +But the brief warm summer night had slid when, to my swift surprise, +A red upedging sun, of glory chambered mortals view not, + Was blazing on my eyes, + + From the Milton Woods to Dole-Hill +All the spacious landscape lighting, and around about my feet +Flinging tall thin tapering shadows from the meanest mound and mole-hill, + And on trails the ewes had beat. + + She was sitting still beside me, +Dozing likewise; and I turned to her, to take her hanging hand; +When, the more regarding, that which like a spectre shook and tried me + In her image then I scanned; + + That which Time's transforming chisel +Had been tooling night and day for twenty years, and tooled too well, +In its rendering of crease where curve was, where was raven, grizzle - + Pits, where peonies once did dwell. + + She had wakened, and perceiving +(I surmise) my sigh and shock, my quite involuntary dismay, +Up she started, and--her wasted figure all throughout it heaving - + Said, "Ah, yes: I am THUS by day! + + "Can you really wince and wonder +That the sunlight should reveal you such a thing of skin and bone, +As if unaware a Death's-head must of need lie not far under + Flesh whose years out-count your own? + + "Yes: that movement was a warning +Of the worth of man's devotion!--Yes, Sir, I am OLD," said she, +"And the thing which should increase love turns it quickly into scorning - + And your new-won heart from me!" + + Then she went, ere I could call her, +With the too proud temper ruling that had parted us before, +And I saw her form descend the slopes, and smaller grow and smaller, + Till I caught its course no more . . . + + True; I might have dogged her downward; +- But it MAY be (though I know not) that this trick on us of Time +Disconcerted and confused me.--Soon I bent my footsteps townward, + Like to one who had watched a crime. + + Well I knew my native weakness, +Well I know it still. I cherished her reproach like physic-wine, +For I saw in that emaciate shape of bitterness and bleakness + A nobler soul than mine. + + Did I not return, then, ever? - +Did we meet again?--mend all?--Alas, what greyhead perseveres! - +Soon I got the Route elsewhither.--Since that hour I have seen her never: + Love is lame at fifty years. + + + +A TRAMPWOMAN'S TRAGEDY +(182-) + + + +I + +From Wynyard's Gap the livelong day, + The livelong day, +We beat afoot the northward way + We had travelled times before. +The sun-blaze burning on our backs, +Our shoulders sticking to our packs, +By fosseway, fields, and turnpike tracks + We skirted sad Sedge-Moor. + +II + +Full twenty miles we jaunted on, + We jaunted on, - +My fancy-man, and jeering John, + And Mother Lee, and I. +And, as the sun drew down to west, +We climbed the toilsome Poldon crest, +And saw, of landskip sights the best, + The inn that beamed thereby. + +III + +For months we had padded side by side, + Ay, side by side +Through the Great Forest, Blackmoor wide, + And where the Parret ran. +We'd faced the gusts on Mendip ridge, +Had crossed the Yeo unhelped by bridge, +Been stung by every Marshwood midge, + I and my fancy-man. + +IV + +Lone inns we loved, my man and I, + My man and I; +"King's Stag," "Windwhistle" high and dry, + "The Horse" on Hintock Green, +The cosy house at Wynyard's Gap, +"The Hut" renowned on Bredy Knap, +And many another wayside tap + Where folk might sit unseen. + +V + +Now as we trudged--O deadly day, + O deadly day! - +I teased my fancy-man in play + And wanton idleness. +I walked alongside jeering John, +I laid his hand my waist upon; +I would not bend my glances on + My lover's dark distress. + +VI + +Thus Poldon top at last we won, + At last we won, +And gained the inn at sink of sun + Far-famed as "Marshal's Elm." +Beneath us figured tor and lea, +From Mendip to the western sea - +I doubt if finer sight there be + Within this royal realm. + +VII + +Inside the settle all a-row - + All four a-row +We sat, I next to John, to show + That he had wooed and won. +And then he took me on his knee, +And swore it was his turn to be +My favoured mate, and Mother Lee + Passed to my former one. + +VIII + +Then in a voice I had never heard, + I had never heard, +My only Love to me: "One word, + My lady, if you please! +Whose is the child you are like to bear? - +HIS? After all my months o' care?" +God knows 'twas not! But, O despair! + I nodded--still to tease. + +IX + +Then up he sprung, and with his knife - + And with his knife +He let out jeering Johnny's life, + Yes; there, at set of sun. +The slant ray through the window nigh +Gilded John's blood and glazing eye, +Ere scarcely Mother Lee and I + Knew that the deed was done. + +X + +The taverns tell the gloomy tale, + The gloomy tale, +How that at Ivel-chester jail + My Love, my sweetheart swung; +Though stained till now by no misdeed +Save one horse ta'en in time o' need; +(Blue Jimmy stole right many a steed + Ere his last fling he flung.) + +XI + +Thereaft I walked the world alone, + Alone, alone! +On his death-day I gave my groan + And dropt his dead-born child. +'Twas nigh the jail, beneath a tree, +None tending me; for Mother Lee +Had died at Glaston, leaving me + Unfriended on the wild. + +XII + +And in the night as I lay weak, + As I lay weak, +The leaves a-falling on my cheek, + The red moon low declined - +The ghost of him I'd die to kiss +Rose up and said: "Ah, tell me this! +Was the child mine, or was it his? + Speak, that I rest may find!" + +XIII + +O doubt not but I told him then, + I told him then, +That I had kept me from all men + Since we joined lips and swore. +Whereat he smiled, and thinned away +As the wind stirred to call up day . . . +- 'Tis past! And here alone I stray + Haunting the Western Moor. + +NOTES.--"Windwhistle" (Stanza iv.). The highness and dryness of Windwhistle +Inn was impressed upon the writer two or three years ago, when, after +climbing on a hot afternoon to the beautiful spot near which it stands and +entering the inn for tea, he was informed by the landlady that none could be +had, unless he would fetch water from a valley half a mile off, the house +containing not a drop, owing to its situation. However, a tantalizing row +of full barrels behind her back testified to a wetness of a certain sort, +which was not at that time desired. + +"Marshal's Elm" (Stanza vi.) so picturesquely situated, is no longer an inn, +though the house, or part of it, still remains. It used to exhibit a fine +old swinging sign. + +"Blue Jimmy" (Stanza x.) was a notorious horse-stealer of Wessex in those +days, who appropriated more than a hundred horses before he was caught, +among others one belonging to a neighbour of the writer's grandfather. He +was hanged at the now demolished Ivel-chester or Ilchester jail above +mentioned--that building formerly of so many sinister associations in the +minds of the local peasantry, and the continual haunt of fever, which at +last led to its condemnation. Its site is now an innocent-looking green +meadow. + +April 1902. + + + +THE TWO ROSALINDS + + + +I + + The dubious daylight ended, +And I walked the Town alone, unminding whither bound and why, +As from each gaunt street and gaping square a mist of light ascended + And dispersed upon the sky. + +II + + Files of evanescent faces +Passed each other without heeding, in their travail, teen, or joy, +Some in void unvisioned listlessness inwrought with pallid traces + Of keen penury's annoy. + +III + + Nebulous flames in crystal cages +Leered as if with discontent at city movement, murk, and grime, +And as waiting some procession of great ghosts from bygone ages + To exalt the ignoble time. + +IV + + In a colonnade high-lighted, +By a thoroughfare where stern utilitarian traffic dinned, +On a red and white emblazonment of players and parts, I sighted + The name of "Rosalind," + +V + + And her famous mates of "Arden," +Who observed no stricter customs than "the seasons' difference" bade, +Who lived with running brooks for books in Nature's wildwood garden, + And called idleness their trade . . . + +VI + + Now the poster stirred an ember +Still remaining from my ardours of some forty years before, +When the selfsame portal on an eve it thrilled me to remember + A like announcement bore; + +VII + + And expectantly I had entered, +And had first beheld in human mould a Rosalind woo and plead, +On whose transcendent figuring my speedy soul had centred + As it had been she indeed . . . + +VIII + + So; all other plans discarding, +I resolved on entrance, bent on seeing what I once had seen, +And approached the gangway of my earlier knowledge, disregarding + The tract of time between. + +IX + + "The words, sir?" cried a creature +Hovering mid the shine and shade as 'twixt the live world and the tomb; +But the well-known numbers needed not for me a text or teacher + To revive and re-illume. + +X + + Then the play . . . But how unfitted +Was THIS Rosalind!--a mammet quite to me, in memories nurst, +And with chilling disappointment soon I sought the street I had quitted, + To re-ponder on the first. + +XI + + The hag still hawked,--I met her +Just without the colonnade. "So you don't like her, sir?" said she. +"Ah--_I_ was once that Rosalind!--I acted her--none better - + Yes--in eighteen sixty-three. + +XII + + "Thus I won Orlando to me +In my then triumphant days when I had charm and maidenhood, +Now some forty years ago.--I used to say, COME WOO ME, WOO ME!" + And she struck the attitude. + +XIII + + It was when I had gone there nightly; +And the voice--though raucous now--was yet the old one.--Clear as noon +My Rosalind was here . . . Thereon the band withinside lightly + Beat up a merry tune. + + + +A SUNDAY MORNING TRAGEDY +(circa 186-) + + + +I bore a daughter flower-fair, +In Pydel Vale, alas for me; +I joyed to mother one so rare, +But dead and gone I now would be. + +Men looked and loved her as she grew, +And she was won, alas for me; +She told me nothing, but I knew, +And saw that sorrow was to be. + +I knew that one had made her thrall, +A thrall to him, alas for me; +And then, at last, she told me all, +And wondered what her end would be. + +She owned that she had loved too well, +Had loved too well, unhappy she, +And bore a secret time would tell, +Though in her shroud she'd sooner be. + +I plodded to her sweetheart's door +In Pydel Vale, alas for me: +I pleaded with him, pleaded sore, +To save her from her misery. + +He frowned, and swore he could not wed, +Seven times he swore it could not be; +"Poverty's worse than shame," he said, +Till all my hope went out of me. + +"I've packed my traps to sail the main" - +Roughly he spake, alas did he - +"Wessex beholds me not again, +'Tis worse than any jail would be!" + +- There was a shepherd whom I knew, +A subtle man, alas for me: +I sought him all the pastures through, +Though better I had ceased to be. + +I traced him by his lantern light, +And gave him hint, alas for me, +Of how she found her in the plight +That is so scorned in Christendie. + +"Is there an herb . . . ?" I asked. "Or none?" +Yes, thus I asked him desperately. +"--There is," he said; "a certain one . . . " +Would he had sworn that none knew he! + +"To-morrow I will walk your way," +He hinted low, alas for me. - +Fieldwards I gazed throughout next day; +Now fields I never more would see! + +The sunset-shine, as curfew strook, +As curfew strook beyond the lea, +Lit his white smock and gleaming crook, +While slowly he drew near to me. + +He pulled from underneath his smock +The herb I sought, my curse to be - +"At times I use it in my flock," +He said, and hope waxed strong in me. + +"'Tis meant to balk ill-motherings" - +(Ill-motherings! Why should they be?) - +"If not, would God have sent such things?" +So spoke the shepherd unto me. + +That night I watched the poppling brew, +With bended back and hand on knee: +I stirred it till the dawnlight grew, +And the wind whiffled wailfully. + +"This scandal shall be slain," said I, +"That lours upon her innocency: +I'll give all whispering tongues the lie;" - +But worse than whispers was to be. + +"Here's physic for untimely fruit," +I said to her, alas for me, +Early that morn in fond salute; +And in my grave I now would be. + +- Next Sunday came, with sweet church chimes +In Pydel Vale, alas for me: +I went into her room betimes; +No more may such a Sunday be! + +"Mother, instead of rescue nigh," +She faintly breathed, alas for me, +"I feel as I were like to die, +And underground soon, soon should be." + +From church that noon the people walked +In twos and threes, alas for me, +Showed their new raiment--smiled and talked, +Though sackcloth-clad I longed to be. + +Came to my door her lover's friends, +And cheerly cried, alas for me, +"Right glad are we he makes amends, +For never a sweeter bride can be." + +My mouth dried, as 'twere scorched within, +Dried at their words, alas for me: +More and more neighbours crowded in, +(O why should mothers ever be!) + +"Ha-ha! Such well-kept news!" laughed they, +Yes--so they laughed, alas for me. +"Whose banns were called in church to-day?" - +Christ, how I wished my soul could flee! + +"Where is she? O the stealthy miss," +Still bantered they, alas for me, +"To keep a wedding close as this . . ." +Ay, Fortune worked thus wantonly! + +"But you are pale--you did not know?" +They archly asked, alas for me, +I stammered, "Yes--some days-ago," +While coffined clay I wished to be. + +"'Twas done to please her, we surmise?" +(They spoke quite lightly in their glee) +"Done by him as a fond surprise?" +I thought their words would madden me. + +Her lover entered. "Where's my bird? - +My bird--my flower--my picotee? +First time of asking, soon the third!" +Ah, in my grave I well may be. + +To me he whispered: "Since your call--" +So spoke he then, alas for me - +"I've felt for her, and righted all." +- I think of it to agony. + +"She's faint to-day--tired--nothing more--" +Thus did I lie, alas for me . . . +I called her at her chamber door +As one who scarce had strength to be. + +No voice replied. I went within - +O women! scourged the worst are we . . . +I shrieked. The others hastened in +And saw the stroke there dealt on me. + +There she lay--silent, breathless, dead, +Stone dead she lay--wronged, sinless she! - +Ghost-white the cheeks once rosy-red: +Death had took her. Death took not me. + +I kissed her colding face and hair, +I kissed her corpse--the bride to be! - +My punishment I cannot bear, +But pray God NOT to pity me. + +January 1904. + + + +THE HOUSE OF HOSPITALITIES + + + +Here we broached the Christmas barrel, + Pushed up the charred log-ends; +Here we sang the Christmas carol, + And called in friends. + +Time has tired me since we met here + When the folk now dead were young, +Since the viands were outset here + And quaint songs sung. + +And the worm has bored the viol + That used to lead the tune, +Rust eaten out the dial + That struck night's noon. + +Now no Christmas brings in neighbours, + And the New Year comes unlit; +Where we sang the mole now labours, + And spiders knit. + +Yet at midnight if here walking, + When the moon sheets wall and tree, +I see forms of old time talking, + Who smile on me. + + + +BEREFT + + + + In the black winter morning +No light will be struck near my eyes +While the clock in the stairway is warning +For five, when he used to rise. + Leave the door unbarred, + The clock unwound, + Make my lone bed hard - + Would 'twere underground! + + When the summer dawns clearly, +And the appletree-tops seem alight, +Who will undraw the curtain and cheerly +Call out that the morning is bright? + + When I tarry at market +No form will cross Durnover Lea +In the gathering darkness, to hark at +Grey's Bridge for the pit-pat o' me. + + When the supper crock's steaming, +And the time is the time of his tread, +I shall sit by the fire and wait dreaming +In a silence as of the dead. + Leave the door unbarred, + The clock unwound, + Make my lone bed hard - + Would 'twere underground! + +1901. + + + +JOHN AND JANE + + + +I + +He sees the world as a boisterous place +Where all things bear a laughing face, +And humorous scenes go hourly on, + Does John. + +II + +They find the world a pleasant place +Where all is ecstasy and grace, +Where a light has risen that cannot wane, + Do John and Jane. + +III + +They see as a palace their cottage-place, +Containing a pearl of the human race, +A hero, maybe, hereafter styled, + Do John and Jane with a baby-child. + +IV + +They rate the world as a gruesome place, +Where fair looks fade to a skull's grimace, - +As a pilgrimage they would fain get done - + Do John and Jane with their worthless son. + + + +THE CURATE'S KINDNESS +A WORKHOUSE IRONY + + + +I + +I thought they'd be strangers aroun' me, + But she's to be there! +Let me jump out o' waggon and go back and drown me +At Pummery or Ten-Hatches Weir. + +II + +I thought: "Well, I've come to the Union - + The workhouse at last - +After honest hard work all the week, and Communion +O' Zundays, these fifty years past. + +III + +"'Tis hard; but," I thought, "never mind it: + There's gain in the end: +And when I get used to the place I shall find it + A home, and may find there a friend. + +IV + +"Life there will be better than t'other. + For peace is assured. +THE MEN IN ONE WING AND THEIR WIVES IN ANOTHER + Is strictly the rule of the Board." + +V + +Just then one young Pa'son arriving + Steps up out of breath +To the side o' the waggon wherein we were driving + To Union; and calls out and saith: + +VI + +"Old folks, that harsh order is altered, + Be not sick of heart! +The Guardians they poohed and they pished and they paltered + When urged not to keep you apart. + +VII + +"'It is wrong,' I maintained, 'to divide them, + Near forty years wed.' +'Very well, sir. We promise, then, they shall abide them + In one wing together,' they said." + +VIII + +Then I sank--knew 'twas quite a foredone thing + That misery should be +To the end! . . . To get freed of her there was the one thing + Had made the change welcome to me. + +IX + +To go there was ending but badly; + 'Twas shame and 'twas pain; +"But anyhow," thought I, "thereby I shall gladly + Get free of this forty years' chain." + +X + +I thought they'd be strangers aroun' me, + But she's to be there! +Let me jump out o' waggon and go back and drown me + At Pummery or Ten-Hatches Weir. + + + +THE FLIRT'S TRAGEDY +(17--) + + + +Here alone by the logs in my chamber, + Deserted, decrepit - +Spent flames limning ghosts on the wainscot + Of friends I once knew - + +My drama and hers begins weirdly + Its dumb re-enactment, +Each scene, sigh, and circumstance passing + In spectral review. + +- Wealth was mine beyond wish when I met her - + The pride of the lowland - +Embowered in Tintinhull Valley + By laurel and yew; + +And love lit my soul, notwithstanding + My features' ill favour, +Too obvious beside her perfections + Of line and of hue. + +But it pleased her to play on my passion, + And whet me to pleadings +That won from her mirthful negations + And scornings undue. + +Then I fled her disdains and derisions + To cities of pleasure, +And made me the crony of idlers + In every purlieu. + +Of those who lent ear to my story, + A needy Adonis +Gave hint how to grizzle her garden + From roses to rue, + +Could his price but be paid for so purging + My scorner of scornings: +Thus tempted, the lust to avenge me + Germed inly and grew. + +I clothed him in sumptuous apparel, + Consigned to him coursers, +Meet equipage, liveried attendants + In full retinue. + +So dowered, with letters of credit + He wayfared to England, +And spied out the manor she goddessed, + And handy thereto, + +Set to hire him a tenantless mansion + As coign-stone of vantage +For testing what gross adulation + Of beauty could do. + +He laboured through mornings and evens, + On new moons and sabbaths, +By wiles to enmesh her attention + In park, path, and pew; + +And having afar played upon her, + Advanced his lines nearer, +And boldly outleaping conventions, + Bent briskly to woo. + +His gay godlike face, his rare seeming + Anon worked to win her, +And later, at noontides and night-tides + They held rendezvous. + +His tarriance full spent, he departed + And met me in Venice, +And lines from her told that my jilter + Was stooping to sue. + +Not long could be further concealment, + She pled to him humbly: +"By our love and our sin, O protect me; + I fly unto you!" + +A mighty remorse overgat me, + I heard her low anguish, +And there in the gloom of the calle + My steel ran him through. + +A swift push engulphed his hot carrion + Within the canal there - +That still street of waters dividing + The city in two. + +- I wandered awhile all unable + To smother my torment, +My brain racked by yells as from Tophet + Of Satan's whole crew. + +A month of unrest brought me hovering + At home in her precincts, +To whose hiding-hole local story + Afforded a clue. + +Exposed, and expelled by her people, + Afar off in London +I found her alone, in a sombre + And soul-stifling mew. + +Still burning to make reparation + I pleaded to wive her, +And father her child, and thus faintly + My mischief undo. + +She yielded, and spells of calm weather + Succeeded the tempest; +And one sprung of him stood as scion + Of my bone and thew . . . + +But Time unveils sorrows and secrets, + And so it befell now: +By inches the curtain was twitched at, + And slowly undrew. + +As we lay, she and I, in the night-time, + We heard the boy moaning: +"O misery mine! My false father + Has murdered my true!" + +She gasped: yea, she heard; understood it. + Next day the child fled us; +And nevermore sighted was even + A print of his shoe. + +Thenceforward she shunned me, and languished; + Till one day the park-pool +Embraced her fair form, and extinguished + Her eyes' living blue. + +- So; ask not what blast may account for + This aspect of pallor, +These bones that just prison within them + Life's poor residue; + +But pass by, and leave unregarded + A Cain to his suffering, +For vengeance too dark on the woman + Whose lover he slew. + + + +THE REJECTED MEMBER'S WIFE + + + +We shall see her no more + On the balcony, +Smiling, while hurt, at the roar + As of surging sea +From the stormy sturdy band + Who have doomed her lord's cause, +Though she waves her little hand + As it were applause. + +Here will be candidates yet, + And candidates' wives, +Fervid with zeal to set + Their ideals on our lives: +Here will come market-men + On the market-days, +Here will clash now and then + More such party assays. + +And the balcony will fill + When such times are renewed, +And the throng in the street will thrill + With to-day's mettled mood; +But she will no more stand + In the sunshine there, +With that wave of her white-gloved hand, + And that chestnut hair. + +January 1906. + + + +THE FARM-WOMAN'S WINTER + + + +I + +If seasons all were summers, + And leaves would never fall, +And hopping casement-comers + Were foodless not at all, +And fragile folk might be here + That white winds bid depart; +Then one I used to see here + Would warm my wasted heart! + +II + +One frail, who, bravely tilling + Long hours in gripping gusts, +Was mastered by their chilling, + And now his ploughshare rusts. +So savage winter catches + The breath of limber things, +And what I love he snatches, + And what I love not, brings. + + + +AUTUMN IN KING'S HINTOCK PARK + + + +Here by the baring bough + Raking up leaves, +Often I ponder how + Springtime deceives, - +I, an old woman now, + Raking up leaves. + +Here in the avenue + Raking up leaves, +Lords' ladies pass in view, + Until one heaves +Sighs at life's russet hue, + Raking up leaves! + +Just as my shape you see + Raking up leaves, +I saw, when fresh and free, + Those memory weaves +Into grey ghosts by me, + Raking up leaves. + +Yet, Dear, though one may sigh, + Raking up leaves, +New leaves will dance on high - + Earth never grieves! - +Will not, when missed am I + Raking up leaves. + +1901. + + + +SHUT OUT THAT MOON + + + +Close up the casement, draw the blind, + Shut out that stealing moon, +She wears too much the guise she wore + Before our lutes were strewn +With years-deep dust, and names we read + On a white stone were hewn. + +Step not out on the dew-dashed lawn + To view the Lady's Chair, +Immense Orion's glittering form, + The Less and Greater Bear: +Stay in; to such sights we were drawn + When faded ones were fair. + +Brush not the bough for midnight scents + That come forth lingeringly, +And wake the same sweet sentiments + They breathed to you and me +When living seemed a laugh, and love + All it was said to be. + +Within the common lamp-lit room + Prison my eyes and thought; +Let dingy details crudely loom, + Mechanic speech be wrought: +Too fragrant was Life's early bloom, + Too tart the fruit it brought! + +1904. + + + +REMINISCENCES OF A DANCING MAN + + + +I + +Who now remembers Almack's balls - + Willis's sometime named - +In those two smooth-floored upper halls + For faded ones so famed? +Where as we trod to trilling sound +The fancied phantoms stood around, + Or joined us in the maze, +Of the powdered Dears from Georgian years, +Whose dust lay in sightless sealed-up biers, + The fairest of former days. + +II + +Who now remembers gay Cremorne, + And all its jaunty jills, +And those wild whirling figures born + Of Jullien's grand quadrilles? +With hats on head and morning coats +There footed to his prancing notes + Our partner-girls and we; +And the gas-jets winked, and the lustres clinked, +And the platform throbbed as with arms enlinked + We moved to the minstrelsy. + +III + +Who now recalls those crowded rooms + Of old yclept "The Argyle," +Where to the deep Drum-polka's booms + We hopped in standard style? +Whither have danced those damsels now! +Is Death the partner who doth moue + Their wormy chaps and bare? +Do their spectres spin like sparks within +The smoky halls of the Prince of Sin + To a thunderous Jullien air? + + + +THE DEAD MAN WALKING + + + +They hail me as one living, + But don't they know +That I have died of late years, + Untombed although? + +I am but a shape that stands here, + A pulseless mould, +A pale past picture, screening + Ashes gone cold. + +Not at a minute's warning, + Not in a loud hour, +For me ceased Time's enchantments + In hall and bower. + +There was no tragic transit, + No catch of breath, +When silent seasons inched me + On to this death . . . + +- A Troubadour-youth I rambled + With Life for lyre, +The beats of being raging + In me like fire. + +But when I practised eyeing + The goal of men, +It iced me, and I perished + A little then. + +When passed my friend, my kinsfolk + Through the Last Door, +And left me standing bleakly, + I died yet more; + +And when my Love's heart kindled + In hate of me, +Wherefore I knew not, died I + One more degree. + +And if when I died fully + I cannot say, +And changed into the corpse-thing + I am to-day; + +Yet is it that, though whiling + The time somehow +In walking, talking, smiling, + I live not now. + + + + +MORE LOVE LYRICS + + + + +1967 + + + +In five-score summers! All new eyes, +New minds, new modes, new fools, new wise; +New woes to weep, new joys to prize; + +With nothing left of me and you +In that live century's vivid view +Beyond a pinch of dust or two; + +A century which, if not sublime, +Will show, I doubt not, at its prime, +A scope above this blinkered time. + +- Yet what to me how far above? +For I would only ask thereof +That thy worm should be my worm, Love! + +16 WESTBOURNE PARK VILLAS, 1867. + + + +HER DEFINITION + + + +I lingered through the night to break of day, +Nor once did sleep extend a wing to me, +Intently busied with a vast array +Of epithets that should outfigure thee. + +Full-featured terms--all fitless--hastened by, +And this sole speech remained: "That maiden mine!" - +Debarred from due description then did I +Perceive the indefinite phrase could yet define. + +As common chests encasing wares of price +Are borne with tenderness through halls of state, +For what they cover, so the poor device +Of homely wording I could tolerate, +Knowing its unadornment held as freight +The sweetest image outside Paradise. + +W. P. V., +Summer 1866. + + + +THE DIVISION + + + +Rain on the windows, creaking doors, + With blasts that besom the green, +And I am here, and you are there, + And a hundred miles between! + +O were it but the weather, Dear, + O were it but the miles +That summed up all our severance, + There might be room for smiles. + +But that thwart thing betwixt us twain, + Which nothing cleaves or clears, +Is more than distance, Dear, or rain, + And longer than the years! + +1893. + + + +ON THE DEPARTURE PLATFORM + + + +We kissed at the barrier; and passing through +She left me, and moment by moment got +Smaller and smaller, until to my view + She was but a spot; + +A wee white spot of muslin fluff +That down the diminishing platform bore +Through hustling crowds of gentle and rough + To the carriage door. + +Under the lamplight's fitful glowers, +Behind dark groups from far and near, +Whose interests were apart from ours, + She would disappear, + +Then show again, till I ceased to see +That flexible form, that nebulous white; +And she who was more than my life to me + Had vanished quite . . . + +We have penned new plans since that fair fond day, +And in season she will appear again - +Perhaps in the same soft white array - + But never as then! + +- "And why, young man, must eternally fly +A joy you'll repeat, if you love her well?" +--O friend, nought happens twice thus; why, + I cannot tell! + + + +IN A CATHEDRAL CITY + + + +These people have not heard your name; +No loungers in this placid place +Have helped to bruit your beauty's fame. + +The grey Cathedral, towards whose face +Bend eyes untold, has met not yours; +Your shade has never swept its base, + +Your form has never darked its doors, +Nor have your faultless feet once thrown +A pensive pit-pat on its floors. + +Along the street to maids well known +Blithe lovers hum their tender airs, +But in your praise voice not a tone. + +- Since nought bespeaks you here, or bears, +As I, your imprint through and through, +Here might I rest, till my heart shares +The spot's unconsciousness of you! + +SALISBURY. + + + +"I SAY I'LL SEEK HER" + + + +I say, "I'll seek her side + Ere hindrance interposes;" + But eve in midnight closes, +And here I still abide. + +When darkness wears I see + Her sad eyes in a vision; + They ask, "What indecision +Detains you, Love, from me? - + +"The creaking hinge is oiled, + I have unbarred the backway, + But you tread not the trackway; +And shall the thing be spoiled? + +"Far cockcrows echo shrill, + The shadows are abating, + And I am waiting, waiting; +But O, you tarry still!" + + + +HER FATHER + + + +I met her, as we had privily planned, +Where passing feet beat busily: +She whispered: "Father is at hand! + He wished to walk with me." + +His presence as he joined us there +Banished our words of warmth away; +We felt, with cloudings of despair, + What Love must lose that day. + +Her crimson lips remained unkissed, +Our fingers kept no tender hold, +His lack of feeling made the tryst + Embarrassed, stiff, and cold. + +A cynic ghost then rose and said, +"But is his love for her so small +That, nigh to yours, it may be read + As of no worth at all? + +"You love her for her pink and white; +But what when their fresh splendours close? +His love will last her in despite + Of Time, and wrack, and foes." + +WEYMOUTH. + + + +AT WAKING + + + + When night was lifting, +And dawn had crept under its shade, + Amid cold clouds drifting +Dead-white as a corpse outlaid, + With a sudden scare + I seemed to behold + My Love in bare + Hard lines unfold. + + Yea, in a moment, +An insight that would not die + Killed her old endowment +Of charm that had capped all nigh, + Which vanished to none + Like the gilt of a cloud, + And showed her but one + Of the common crowd. + + She seemed but a sample +Of earth's poor average kind, + Lit up by no ample +Enrichments of mien or mind. + I covered my eyes + As to cover the thought, + And unrecognize + What the morn had taught. + + O vision appalling +When the one believed-in thing + Is seen falling, falling, +With all to which hope can cling. + Off: it is not true; + For it cannot be + That the prize I drew + Is a blank to me! + +WEYMOUTH, 1869. + + + +FOUR FOOTPRINTS + + + +Here are the tracks upon the sand +Where stood last evening she and I - +Pressed heart to heart and hand to hand; +The morning sun has baked them dry. + +I kissed her wet face--wet with rain, +For arid grief had burnt up tears, +While reached us as in sleeping pain +The distant gurgling of the weirs. + +"I have married him--yes; feel that ring; +'Tis a week ago that he put it on . . . +A dutiful daughter does this thing, +And resignation succeeds anon! + +"But that I body and soul was yours +Ere he'd possession, he'll never know. +He's a confident man. 'The husband scores,' +He says, 'in the long run' . . . Now, Dear, go!" + +I went. And to-day I pass the spot; +It is only a smart the more to endure; +And she whom I held is as though she were not, +For they have resumed their honeymoon tour. + + + +IN THE VAULTED WAY + + + +In the vaulted way, where the passage turned +To the shadowy corner that none could see, +You paused for our parting,--plaintively; +Though overnight had come words that burned +My fond frail happiness out of me. + +And then I kissed you,--despite my thought +That our spell must end when reflection came +On what you had deemed me, whose one long aim +Had been to serve you; that what I sought +Lay not in a heart that could breathe such blame. + +But yet I kissed you; whereon you again +As of old kissed me. Why, why was it so? +Do you cleave to me after that light-tongued blow? +If you scorned me at eventide, how love then? +The thing is dark, Dear. I do not know. + + + +IN THE MIND'S EYE + + + +That was once her casement, + And the taper nigh, +Shining from within there, + Beckoned, "Here am I!" + +Now, as then, I see her + Moving at the pane; +Ah; 'tis but her phantom + Borne within my brain! - + +Foremost in my vision + Everywhere goes she; +Change dissolves the landscapes, + She abides with me. + +Shape so sweet and shy, Dear, + Who can say thee nay? +Never once do I, Dear, + Wish thy ghost away. + + + +THE END OF THE EPISODE + + + + Indulge no more may we +In this sweet-bitter pastime: +The love-light shines the last time + Between you, Dear, and me. + + There shall remain no trace +Of what so closely tied us, +And blank as ere love eyed us + Will be our meeting-place. + + The flowers and thymy air, +Will they now miss our coming? +The dumbles thin their humming + To find we haunt not there? + + Though fervent was our vow, +Though ruddily ran our pleasure, +Bliss has fulfilled its measure, + And sees its sentence now. + + Ache deep; but make no moans: +Smile out; but stilly suffer: +The paths of love are rougher + Than thoroughfares of stones. + + + +THE SIGH + + + +Little head against my shoulder, +Shy at first, then somewhat bolder, + And up-eyed; +Till she, with a timid quaver, +Yielded to the kiss I gave her; + But, she sighed. + +That there mingled with her feeling +Some sad thought she was concealing + It implied. +- Not that she had ceased to love me, +None on earth she set above me; + But she sighed. + +She could not disguise a passion, +Dread, or doubt, in weakest fashion + If she tried: +Nothing seemed to hold us sundered, +Hearts were victors; so I wondered + Why she sighed. + +Afterwards I knew her throughly, +And she loved me staunchly, truly, + Till she died; +But she never made confession +Why, at that first sweet concession, + She had sighed. + +It was in our May, remember; +And though now I near November, + And abide +Till my appointed change, unfretting, +Sometimes I sit half regretting + That she sighed. + + + +"IN THE NIGHT SHE CAME" + + + +I told her when I left one day +That whatsoever weight of care +Might strain our love, Time's mere assault + Would work no changes there. +And in the night she came to me, + Toothless, and wan, and old, +With leaden concaves round her eyes, + And wrinkles manifold. + +I tremblingly exclaimed to her, +"O wherefore do you ghost me thus! +I have said that dull defacing Time + Will bring no dreads to us." +"And is that true of YOU?" she cried + In voice of troubled tune. +I faltered: "Well . . . I did not think + You would test me quite so soon!" + +She vanished with a curious smile, +Which told me, plainlier than by word, +That my staunch pledge could scarce beguile + The fear she had averred. +Her doubts then wrought their shape in me, + And when next day I paid +My due caress, we seemed to be + Divided by some shade. + + + +THE CONFORMERS + + + + Yes; we'll wed, my little fay, + And you shall write you mine, +And in a villa chastely gray + We'll house, and sleep, and dine. + But those night-screened, divine, + Stolen trysts of heretofore, +We of choice ecstasies and fine + Shall know no more. + + The formal faced cohue + Will then no more upbraid +With smiting smiles and whisperings two + Who have thrown less loves in shade. + We shall no more evade + The searching light of the sun, +Our game of passion will be played, + Our dreaming done. + + We shall not go in stealth + To rendezvous unknown, +But friends will ask me of your health, + And you about my own. + When we abide alone, + No leapings each to each, +But syllables in frigid tone + Of household speech. + + When down to dust we glide + Men will not say askance, +As now: "How all the country side + Rings with their mad romance!" + But as they graveward glance + Remark: "In them we lose +A worthy pair, who helped advance + Sound parish views." + + +THE DAWN AFTER THE DANCE + + + +Here is your parents' dwelling with its curtained windows telling +Of no thought of us within it or of our arrival here; +Their slumbers have been normal after one day more of formal +Matrimonial commonplace and household life's mechanic gear. + +I would be candid willingly, but dawn draws on so chillingly +As to render further cheerlessness intolerable now, +So I will not stand endeavouring to declare a day for severing, +But will clasp you just as always--just the olden love avow. + +Through serene and surly weather we have walked the ways together, +And this long night's dance this year's end eve now finishes the spell; +Yet we dreamt us but beginning a sweet sempiternal spinning +Of a cord we have spun to breaking--too intemperately, too well. + +Yes; last night we danced I know, Dear, as we did that year ago, Dear, +When a new strange bond between our days was formed, and felt, and heard; +Would that dancing were the worst thing from the latest to the first thing +That the faded year can charge us with; but what avails a word! + +That which makes man's love the lighter and the woman's burn no brighter +Came to pass with us inevitably while slipped the shortening year . . . +And there stands your father's dwelling with its blind bleak windows telling +That the vows of man and maid are frail as filmy gossamere. + +WEYMOUTH, 1869. + + + +THE SUN ON THE LETTER + + + +I drew the letter out, while gleamed +The sloping sun from under a roof +Of cloud whose verge rose visibly. + +The burning ball flung rays that seemed +Stretched like a warp without a woof +Across the levels of the lea + +To where I stood, and where they beamed +As brightly on the page of proof +That she had shown her false to me + +As if it had shown her true--had teemed +With passionate thought for my behoof +Expressed with their own ardency! + + + +THE NIGHT OF THE DANCE + + + +The cold moon hangs to the sky by its horn, + And centres its gaze on me; +The stars, like eyes in reverie, +Their westering as for a while forborne, + Quiz downward curiously. + +Old Robert draws the backbrand in, + The green logs steam and spit; +The half-awakened sparrows flit +From the riddled thatch; and owls begin + To whoo from the gable-slit. + +Yes; far and nigh things seem to know + Sweet scenes are impending here; +That all is prepared; that the hour is near +For welcomes, fellowships, and flow + Of sally, song, and cheer; + +That spigots are pulled and viols strung; + That soon will arise the sound +Of measures trod to tunes renowned; +That She will return in Love's low tongue + My vows as we wheel around. + + + +MISCONCEPTION + + + +I busied myself to find a sure + Snug hermitage +That should preserve my Love secure + From the world's rage; +Where no unseemly saturnals, + Or strident traffic-roars, +Or hum of intervolved cabals + Should echo at her doors. + +I laboured that the diurnal spin + Of vanities +Should not contrive to suck her in + By dark degrees, +And cunningly operate to blur + Sweet teachings I had begun; +And then I went full-heart to her + To expound the glad deeds done. + +She looked at me, and said thereto + With a pitying smile, +"And THIS is what has busied you + So long a while? +O poor exhausted one, I see + You have worn you old and thin +For naught! Those moils you fear for me + I find most pleasure in!" + + + +THE VOICE OF THE THORN + + + +I + +When the thorn on the down +Quivers naked and cold, +And the mid-aged and old +Pace the path there to town, +In these words dry and drear +It seems to them sighing: +"O winter is trying +To sojourners here!" + +II + +When it stands fully tressed +On a hot summer day, +And the ewes there astray +Find its shade a sweet rest, +By the breath of the breeze +It inquires of each farer: +"Who would not be sharer +Of shadow with these?" + +III + +But by day or by night, +And in winter or summer, +Should I be the comer +Along that lone height, +In its voicing to me +Only one speech is spoken: +"Here once was nigh broken +A heart, and by thee." + + + +FROM HER IN THE COUNTRY + + + +I thought and thought of thy crass clanging town +To folly, till convinced such dreams were ill, +I held my heart in bond, and tethered down +Fancy to where I was, by force of will. + +I said: How beautiful are these flowers, this wood, +One little bud is far more sweet to me +Than all man's urban shows; and then I stood +Urging new zest for bird, and bush, and tree; + +And strove to feel my nature brought it forth +Of instinct, or no rural maid was I; +But it was vain; for I could not see worth +Enough around to charm a midge or fly, + +And mused again on city din and sin, +Longing to madness I might move therein! + +16 W. P. V., 1866. + + + +HER CONFESSION + + + +As some bland soul, to whom a debtor says +"I'll now repay the amount I owe to you," +In inward gladness feigns forgetfulness +That such a payment ever was his due + +(His long thought notwithstanding), so did I +At our last meeting waive your proffered kiss +With quick divergent talk of scenery nigh, +By such suspension to enhance my bliss. + +And as his looks in consternation fall +When, gathering that the debt is lightly deemed, +The debtor makes as not to pay at all, +So faltered I, when your intention seemed + +Converted by my false uneagerness +To putting off for ever the caress. + +W. P. V., 1865-67. + + + +TO AN IMPERSONATOR OF ROSALIND + + + +Did he who drew her in the years ago - +Till now conceived creator of her grace - +With telescopic sight high natures know, +Discern remote in Time's untravelled space + +Your soft sweet mien, your gestures, as do we, +And with a copyist's hand but set them down, +Glowing yet more to dream our ecstasy +When his Original should be forthshown? + +For, kindled by that animated eye, +Whereto all fairnesses about thee brim, +And by thy tender tones, what wight can fly +The wild conviction welling up in him + +That he at length beholds woo, parley, plead, +The "very, very Rosalind" indeed! + +8 ADELPHI TERRACE, 21st April 1867. + + + +TO AN ACTRESS + + + +I read your name when you were strange to me, +Where it stood blazoned bold with many more; +I passed it vacantly, and did not see +Any great glory in the shape it wore. + +O cruelty, the insight barred me then! +Why did I not possess me with its sound, +And in its cadence catch and catch again +Your nature's essence floating therearound? + +Could THAT man be this I, unknowing you, +When now the knowing you is all of me, +And the old world of then is now a new, +And purpose no more what it used to be - +A thing of formal journeywork, but due +To springs that then were sealed up utterly? + +1867. + + + +THE MINUTE BEFORE MEETING + + + +The grey gaunt days dividing us in twain +Seemed hopeless hills my strength must faint to climb, +But they are gone; and now I would detain +The few clock-beats that part us; rein back Time, + +And live in close expectance never closed +In change for far expectance closed at last, +So harshly has expectance been imposed +On my long need while these slow blank months passed. + +And knowing that what is now about to be +Will all HAVE BEEN in O, so short a space! +I read beyond it my despondency +When more dividing months shall take its place, +Thereby denying to this hour of grace +A full-up measure of felicity. + +1871. + + + +HE ABJURES LOVE + + + +At last I put off love, + For twice ten years +The daysman of my thought, + And hope, and doing; +Being ashamed thereof, + And faint of fears +And desolations, wrought +In his pursuing, + +Since first in youthtime those + Disquietings +That heart-enslavement brings + To hale and hoary, +Became my housefellows, + And, fool and blind, +I turned from kith and kind + To give him glory. + +I was as children be + Who have no care; +I did not shrink or sigh, + I did not sicken; +But lo, Love beckoned me, + And I was bare, +And poor, and starved, and dry, + And fever-stricken. + +Too many times ablaze + With fatuous fires, +Enkindled by his wiles + To new embraces, +Did I, by wilful ways + And baseless ires, +Return the anxious smiles + Of friendly faces. + +No more will now rate I + The common rare, +The midnight drizzle dew, + The gray hour golden, +The wind a yearning cry, + The faulty fair, +Things dreamt, of comelier hue + Than things beholden! . . . + +--I speak as one who plumbs + Life's dim profound, +One who at length can sound + Clear views and certain. +But--after love what comes? + A scene that lours, +A few sad vacant hours, + And then, the Curtain. + +1883. + + + + +A SET OF COUNTRY SONGS + + + + +LET ME ENJOY +(MINOR KEY) + + + +I + +Let me enjoy the earth no less +Because the all-enacting Might +That fashioned forth its loveliness +Had other aims than my delight. + +II + +About my path there flits a Fair, +Who throws me not a word or sign; +I'll charm me with her ignoring air, +And laud the lips not meant for mine. + +III + +From manuscripts of moving song +Inspired by scenes and dreams unknown +I'll pour out raptures that belong +To others, as they were my own. + +IV + +And some day hence, towards Paradise, +And all its blest--if such should be - +I will lift glad, afar-off eyes, +Though it contain no place for me. + + + +AT CASTERBRIDGE FAIR + + + +I + +THE BALLAD-SINGER + +Sing, Ballad-singer, raise a hearty tune; +Make me forget that there was ever a one +I walked with in the meek light of the moon + When the day's work was done. + +Rhyme, Ballad-rhymer, start a country song; +Make me forget that she whom I loved well +Swore she would love me dearly, love me long, + Then--what I cannot tell! + +Sing, Ballad-singer, from your little book; +Make me forget those heart-breaks, achings, fears; +Make me forget her name, her sweet sweet look - + Make me forget her tears. + +II + +FORMER BEAUTIES + +These market-dames, mid-aged, with lips thin-drawn, + And tissues sere, +Are they the ones we loved in years agone, + And courted here? + +Are these the muslined pink young things to whom + We vowed and swore +In nooks on summer Sundays by the Froom, + Or Budmouth shore? + +Do they remember those gay tunes we trod + Clasped on the green; +Aye; trod till moonlight set on the beaten sod + A satin sheen? + +They must forget, forget! They cannot know + What once they were, +Or memory would transfigure them, and show + Them always fair. + +III + +AFTER THE CLUB-DANCE + +Black'on frowns east on Maidon, + And westward to the sea, +But on neither is his frown laden + With scorn, as his frown on me! + +At dawn my heart grew heavy, + I could not sip the wine, +I left the jocund bevy + And that young man o' mine. + +The roadside elms pass by me, - + Why do I sink with shame +When the birds a-perch there eye me? + They, too, have done the same! + +IV + +THE MARKET-GIRL + +Nobody took any notice of her as she stood on the causey kerb, +All eager to sell her honey and apples and bunches of garden herb; +And if she had offered to give her wares and herself with them too that day, +I doubt if a soul would have cared to take a bargain so choice away. + +But chancing to trace her sunburnt grace that morning as I passed nigh, +I went and I said "Poor maidy dear!--and will none of the people buy?" +And so it began; and soon we knew what the end of it all must be, +And I found that though no others had bid, a prize had been won by me. + +V + +THE INQUIRY + +And are ye one of Hermitage - +Of Hermitage, by Ivel Road, +And do ye know, in Hermitage +A thatch-roofed house where sengreens grow? +And does John Waywood live there still - +He of the name that there abode +When father hurdled on the hill + Some fifteen years ago? + +Does he now speak o' Patty Beech, +The Patty Beech he used to--see, +Or ask at all if Patty Beech +Is known or heard of out this way? +- Ask ever if she's living yet, +And where her present home may be, +And how she bears life's fag and fret + After so long a day? + +In years agone at Hermitage +This faded face was counted fair, +None fairer; and at Hermitage +We swore to wed when he should thrive. +But never a chance had he or I, +And waiting made his wish outwear, +And Time, that dooms man's love to die, + Preserves a maid's alive. + +VI + +A WIFE WAITS + +Will's at the dance in the Club-room below, + Where the tall liquor-cups foam; +I on the pavement up here by the Bow, + Wait, wait, to steady him home. + +Will and his partner are treading a tune, + Loving companions they be; +Willy, before we were married in June, + Said he loved no one but me; + +Said he would let his old pleasures all go + Ever to live with his Dear. +Will's at the dance in the Club-room below, + Shivering I wait for him here. + +NOTE.--"The Bow" (line 3). The old name for the curved corner by the cross- +streets in the middle of Casterbridge. + +VII + +AFTER THE FAIR + +The singers are gone from the Cornmarket-place + With their broadsheets of rhymes, +The street rings no longer in treble and bass + With their skits on the times, +And the Cross, lately thronged, is a dim naked space + That but echoes the stammering chimes. + +From Clock-corner steps, as each quarter ding-dongs, + Away the folk roam +By the "Hart" and Grey's Bridge into byways and "drongs," + Or across the ridged loam; +The younger ones shrilling the lately heard songs, + The old saying, "Would we were home." + +The shy-seeming maiden so mute in the fair + Now rattles and talks, +And that one who looked the most swaggering there + Grows sad as she walks, +And she who seemed eaten by cankering care + In statuesque sturdiness stalks. + +And midnight clears High Street of all but the ghosts + Of its buried burghees, +From the latest far back to those old Roman hosts + Whose remains one yet sees, +Who loved, laughed, and fought, hailed their friends, drank their toasts + At their meeting-times here, just as these! + +1902. + +NOTE.--"The Chimes" (line 6) will be listened for in vain here at midnight +now, having been abolished some years ago. + + + +THE DARK-EYED GENTLEMAN + + + +I + +I pitched my day's leazings in Crimmercrock Lane, +To tie up my garter and jog on again, +When a dear dark-eyed gentleman passed there and said, +In a way that made all o' me colour rose-red, + "What do I see - + O pretty knee!" +And he came and he tied up my garter for me. + +II + +'Twixt sunset and moonrise it was, I can mind: +Ah, 'tis easy to lose what we nevermore find! - +Of the dear stranger's home, of his name, I knew nought, +But I soon knew his nature and all that it brought. + Then bitterly + Sobbed I that he +Should ever have tied up my garter for me! + +III + +Yet now I've beside me a fine lissom lad, +And my slip's nigh forgot, and my days are not sad; +My own dearest joy is he, comrade, and friend, +He it is who safe-guards me, on him I depend; + No sorrow brings he, + And thankful I be +That his daddy once tied up my garter for me! + +NOTE.--"Leazings" (line 1).--Bundle of gleaned corn. + + + +TO CARREY CLAVEL + + + +You turn your back, you turn your back, + And never your face to me, +Alone you take your homeward track, + And scorn my company. + +What will you do when Charley's seen + Dewbeating down this way? +- You'll turn your back as now, you mean? + Nay, Carrey Clavel, nay! + +You'll see none's looking; put your lip + Up like a tulip, so; +And he will coll you, bend, and sip: + Yes, Carrey, yes; I know! + + + +THE ORPHANED OLD MAID + + + +I wanted to marry, but father said, "No - +'Tis weakness in women to give themselves so; +If you care for your freedom you'll listen to me, +Make a spouse in your pocket, and let the men be." + +I spake on't again and again: father cried, +"Why--if you go husbanding, where shall I bide? +For never a home's for me elsewhere than here!" +And I yielded; for father had ever been dear. + +But now father's gone, and I feel growing old, +And I'm lonely and poor in this house on the wold, +And my sweetheart that was found a partner elsewhere, +And nobody flings me a thought or a care. + + + +THE SPRING CALL + + + +Down Wessex way, when spring's a-shine, + The blackbird's "pret-ty de-urr!" +In Wessex accents marked as mine + Is heard afar and near. + +He flutes it strong, as if in song + No R's of feebler tone +Than his appear in "pretty dear," + Have blackbirds ever known. + +Yet they pipe "prattie deerh!" I glean, + Beneath a Scottish sky, +And "pehty de-aw!" amid the treen + Of Middlesex or nigh. + +While some folk say--perhaps in play - + Who know the Irish isle, +'Tis "purrity dare!" in treeland there + When songsters would beguile. + +Well: I'll say what the listening birds + Say, hearing "pret-ty de-urr!" - +However strangers sound such words, + That's how we sound them here. + +Yes, in this clime at pairing time, + As soon as eyes can see her +At dawn of day, the proper way + To call is "pret-ty de-urr!" + + + +JULIE-JANE + + + + Sing; how 'a would sing! + How 'a would raise the tune +When we rode in the waggon from harvesting + By the light o' the moon! + + Dance; how 'a would dance! + If a fiddlestring did but sound +She would hold out her coats, give a slanting glance, + And go round and round. + + Laugh; how 'a would laugh! + Her peony lips would part +As if none such a place for a lover to quaff + At the deeps of a heart. + + Julie, O girl of joy, + Soon, soon that lover he came. +Ah, yes; and gave thee a baby-boy, + But never his name . . . + + --Tolling for her, as you guess; + And the baby too . . . 'Tis well. +You knew her in maidhood likewise?--Yes, + That's her burial bell. + + "I suppose," with a laugh, she said, + "I should blush that I'm not a wife; +But how can it matter, so soon to be dead, + What one does in life!" + + When we sat making the mourning + By her death-bed side, said she, +"Dears, how can you keep from your lovers, adorning + In honour of me!" + + Bubbling and brightsome eyed! + But now--O never again. +She chose her bearers before she died + From her fancy-men. + +NOTE.--It is, or was, a common custom in Wessex, and probably other country +places, to prepare the mourning beside the death-bed, the dying person +sometimes assisting, who also selects his or her bearers on such occasions. + +"Coats" (line 7).--Old name for petticoats. + + + +NEWS FOR HER MOTHER + + + +I + + One mile more is + Where your door is + Mother mine! - + Harvest's coming, + Mills are strumming, + Apples fine, +And the cider made to-year will be as wine. + +II + + Yet, not viewing + What's a-doing + Here around + Is it thrills me, + And so fills me + That I bound +Like a ball or leaf or lamb along the ground. + +III + + Tremble not now + At your lot now, + Silly soul! + Hosts have sped them + Quick to wed them, + Great and small, +Since the first two sighing half-hearts made a whole. + +IV + + Yet I wonder, + Will it sunder + Her from me? + Will she guess that + I said "Yes,"--that + His I'd be, +Ere I thought she might not see him as I see! + +V + + Old brown gable, + Granary, stable, + Here you are! + O my mother, + Can another + Ever bar +Mine from thy heart, make thy nearness seem afar? + + + +THE FIDDLER + + + +The fiddler knows what's brewing + To the lilt of his lyric wiles: +The fiddler knows what rueing + Will come of this night's smiles! + +He sees couples join them for dancing, + And afterwards joining for life, +He sees them pay high for their prancing + By a welter of wedded strife. + +He twangs: "Music hails from the devil, + Though vaunted to come from heaven, +For it makes people do at a revel + What multiplies sins by seven. + +"There's many a heart now mangled, + And waiting its time to go, +Whose tendrils were first entangled + By my sweet viol and bow!" + + + +THE HUSBAND'S VIEW + + + +"Can anything avail +Beldame, for my hid grief? - +Listen: I'll tell the tale, +It may bring faint relief! - + +"I came where I was not known, +In hope to flee my sin; +And walking forth alone +A young man said, 'Good e'en.' + +"In gentle voice and true +He asked to marry me; +'You only--only you +Fulfil my dream!' said he. + +"We married o' Monday morn, +In the month of hay and flowers; +My cares were nigh forsworn, +And perfect love was ours. + +"But ere the days are long +Untimely fruit will show; +My Love keeps up his song, +Undreaming it is so. + +"And I awake in the night, +And think of months gone by, +And of that cause of flight +Hidden from my Love's eye. + +"Discovery borders near, +And then! . . . But something stirred? - +My husband--he is here! +Heaven--has he overheard?" - + +"Yes; I have heard, sweet Nan; +I have known it all the time. +I am not a particular man; +Misfortunes are no crime: + +"And what with our serious need +Of sons for soldiering, +That accident, indeed, +To maids, is a useful thing!" + + + +ROSE-ANN + + + +Why didn't you say you was promised, Rose-Ann? + Why didn't you name it to me, +Ere ever you tempted me hither, Rose-Ann, + So often, so wearifully? + +O why did you let me be near 'ee, Rose-Ann, + Talking things about wedlock so free, +And never by nod or by whisper, Rose-Ann, + Give a hint that it wasn't to be? + +Down home I was raising a flock of stock ewes, + Cocks and hens, and wee chickens by scores, +And lavendered linen all ready to use, + A-dreaming that they would be yours. + +Mother said: "She's a sport-making maiden, my son"; + And a pretty sharp quarrel had we; +O why do you prove by this wrong you have done + That I saw not what mother could see? + +Never once did you say you was promised, Rose-Ann, + Never once did I dream it to be; +And it cuts to the heart to be treated, Rose-Ann, + As you in your scorning treat me! + + + +THE HOMECOMING + + + +Gruffly growled the wind on Toller downland broad and bare, +And lonesome was the house, and dark; and few came there. + +"Now don't ye rub your eyes so red; we're home and have no cares; +Here's a skimmer-cake for supper, peckled onions, and some pears; +I've got a little keg o' summat strong, too, under stairs: +- What, slight your husband's victuals? Other brides can tackle theirs!" + +The wind of winter mooed and mouthed their chimney like a horn, +And round the house and past the house 'twas leafless and lorn. + +"But my dear and tender poppet, then, how came ye to agree +In Ivel church this morning? Sure, there-right you married me!" +- "Hoo-hoo!--I don't know--I forgot how strange and far 'twould be, +An' I wish I was at home again with dear daddee!" + +Gruffly growled the wind on Toller downland broad and bare, +And lonesome was the house and dark; and few came there. + +"I didn't think such furniture as this was all you'd own, +And great black beams for ceiling, and a floor o' wretched stone, +And nasty pewter platters, horrid forks of steel and bone, +And a monstrous crock in chimney. 'Twas to me quite unbeknown!" + +Rattle rattle went the door; down flapped a cloud of smoke, +As shifting north the wicked wind assayed a smarter stroke. + +"Now sit ye by the fire, poppet; put yourself at ease: +And keep your little thumb out of your mouth, dear, please! +And I'll sing to 'ee a pretty song of lovely flowers and bees, +And happy lovers taking walks within a grove o' trees." + +Gruffly growled the wind on Toller Down, so bleak and bare, +And lonesome was the house, and dark; and few came there. + +"Now, don't ye gnaw your handkercher; 'twill hurt your little tongue, +And if you do feel spitish, 'tis because ye are over young; +But you'll be getting older, like us all, ere very long, +And you'll see me as I am--a man who never did 'ee wrong." + +Straight from Whit'sheet Hill to Benvill Lane the blusters pass, +Hitting hedges, milestones, handposts, trees, and tufts of grass. + +"Well, had I only known, my dear, that this was how you'd be, +I'd have married her of riper years that was so fond of me. +But since I can't, I've half a mind to run away to sea, +And leave 'ee to go barefoot to your d-d daddee!" + +Up one wall and down the other--past each window-pane - +Prance the gusts, and then away down Crimmercrock's long lane. + +"I--I--don't know what to say to't, since your wife I've vowed to be; +And as 'tis done, I s'pose here I must bide --poor me! +Aye--as you are ki-ki-kind, I'll try to live along with 'ee, +Although I'd fain have stayed at home with dear daddee!" + +Gruffly growled the wind on Toller Down, so bleak and bare, +And lonesome was the house and dark; and few came there. + +"That's right, my Heart! And though on haunted Toller Down we be, +And the wind swears things in chimley, we'll to supper merrily! +So don't ye tap your shoe so pettish-like; but smile at me, +And ye'll soon forget to sock and sigh for dear daddee!" + +December 1901. + + + + +PIECES OCCASIONAL AND VARIOUS + + + + +A CHURCH ROMANCE +(MELLSTOCK circa 1835) + + + +She turned in the high pew, until her sight +Swept the west gallery, and caught its row +Of music-men with viol, book, and bow +Against the sinking sad tower-window light. + +She turned again; and in her pride's despite +One strenuous viol's inspirer seemed to throw +A message from his string to her below, +Which said: "I claim thee as my own forthright!" + +Thus their hearts' bond began, in due time signed. +And long years thence, when Age had scared Romance, +At some old attitude of his or glance +That gallery-scene would break upon her mind, +With him as minstrel, ardent, young, and trim, +Bowing "New Sabbath" or "Mount Ephraim." + + + +THE RASH BRIDE +AN EXPERIENCE OF THE MELLSTOCK QUIRE + + + +I + +We Christmas-carolled down the Vale, and up the Vale, and round the Vale, +We played and sang that night as we were yearly wont to do - +A carol in a minor key, a carol in the major D, +Then at each house: "Good wishes: many Christmas joys to you!" + +II + +Next, to the widow's John and I and all the rest drew on. And I +Discerned that John could hardly hold the tongue of him for joy. +The widow was a sweet young thing whom John was bent on marrying, +And quiring at her casement seemed romantic to the boy. + +III + +"She'll make reply, I trust," said he, "to our salute? She must!" said he, +"And then I will accost her gently--much to her surprise! - +For knowing not I am with you here, when I speak up and call her dear +A tenderness will fill her voice, a bashfulness her eyes. + +IV + +So, by her window-square we stood; ay, with our lanterns there we stood, +And he along with us,--not singing, waiting for a sign; +And when we'd quired her carols three a light was lit and out looked she, +A shawl about her bedgown, and her colour red as wine. + +V + +And sweetly then she bowed her thanks, and smiled, and spoke aloud her +thanks; +When lo, behind her back there, in the room, a man appeared. +I knew him--one from Woolcomb way--Giles Swetman--honest as the day, +But eager, hasty; and I felt that some strange trouble neared. + +VI + +"How comes he there? . . . Suppose," said we, "she's wed of late! Who +knows?" said we. +- "She married yester-morning--only mother yet has known +The secret o't!" shrilled one small boy. "But now I've told, let's wish 'em +joy!" +A heavy fall aroused us: John had gone down like a stone. + +VII + +We rushed to him and caught him round, and lifted him, and brought him +round, +When, hearing something wrong had happened, oped the window she: +"Has one of you fallen ill?" she asked, "by these night labours overtasked?" +None answered. That she'd done poor John a cruel turn felt we. + +VIII + +Till up spoke Michael: "Fie, young dame! You've broke your promise, sly +young dame, +By forming this new tie, young dame, and jilting John so true, +Who trudged to-night to sing to 'ee because he thought he'd bring to 'ee +Good wishes as your coming spouse. May ye such trifling rue!" + +IX + +Her man had said no word at all; but being behind had heard it all, +And now cried: "Neighbours, on my soul I knew not 'twas like this!" +And then to her: "If I had known you'd had in tow not me alone, +No wife should you have been of mine. It is a dear bought bliss!" + +X + +She changed death-white, and heaved a cry: we'd never heard so grieved a +cry +As came from her at this from him: heart-broken quite seemed she; +And suddenly, as we looked on, she turned, and rushed; and she was gone, +Whither, her husband, following after, knew not; nor knew we. + +XI + +We searched till dawn about the house; within the house, without the house, +We searched among the laurel boughs that grew beneath the wall, +And then among the crocks and things, and stores for winter junketings, +In linhay, loft, and dairy; but we found her not at all. + +XII + +Then John rushed in: "O friends," he said, "hear this, this, this!" and +bends his head: +"I've--searched round by the--WELL, and find the cover open wide! +I am fearful that--I can't say what . . . Bring lanterns, and some cords to +knot." +We did so, and we went and stood the deep dark hole beside. + +XIII + +And then they, ropes in hand, and I--ay, John, and all the band, and I +Let down a lantern to the depths--some hundred feet and more; +It glimmered like a fog-dimmed star; and there, beside its light, afar, +White drapery floated, and we knew the meaning that it bore. + +XIV + +The rest is naught . . . We buried her o' Sunday. Neighbours carried her; +And Swetman--he who'd married her--now miserablest of men, +Walked mourning first; and then walked John; just quivering, but composed +anon; +And we the quire formed round the grave, as was the custom then. + +XV + +Our old bass player, as I recall--his white hair blown--but why recall! - +His viol upstrapped, bent figure--doomed to follow her full soon - +Stood bowing, pale and tremulous; and next to him the rest of us . . . +We sang the Ninetieth Psalm to her--set to Saint Stephen's tune. + + + +THE DEAD QUIRE + + + +I + +Beside the Mead of Memories, +Where Church-way mounts to Moaning Hill, +The sad man sighed his phantasies: + He seems to sigh them still. + +II + +"'Twas the Birth-tide Eve, and the hamleteers +Made merry with ancient Mellstock zest, +But the Mellstock quire of former years + Had entered into rest. + +III + +"Old Dewy lay by the gaunt yew tree, +And Reuben and Michael a pace behind, +And Bowman with his family + By the wall that the ivies bind. + +IV + +"The singers had followed one by one, +Treble, and tenor, and thorough-bass; +And the worm that wasteth had begun + To mine their mouldering place. + +V + +"For two-score years, ere Christ-day light, +Mellstock had throbbed to strains from these; +But now there echoed on the night + No Christmas harmonies. + +VI + +"Three meadows off, at a dormered inn, +The youth had gathered in high carouse, +And, ranged on settles, some therein + Had drunk them to a drowse. + +VII + +"Loud, lively, reckless, some had grown, +Each dandling on his jigging knee +Eliza, Dolly, Nance, or Joan - + Livers in levity. + +VIII + +"The taper flames and hearthfire shine +Grew smoke-hazed to a lurid light, +And songs on subjects not divine + Were warbled forth that night. + +IX + +"Yet many were sons and grandsons here +Of those who, on such eves gone by, +At that still hour had throated clear + Their anthems to the sky. + +X + +"The clock belled midnight; and ere long +One shouted, 'Now 'tis Christmas morn; +Here's to our women old and young, + And to John Barleycorn!' + +XI + +"They drink the toast and shout again: +The pewter-ware rings back the boom, +And for a breath-while follows then + A silence in the room. + +XII + +"When nigh without, as in old days, +The ancient quire of voice and string +Seemed singing words of prayer and praise + As they had used to sing: + +XIII + +"'While shepherds watch'd their flocks by night,' - +Thus swells the long familiar sound +In many a quaint symphonic flight - + To, 'Glory shone around.' + +XIV + +"The sons defined their fathers' tones, +The widow his whom she had wed, +And others in the minor moans + The viols of the dead. + +XV + +"Something supernal has the sound +As verse by verse the strain proceeds, +And stilly staring on the ground + Each roysterer holds and heeds. + +XVI + +"Towards its chorded closing bar +Plaintively, thinly, waned the hymn, +Yet lingered, like the notes afar + Of banded seraphim. + +XVII + +"With brows abashed, and reverent tread, +The hearkeners sought the tavern door: +But nothing, save wan moonlight, spread + The empty highway o'er. + +XVIII + +"While on their hearing fixed and tense +The aerial music seemed to sink, +As it were gently moving thence + Along the river brink. + +XIX + +"Then did the Quick pursue the Dead +By crystal Froom that crinkles there; +And still the viewless quire ahead + Voiced the old holy air. + +XX + +"By Bank-walk wicket, brightly bleached, +It passed, and 'twixt the hedges twain, +Dogged by the living; till it reached + The bottom of Church Lane. + +XXI + +"There, at the turning, it was heard +Drawing to where the churchyard lay: +But when they followed thitherward + It smalled, and died away. + +XXII + +"Each headstone of the quire, each mound, +Confronted them beneath the moon; +But no more floated therearound + That ancient Birth-night tune. + +XXIII + +"There Dewy lay by the gaunt yew tree, +There Reuben and Michael, a pace behind, +And Bowman with his family + By the wall that the ivies bind . . . + +XXIV + +"As from a dream each sobered son +Awoke, and musing reached his door: +'Twas said that of them all, not one + Sat in a tavern more." + +XXV + +- The sad man ceased; and ceased to heed +His listener, and crossed the leaze +From Moaning Hill towards the mead - + The Mead of Memories. + +1897. + + + +THE CHRISTENING + + + +Whose child is this they bring + Into the aisle? - +At so superb a thing +The congregation smile +And turn their heads awhile. + +Its eyes are blue and bright, + Its cheeks like rose; +Its simple robes unite +Whitest of calicoes +With lawn, and satin bows. + +A pride in the human race + At this paragon +Of mortals, lights each face +While the old rite goes on; +But ah, they are shocked anon. + +What girl is she who peeps + From the gallery stair, +Smiles palely, redly weeps, +With feverish furtive air +As though not fitly there? + +"I am the baby's mother; + This gem of the race +The decent fain would smother, +And for my deep disgrace +I am bidden to leave the place." + +"Where is the baby's father?" - + "In the woods afar. +He says there is none he'd rather +Meet under moon or star +Than me, of all that are. + +"To clasp me in lovelike weather, + Wish fixing when, +He says: To be together +At will, just now and then, +Makes him the blest of men; + +"But chained and doomed for life + To slovening +As vulgar man and wife, +He says, is another thing: +Yea: sweet Love's sepulchring!" + +1904. + + + +A DREAM QUESTION + + + +"It shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine." +Micah iii. 6. + +I asked the Lord: "Sire, is this true +Which hosts of theologians hold, +That when we creatures censure you +For shaping griefs and ails untold +(Deeming them punishments undue) +You rage, as Moses wrote of old? + +When we exclaim: 'Beneficent +He is not, for he orders pain, +Or, if so, not omnipotent: +To a mere child the thing is plain!' +Those who profess to represent +You, cry out: 'Impious and profane!'" + +He: "Save me from my friends, who deem +That I care what my creatures say! +Mouth as you list: sneer, rail, blaspheme, +O manikin, the livelong day, +Not one grief-groan or pleasure-gleam +Will you increase or take away. + +"Why things are thus, whoso derides, +May well remain my secret still . . . +A fourth dimension, say the guides, +To matter is conceivable. +Think some such mystery resides +Within the ethic of my will." + + + +BY THE BARROWS + + + +Not far from Mellstock--so tradition saith - +Where barrows, bulging as they bosoms were +Of Multimammia stretched supinely there, +Catch night and noon the tempest's wanton breath, + +A battle, desperate doubtless unto death, +Was one time fought. The outlook, lone and bare, +The towering hawk and passing raven share, +And all the upland round is called "The He'th." + +Here once a woman, in our modern age, +Fought singlehandedly to shield a child - +One not her own--from a man's senseless rage. +And to my mind no patriots' bones there piled +So consecrate the silence as her deed +Of stoic and devoted self-unheed. + + + +A WIFE AND ANOTHER + + + + "War ends, and he's returning + Early; yea, + The evening next to-morrow's!" - + --This I say +To her, whom I suspiciously survey, + + Holding my husband's letter + To her view. - + She glanced at it but lightly, + And I knew +That one from him that day had reached her too. + + There was no time for scruple; + Secretly + I filched her missive, conned it, + Learnt that he +Would lodge with her ere he came home to me. + + To reach the port before her, + And, unscanned, + There wait to intercept them + Soon I planned: +That, in her stead, _I_ might before him stand. + + So purposed, so effected; + At the inn + Assigned, I found her hidden:- + O that sin +Should bear what she bore when I entered in! + + Her heavy lids grew laden + With despairs, + Her lips made soundless movements + Unawares, +While I peered at the chamber hired as theirs. + + And as beside its doorway, + Deadly hued, + One inside, one withoutside + We two stood, +He came--my husband--as she knew he would. + + No pleasurable triumph + Was that sight! + The ghastly disappointment + Broke them quite. +What love was theirs, to move them with such might! + + "Madam, forgive me!" said she, + Sorrow bent, + "A child--I soon shall bear him . . . + Yes--I meant +To tell you--that he won me ere he went." + + Then, as it were, within me + Something snapped, + As if my soul had largened: + Conscience-capped, +I saw myself the snarer--them the trapped. + + "My hate dies, and I promise, + Grace-beguiled," + I said, "to care for you, be + Reconciled; +And cherish, and take interest in the child." + + Without more words I pressed him + Through the door + Within which she stood, powerless + To say more, +And closed it on them, and downstairward bore. + + "He joins his wife--my sister," + I, below, + Remarked in going--lightly - + Even as though +All had come right, and we had arranged it so . . . + + As I, my road retracing, + Left them free, + The night alone embracing + Childless me, +I held I had not stirred God wrothfully. + + + +THE ROMAN ROAD + + + +The Roman Road runs straight and bare +As the pale parting-line in hair +Across the heath. And thoughtful men +Contrast its days of Now and Then, +And delve, and measure, and compare; + +Visioning on the vacant air +Helmed legionaries, who proudly rear +The Eagle, as they pace again + The Roman Road. + +But no tall brass-helmed legionnaire +Haunts it for me. Uprises there +A mother's form upon my ken, +Guiding my infant steps, as when +We walked that ancient thoroughfare, + The Roman Road. + + + +THE VAMPIRINE FAIR + + + +Gilbert had sailed to India's shore, + And I was all alone: +My lord came in at my open door + And said, "O fairest one!" + +He leant upon the slant bureau, + And sighed, "I am sick for thee!" +"My lord," said I, "pray speak not so, + Since wedded wife I be." + +Leaning upon the slant bureau, + Bitter his next words came: +"So much I know; and likewise know + My love burns on the same! + +"But since you thrust my love away, + And since it knows no cure, +I must live out as best I may + The ache that I endure." + +When Michaelmas browned the nether Coomb, + And Wingreen Hill above, +And made the hollyhocks rags of bloom, + My lord grew ill of love. + +My lord grew ill with love for me; + Gilbert was far from port; +And--so it was--that time did see + Me housed at Manor Court. + +About the bowers of Manor Court + The primrose pushed its head +When, on a day at last, report + Arrived of him I had wed. + +"Gilbert, my lord, is homeward bound, + His sloop is drawing near, +What shall I do when I am found + Not in his house but here?" + +"O I will heal the injuries + I've done to him and thee. +I'll give him means to live at ease + Afar from Shastonb'ry." + +When Gilbert came we both took thought: + "Since comfort and good cheer," +Said he, "So readily are bought, + He's welcome to thee, Dear." + +So when my lord flung liberally + His gold in Gilbert's hands, +I coaxed and got my brothers three + Made stewards of his lands. + +And then I coaxed him to install + My other kith and kin, +With aim to benefit them all + Before his love ran thin. + +And next I craved to be possessed + Of plate and jewels rare. +He groaned: "You give me, Love, no rest, + Take all the law will spare!" + +And so in course of years my wealth + Became a goodly hoard, +My steward brethren, too, by stealth + Had each a fortune stored. + +Thereafter in the gloom he'd walk, + And by and by began +To say aloud in absent talk, + "I am a ruined man! - + +"I hardly could have thought," he said, + "When first I looked on thee, +That one so soft, so rosy red, + Could thus have beggared me!" + +Seeing his fair estates in pawn, + And him in such decline, +I knew that his domain had gone + To lift up me and mine. + +Next month upon a Sunday morn + A gunshot sounded nigh: +By his own hand my lordly born + Had doomed himself to die. + +"Live, my dear lord, and much of thine + Shall be restored to thee!" +He smiled, and said 'twixt word and sign, + "Alas--that cannot be!" + +And while I searched his cabinet + For letters, keys, or will, +'Twas touching that his gaze was set + With love upon me still. + +And when I burnt each document + Before his dying eyes, +'Twas sweet that he did not resent + My fear of compromise. + +The steeple-cock gleamed golden when + I watched his spirit go: +And I became repentant then + That I had wrecked him so. + +Three weeks at least had come and gone, + With many a saddened word, +Before I wrote to Gilbert on + The stroke that so had stirred. + +And having worn a mournful gown, + I joined, in decent while, +My husband at a dashing town + To live in dashing style. + +Yet though I now enjoy my fling, + And dine and dance and drive, +I'd give my prettiest emerald ring + To see my lord alive. + +And when the meet on hunting-days + Is near his churchyard home, +I leave my bantering beaux to place + A flower upon his tomb; + +And sometimes say: "Perhaps too late + The saints in Heaven deplore +That tender time when, moved by Fate, + He darked my cottage door." + + + +THE REMINDER + + + +I + +While I watch the Christmas blaze +Paint the room with ruddy rays, +Something makes my vision glide +To the frosty scene outside. + +There, to reach a rotting berry, +Toils a thrush,--constrained to very +Dregs of food by sharp distress, +Taking such with thankfulness. + +Why, O starving bird, when I +One day's joy would justify, +And put misery out of view, +Do you make me notice you! + + + +THE RAMBLER + + + +I do not see the hills around, +Nor mark the tints the copses wear; +I do not note the grassy ground +And constellated daisies there. + +I hear not the contralto note +Of cuckoos hid on either hand, +The whirr that shakes the nighthawk's throat +When eve's brown awning hoods the land. + +Some say each songster, tree, and mead - +All eloquent of love divine - +Receives their constant careful heed: +Such keen appraisement is not mine. + +The tones around me that I hear, +The aspects, meanings, shapes I see, +Are those far back ones missed when near, +And now perceived too late by me! + + + +NIGHT IN THE OLD HOME + + + +When the wasting embers redden the chimney-breast, +And Life's bare pathway looms like a desert track to me, +And from hall and parlour the living have gone to their rest, +My perished people who housed them here come back to me. + +They come and seat them around in their mouldy places, +Now and then bending towards me a glance of wistfulness, +A strange upbraiding smile upon all their faces, +And in the bearing of each a passive tristfulness. + +"Do you uphold me, lingering and languishing here, +A pale late plant of your once strong stock?" I say to them; +"A thinker of crooked thoughts upon Life in the sere, +And on That which consigns men to night after showing the day to them?" + +"--O let be the Wherefore! We fevered our years not thus: +Take of Life what it grants, without question!" they answer me seemingly. +"Enjoy, suffer, wait: spread the table here freely like us, +And, satisfied, placid, unfretting, watch Time away beamingly!" + + + +AFTER THE LAST BREATH +(J. H. 1813-1904) + + + +There's no more to be done, or feared, or hoped; +None now need watch, speak low, and list, and tire; +No irksome crease outsmoothed, no pillow sloped + Does she require. + +Blankly we gaze. We are free to go or stay; +Our morrow's anxious plans have missed their aim; +Whether we leave to-night or wait till day + Counts as the same. + +The lettered vessels of medicaments +Seem asking wherefore we have set them here; +Each palliative its silly face presents + As useless gear. + +And yet we feel that something savours well; +We note a numb relief withheld before; +Our well-beloved is prisoner in the cell + Of Time no more. + +We see by littles now the deft achievement +Whereby she has escaped the Wrongers all, +In view of which our momentary bereavement + Outshapes but small. + +1904. + + + +IN CHILDBED + + + + In the middle of the night +Mother's spirit came and spoke to me, + Looking weariful and white - +As 'twere untimely news she broke to me. + + "O my daughter, joyed are you +To own the weetless child you mother there; + 'Men may search the wide world through,' +You think, 'nor find so fair another there!' + + "Dear, this midnight time unwombs +Thousands just as rare and beautiful; + Thousands whom High Heaven foredooms +To be as bright, as good, as dutiful. + + "Source of ecstatic hopes and fears +And innocent maternal vanity, + Your fond exploit but shapes for tears +New thoroughfares in sad humanity. + + "Yet as you dream, so dreamt I +When Life stretched forth its morning ray to me; + Other views for by and by!" . . . +Such strange things did mother say to me. + + + +THE PINE PLANTERS +(MARTY SOUTH'S REVERIE) + + + +I + +We work here together + In blast and breeze; +He fills the earth in, + I hold the trees. + +He does not notice + That what I do +Keeps me from moving + And chills me through. + +He has seen one fairer + I feel by his eye, +Which skims me as though + I were not by. + +And since she passed here + He scarce has known +But that the woodland + Holds him alone. + +I have worked here with him + Since morning shine, +He busy with his thoughts + And I with mine. + +I have helped him so many, + So many days, +But never win any + Small word of praise! + +Shall I not sigh to him + That I work on +Glad to be nigh to him + Though hope is gone? + +Nay, though he never + Knew love like mine, +I'll bear it ever + And make no sign! + +II + +From the bundle at hand here + I take each tree, +And set it to stand, here + Always to be; +When, in a second, + As if from fear +Of Life unreckoned + Beginning here, +It starts a sighing + Through day and night, +Though while there lying + 'Twas voiceless quite. + +It will sigh in the morning, + Will sigh at noon, +At the winter's warning, + In wafts of June; +Grieving that never + Kind Fate decreed +It should for ever + Remain a seed, +And shun the welter + Of things without, +Unneeding shelter + From storm and drought. + +Thus, all unknowing + For whom or what +We set it growing + In this bleak spot, +It still will grieve here + Throughout its time, +Unable to leave here, + Or change its clime; +Or tell the story + Of us to-day +When, halt and hoary, + We pass away. + + + +THE DEAR + + + +I plodded to Fairmile Hill-top, where + A maiden one fain would guard +From every hazard and every care + Advanced on the roadside sward. + +I wondered how succeeding suns + Would shape her wayfarings, +And wished some Power might take such ones + Under Its warding wings. + +The busy breeze came up the hill + And smartened her cheek to red, +And frizzled her hair to a haze. With a will + "Good-morning, my Dear!" I said. + +She glanced from me to the far-off gray, + And, with proud severity, +"Good-morning to you--though I may say + I am not YOUR Dear," quoth she: + +"For I am the Dear of one not here - + One far from his native land!" - +And she passed me by; and I did not try + To make her understand. + +1901 + + + +ONE WE KNEW +(M. H. 1772-1857) + + + +She told how they used to form for the country dances - + "The Triumph," "The New-rigged Ship" - +To the light of the guttering wax in the panelled manses, + And in cots to the blink of a dip. + +She spoke of the wild "poussetting" and "allemanding" + On carpet, on oak, and on sod; +And the two long rows of ladies and gentlemen standing, + And the figures the couples trod. + +She showed us the spot where the maypole was yearly planted, + And where the bandsmen stood +While breeched and kerchiefed partners whirled, and panted + To choose each other for good. + +She told of that far-back day when they learnt astounded + Of the death of the King of France: +Of the Terror; and then of Bonaparte's unbounded + Ambition and arrogance. + +Of how his threats woke warlike preparations + Along the southern strand, +And how each night brought tremors and trepidations + Lest morning should see him land. + +She said she had often heard the gibbet creaking + As it swayed in the lightning flash, +Had caught from the neighbouring town a small child's shrieking + At the cart-tail under the lash . . . + +With cap-framed face and long gaze into the embers - + We seated around her knees - +She would dwell on such dead themes, not as one who remembers, + But rather as one who sees. + +She seemed one left behind of a band gone distant + So far that no tongue could hail: +Past things retold were to her as things existent, + Things present but as a tale. + +May 20, 1902. + + + +SHE HEARS THE STORM + + + +There was a time in former years - + While my roof-tree was his - +When I should have been distressed by fears + At such a night as this! + +I should have murmured anxiously, + "The pricking rain strikes cold; +His road is bare of hedge or tree, + And he is getting old." + +But now the fitful chimney-roar, + The drone of Thorncombe trees, +The Froom in flood upon the moor, + The mud of Mellstock Leaze, + +The candle slanting sooty wick'd, + The thuds upon the thatch, +The eaves-drops on the window flicked, + The clacking garden-hatch, + +And what they mean to wayfarers, + I scarcely heed or mind; +He has won that storm-tight roof of hers + Which Earth grants all her kind. + + + +A WET NIGHT + + + +I pace along, the rain-shafts riddling me, +Mile after mile out by the moorland way, +And up the hill, and through the ewe-leaze gray +Into the lane, and round the corner tree; + +Where, as my clothing clams me, mire-bestarred, +And the enfeebled light dies out of day, +Leaving the liquid shades to reign, I say, +"This is a hardship to be calendared!" + +Yet sires of mine now perished and forgot, +When worse beset, ere roads were shapen here, +And night and storm were foes indeed to fear, +Times numberless have trudged across this spot +In sturdy muteness on their strenuous lot, +And taking all such toils as trifles mere. + + + +BEFORE LIFE AND AFTER + + + + A time there was--as one may guess +And as, indeed, earth's testimonies tell - + Before the birth of consciousness, + When all went well. + + None suffered sickness, love, or loss, +None knew regret, starved hope, or heart-burnings; + None cared whatever crash or cross + Brought wrack to things. + + If something ceased, no tongue bewailed, +If something winced and waned, no heart was wrung; + If brightness dimmed, and dark prevailed, + No sense was stung. + + But the disease of feeling germed, +And primal rightness took the tinct of wrong; + Ere nescience shall be reaffirmed + How long, how long? + + + +NEW YEAR'S EVE + + + +"I have finished another year," said God, + "In grey, green, white, and brown; +I have strewn the leaf upon the sod, +Sealed up the worm within the clod, + And let the last sun down." + +"And what's the good of it?" I said. + "What reasons made you call +From formless void this earth we tread, +When nine-and-ninety can be read + Why nought should be at all? + +"Yea, Sire; why shaped you us, 'who in + This tabernacle groan' - +If ever a joy be found herein, +Such joy no man had wished to win + If he had never known!" + +Then he: "My labours--logicless - + You may explain; not I: +Sense-sealed I have wrought, without a guess +That I evolved a Consciousness + To ask for reasons why. + +"Strange that ephemeral creatures who + By my own ordering are, +Should see the shortness of my view, +Use ethic tests I never knew, + Or made provision for!" + +He sank to raptness as of yore, + And opening New Year's Day +Wove it by rote as theretofore, +And went on working evermore + In his unweeting way. + +1906. + + + +GOD'S EDUCATION + + + +I saw him steal the light away + That haunted in her eye: +It went so gently none could say +More than that it was there one day + And missing by-and-by. + +I watched her longer, and he stole + Her lily tincts and rose; +All her young sprightliness of soul +Next fell beneath his cold control, + And disappeared like those. + +I asked: "Why do you serve her so? + Do you, for some glad day, +Hoard these her sweets--?" He said, "O no, +They charm not me; I bid Time throw + Them carelessly away." + +Said I: "We call that cruelty - + We, your poor mortal kind." +He mused. "The thought is new to me. +Forsooth, though I men's master be, + Theirs is the teaching mind!" + + + +TO SINCERITY + + + +O sweet sincerity! - +Where modern methods be +What scope for thine and thee? + +Life may be sad past saying, +Its greens for ever graying, +Its faiths to dust decaying; + +And youth may have foreknown it, +And riper seasons shown it, +But custom cries: "Disown it: + +"Say ye rejoice, though grieving, +Believe, while unbelieving, +Behold, without perceiving!" + +- Yet, would men look at true things, +And unilluded view things, +And count to bear undue things, + +The real might mend the seeming, +Facts better their foredeeming, +And Life its disesteeming. + +February 1899. + + + +PANTHERA + + + +(For other forms of this legend--first met with in the second century--see +Origen contra Celsum; the Talmud; Sepher Toldoth Jeschu; quoted fragments of +lost Apocryphal gospels; Strauss, Haeckel; etc.) + +Yea, as I sit here, crutched, and cricked, and bent, +I think of Panthera, who underwent +Much from insidious aches in his decline; +But his aches were not radical like mine; +They were the twinges of old wounds--the feel +Of the hand he had lost, shorn by barbarian steel, +Which came back, so he said, at a change in the air, +Fingers and all, as if it still were there. +My pains are otherwise: upclosing cramps +And stiffened tendons from this country's damps, +Where Panthera was never commandant. - +The Fates sent him by way of the Levant. + He had been blithe in his young manhood's time, +And as centurion carried well his prime. +In Ethiop, Araby, climes fair and fell, +He had seen service and had borne him well. +Nought shook him then: he was serene as brave; +Yet later knew some shocks, and would grow grave +When pondering them; shocks less of corporal kind +Than phantom-like, that disarranged his mind; +And it was in the way of warning me +(By much his junior) against levity +That he recounted them; and one in chief +Panthera loved to set in bold relief. + + This was a tragedy of his Eastern days, +Personal in touch--though I have sometimes thought +That touch a possible delusion--wrought +Of half-conviction carried to a craze - +His mind at last being stressed by ails and age:- +Yet his good faith thereon I well could wage. + + I had said it long had been a wish with me +That I might leave a scion--some small tree +As channel for my sap, if not my name - +Ay, offspring even of no legitimate claim, +In whose advance I secretly could joy. +Thereat he warned. + "Cancel such wishes, boy! +A son may be a comfort or a curse, +A seer, a doer, a coward, a fool; yea, worse - +A criminal . . . That I could testify!" +"Panthera has no guilty son!" cried I +All unbelieving. "Friend, you do not know," +He darkly dropt: "True, I've none now to show, +For THE LAW TOOK HIM. Ay, in sooth, Jove shaped it so!" + + "This noon is not unlike," he again began, +"The noon these pricking memories print on me - +Yea, that day, when the sun grew copper-red, +And I served in Judaea . . . 'Twas a date +Of rest for arms. The Pax Romana ruled, +To the chagrin of frontier legionaries! +Palestine was annexed--though sullen yet, - +I, being in age some two-score years and ten +And having the garrison in Jerusalem +Part in my hands as acting officer +Under the Governor. A tedious time +I found it, of routine, amid a folk +Restless, contentless, and irascible. - +Quelling some riot, sentrying court and hall, +Sending men forth on public meeting-days +To maintain order, were my duties there. + + "Then came a morn in spring, and the cheerful sun +Whitened the city and the hills around, +And every mountain-road that clambered them, +Tincturing the greyness of the olives warm, +And the rank cacti round the valley's sides. +The day was one whereon death-penalties +Were put in force, and here and there were set +The soldiery for order, as I said, +Since one of the condemned had raised some heat, +And crowds surged passionately to see him slain. +I, mounted on a Cappadocian horse, +With some half-company of auxiliaries, +Had captained the procession through the streets +When it came streaming from the judgment-hall +After the verdicts of the Governor. +It drew to the great gate of the northern way +That bears towards Damascus; and to a knoll +Upon the common, just beyond the walls - +Whence could be swept a wide horizon round +Over the housetops to the remotest heights. +Here was the public execution-ground +For city crimes, called then and doubtless now +Golgotha, Kranion, or Calvaria. + + "The usual dooms were duly meted out; +Some three or four were stript, transfixed, and nailed, +And no great stir occurred. A day of wont +It was to me, so far, and would have slid +Clean from my memory at its squalid close +But for an incident that followed these. + + "Among the tag-rag rabble of either sex +That hung around the wretches as they writhed, +Till thrust back by our spears, one held my eye - +A weeping woman, whose strained countenance, +Sharpened against a looming livid cloud, +Was mocked by the crude rays of afternoon - +The mother of one of those who suffered there +I had heard her called when spoken roughly to +By my ranged men for pressing forward so. +It stole upon me hers was a face I knew; +Yet when, or how, I had known it, for a while +Eluded me. And then at once it came. + + "Some thirty years or more before that noon +I was sub-captain of a company +Drawn from the legion of Calabria, +That marched up from Judaea north to Tyre. +We had pierced the old flat country of Jezreel, +The great Esdraelon Plain and fighting-floor +Of Jew with Canaanite, and with the host +Of Pharaoh-Necho, king of Egypt, met +While crossing there to strike the Assyrian pride. +We left behind Gilboa; passed by Nain; +Till bulging Tabor rose, embossed to the top +With arbute, terabinth, and locust growths. + + "Encumbering me were sundry sick, so fallen +Through drinking from a swamp beside the way; +But we pressed on, till, bearing over a ridge, +We dipt into a world of pleasantness - +A vale, the fairest I had gazed upon - +Which lapped a village on its furthest slopes +Called Nazareth, brimmed round by uplands nigh. +In the midst thereof a fountain bubbled, where, +Lime-dry from marching, our glad halt we made +To rest our sick ones, and refresh us all. + + "Here a day onward, towards the eventide, +Our men were piping to a Pyrrhic dance +Trod by their comrades, when the young women came +To fill their pitchers, as their custom was. +I proffered help to one--a slim girl, coy +Even as a fawn, meek, and as innocent. +Her long blue gown, the string of silver coins +That hung down by her banded beautiful hair, +Symboled in full immaculate modesty. + + "Well, I was young, and hot, and readily stirred +To quick desire. 'Twas tedious timing out +The convalescence of the soldiery; +And I beguiled the long and empty days +By blissful yieldance to her sweet allure, +Who had no arts, but what out-arted all, +The tremulous tender charm of trustfulness. +We met, and met, and under the winking stars +That passed which peoples earth--true union, yea, +To the pure eye of her simplicity. + + "Meanwhile the sick found health; and we pricked on. +I made her no rash promise of return, +As some do use; I was sincere in that; +I said we sundered never to meet again - +And yet I spoke untruth unknowingly! - +For meet again we did. Now, guess you aught? +The weeping mother on Calvaria +Was she I had known--albeit that time and tears +Had wasted rudely her once flowerlike form, +And her soft eyes, now swollen with sorrowing. + + "Though I betrayed some qualms, she marked me not; +And I was scarce of mood to comrade her +And close the silence of so wide a time +To claim a malefactor as my son - +(For so I guessed him). And inquiry made +Brought rumour how at Nazareth long before +An old man wedded her for pity's sake +On finding she had grown pregnant, none knew how, +Cared for her child, and loved her till he died. + + "Well; there it ended; save that then I learnt +That he--the man whose ardent blood was mine - +Had waked sedition long among the Jews, +And hurled insulting parlance at their god, +Whose temple bulked upon the adjoining hill, +Vowing that he would raze it, that himself +Was god as great as he whom they adored, +And by descent, moreover, was their king; +With sundry other incitements to misrule. + + "The impalements done, and done the soldiers' game +Of raffling for the clothes, a legionary, +Longinus, pierced the young man with his lance +At signs from me, moved by his agonies +Through naysaying the drug they had offered him. +It brought the end. And when he had breathed his last +The woman went. I saw her never again . . . +Now glares my moody meaning on you, friend? - +That when you talk of offspring as sheer joy +So trustingly, you blink contingencies. +Fors Fortuna! He who goes fathering +Gives frightful hostages to hazardry!" + + Thus Panthera's tale. 'Twas one he seldom told, +But yet it got abroad. He would unfold, +At other times, a story of less gloom, +Though his was not a heart where jests had room. +He would regret discovery of the truth +Was made too late to influence to ruth +The Procurator who had condemned his son-- +Or rather him so deemed. For there was none +To prove that Panthera erred not: and indeed, +When vagueness of identity I would plead, +Panther himself would sometimes own as much - +Yet lothly. But, assuming fact was such, +That the said woman did not recognize +Her lover's face, is matter for surprise. +However, there's his tale, fantasy or otherwise. + + Thereafter shone not men of Panthera's kind: +The indolent heads at home were ill-inclined +To press campaigning that would hoist the star +Of their lieutenants valorous afar. +Jealousies kept him irked abroad, controlled +And stinted by an Empire no more bold. +Yet in some actions southward he had share - +In Mauretania and Numidia; there +With eagle eye, and sword and steed and spur, +Quelling uprisings promptly. Some small stir +In Parthia next engaged him, until maimed, +As I have said; and cynic Time proclaimed +His noble spirit broken. What a waste +Of such a Roman!--one in youth-time graced +With indescribable charm, so I have heard, +Yea, magnetism impossible to word +When faltering as I saw him. What a fame, +O Son of Saturn, had adorned his name, +Might the Three so have urged Thee!--Hour by hour +His own disorders hampered Panthera's power +To brood upon the fate of those he had known, +Even of that one he always called his own - +Either in morbid dream or memory . . . +He died at no great age, untroublously, +An exit rare for ardent soldiers such as he. + + + +THE UNBORN + + + +I rose at night, and visited + The Cave of the Unborn: +And crowding shapes surrounded me +For tidings of the life to be, +Who long had prayed the silent Head + To haste its advent morn. + +Their eyes were lit with artless trust, + Hope thrilled their every tone; +"A scene the loveliest, is it not? +A pure delight, a beauty-spot +Where all is gentle, true and just, + And darkness is unknown?" + +My heart was anguished for their sake, + I could not frame a word; +And they descried my sunken face, +And seemed to read therein, and trace +The news that pity would not break, + Nor truth leave unaverred. + +And as I silently retired + I turned and watched them still, +And they came helter-skelter out, +Driven forward like a rabble rout +Into the world they had so desired + By the all-immanent Will. + +1905. + + + +THE MAN HE KILLED + + + + "Had he and I but met + By some old ancient inn, +We should have sat us down to wet + Right many a nipperkin! + + "But ranged as infantry, + And staring face to face, +I shot at him as he at me, + And killed him in his place. + + "I shot him dead because - + Because he was my foe, +Just so: my foe of course he was; + That's clear enough; although + + "He thought he'd 'list, perhaps, + Off-hand like--just as I - +Was out of work--had sold his traps - + No other reason why. + + "Yes; quaint and curious war is! + You shoot a fellow down +You'd treat if met where any bar is, + Or help to half-a-crown." + +1902. + + + +GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE +(A MEMORY OF CHRISTIANA C-) + + + +Where Blackmoor was, the road that led + To Bath, she could not show, +Nor point the sky that overspread + Towns ten miles off or so. + +But that Calcutta stood this way, + Cape Horn there figured fell, +That here was Boston, here Bombay, + She could declare full well. + +Less known to her the track athwart + Froom Mead or Yell'ham Wood +Than how to make some Austral port + In seas of surly mood. + +She saw the glint of Guinea's shore + Behind the plum-tree nigh, +Heard old unruly Biscay's roar + In the weir's purl hard by . . . + +"My son's a sailor, and he knows + All seas and many lands, +And when he's home he points and shows + Each country where it stands. + +"He's now just there--by Gib's high rock - + And when he gets, you see, +To Portsmouth here, behind the clock, + Then he'll come back to me!" + + + +ONE RALPH BLOSSOM SOLILOQUIZES + + + +("It being deposed that vij women who were mayds before he knew them have +been brought upon the towne [rates?] by the fornicacions of one Ralph +Blossom, Mr Major inquired why he should not contribute xiv pence weekly +toward their mayntenance. But it being shewn that the sayd R. B. was dying +of a purple feaver, no order was made."--Budmouth Borough Minutes: 16--.) + +When I am in hell or some such place, +A-groaning over my sorry case, +What will those seven women say to me +Who, when I coaxed them, answered "Aye" to me? + +"I did not understand your sign!" +Will be the words of Caroline; +While Jane will cry, "If I'd had proof of you, +I should have learnt to hold aloof of you!" + +"I won't reproach: it was to be!" +Will dryly murmur Cicely; +And Rosa: "I feel no hostility, +For I must own I lent facility." + +Lizzy says: "Sharp was my regret, +And sometimes it is now! But yet +I joy that, though it brought notoriousness, +I knew Love once and all its gloriousness!" + +Says Patience: "Why are we apart? +Small harm did you, my poor Sweet Heart! +A manchild born, now tall and beautiful, +Was worth the ache of days undutiful." + +And Anne cries: "O the time was fair, +So wherefore should you burn down there? +There is a deed under the sun, my Love, +And that was ours. What's done is done, my Love. +These trumpets here in Heaven are dumb to me +With you away. Dear, come, O come to me!" + + + +THE NOBLE LADY'S TALE +(circa 1790) + + + +I + + "We moved with pensive paces, + I and he, + And bent our faded faces + Wistfully, +For something troubled him, and troubled me. + + "The lanthorn feebly lightened + Our grey hall, + Where ancient brands had brightened + Hearth and wall, +And shapes long vanished whither vanish all. + + "'O why, Love, nightly, daily,' + I had said, + 'Dost sigh, and smile so palely, + As if shed +Were all Life's blossoms, all its dear things dead?' + + "'Since silence sets thee grieving,' + He replied, + 'And I abhor deceiving + One so tried, +Why, Love, I'll speak, ere time us twain divide.' + + "He held me, I remember, + Just as when + Our life was June--(September + It was then); +And we walked on, until he spoke again. + + "'Susie, an Irish mummer, + Loud-acclaimed + Through the gay London summer, + Was I; named +A master in my art, who would be famed. + + "'But lo, there beamed before me + Lady Su; + God's altar-vow she swore me + When none knew, +And for her sake I bade the sock adieu. + + "'My Lord your father's pardon + Thus I won: + He let his heart unharden + Towards his son, +And honourably condoned what we had done; + + "'But said--recall you, dearest? - + As for Su, + I'd see her--ay, though nearest + Me unto - +Sooner entombed than in a stage purlieu! + + "'Just so.--And here he housed us, + In this nook, + Where Love like balm has drowsed us: + Robin, rook, +Our chief familiars, next to string and book. + + "'Our days here, peace-enshrouded, + Followed strange + The old stage-joyance, crowded, + Rich in range; +But never did my soul desire a change, + + "'Till now, when far uncertain + Lips of yore + Call, call me to the curtain, + There once more, +But ONCE, to tread the boards I trod before. + + "'A night--the last and single + Ere I die - + To face the lights, to mingle + As did I +Once in the game, and rivet every eye!' + + "'To something drear, distressing + As the knell + Of all hopes worth possessing!' . . . + --What befell +Seemed linked with me, but how I could not tell. + + "Hours passed; till I implored him, + As he knew + How faith and frankness toward him + Ruled me through, +To say what ill I had done, and could undo. + + "'FAITH--FRANKNESS. Ah! Heaven save such!' + Murmured he, + 'They are wedded wealth! _I_ gave such + Liberally, +But you, Dear, not. For you suspected me.' + + "I was about beseeching + In hurt haste + More meaning, when he, reaching + To my waist, +Led me to pace the hall as once we paced. + + "'I never meant to draw you + To own all,' + Declared he. 'But--I SAW you - + By the wall, +Half-hid. And that was why I failed withal!' + + "'Where? when?' said I--'Why, nigh me, + At the play + That night. That you should spy me, + Doubt my fay, +And follow, furtive, took my heart away!' + + "That I had never been there, + But had gone + To my locked room--unseen there, + Curtains drawn, +Long days abiding--told I, wonder-wan. + + "'Nay, 'twas your form and vesture, + Cloak and gown, + Your hooded features--gesture + Half in frown, +That faced me, pale,' he urged, 'that night in town. + + "'And when, outside, I handed + To her chair + (As courtesy demanded + Of me there) +The leading lady, you peeped from the stair. + + "Straight pleaded I: 'Forsooth, Love, + Had I gone, + I must have been in truth, Love, + Mad to don +Such well-known raiment.' But he still went on + + "That he was not mistaken + Nor misled. - + I felt like one forsaken, + Wished me dead, +That he could think thus of the wife he had wed! + + "His going seemed to waste him + Like a curse, + To wreck what once had graced him; + And, averse +To my approach, he mused, and moped, and worse. + + "Till, what no words effected + Thought achieved: + IT WAS MY WRAITH--projected, + He conceived, +Thither, by my tense brain at home aggrieved. + + "Thereon his credence centred + Till he died; + And, no more tempted, entered + Sanctified, +The little vault with room for one beside." + +III + + Thus far the lady's story. - + Now she, too, + Reclines within that hoary + Last dark mew +In Mellstock Quire with him she loved so true. + + A yellowing marble, placed there + Tablet-wise, + And two joined hearts enchased there + Meet the eyes; +And reading their twin names we moralize: + + Did she, we wonder, follow + Jealously? + And were those protests hollow? - + Or saw he +Some semblant dame? Or can wraiths really be? + + Were it she went, her honour, + All may hold, + Pressed truth at last upon her + Till she told - +(Him only--others as these lines unfold.) + + Riddle death-sealed for ever, + Let it rest! . . . + One's heart could blame her never + If one guessed +That go she did. She knew her actor best. + + + +UNREALIZED + + + +Down comes the winter rain - + Spoils my hat and bow - +Runs into the poll of me; + But mother won't know. + +We've been out and caught a cold, + Knee-deep in snow; +Such a lucky thing it is + That mother won't know! + +Rosy lost herself last night - + Couldn't tell where to go. +Yes--it rather frightened her, + But mother didn't know. + +Somebody made Willy drunk + At the Christmas show: +O 'twas fun! It's well for him + That mother won't know! + +Howsoever wild we are, + Late at school or slow, +Mother won't be cross with us, + Mother won't know. + +How we cried the day she died! + Neighbours whispering low . . . +But we now do what we will - + Mother won't know. + + + +WAGTAIL AND BABY + + + +A baby watched a ford, whereto + A wagtail came for drinking; +A blaring bull went wading through, + The wagtail showed no shrinking. + +A stallion splashed his way across, + The birdie nearly sinking; +He gave his plumes a twitch and toss, + And held his own unblinking. + +Next saw the baby round the spot + A mongrel slowly slinking; +The wagtail gazed, but faltered not + In dip and sip and prinking. + +A perfect gentleman then neared; + The wagtail, in a winking, +With terror rose and disappeared; + The baby fell a-thinking. + + + +ABERDEEN +(April: 1905) + + + +"And wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times."--Isaiah +xxxiii. 6. + +I looked and thought, "All is too gray and cold +To wake my place-enthusiasms of old!" +Till a voice passed: "Behind that granite mien +Lurks the imposing beauty of a Queen." +I looked anew; and saw the radiant form +Of Her who soothes in stress, who steers in storm, +On the grave influence of whose eyes sublime +Men count for the stability of the time. + + + +GEORGE MEREDITH +1828-1909 + + + +Forty years back, when much had place +That since has perished out of mind, +I heard that voice and saw that face. + +He spoke as one afoot will wind +A morning horn ere men awake; +His note was trenchant, turning kind. + +He was of those whose wit can shake +And riddle to the very core +The counterfeits that Time will break . . . + +Of late, when we two met once more, +The luminous countenance and rare +Shone just as forty years before. + +So that, when now all tongues declare +His shape unseen by his green hill, +I scarce believe he sits not there. + +No matter. Further and further still +Through the world's vaporous vitiate air +His words wing on--as live words will. + +May 1909. + + + +YELL'HAM-WOOD'S STORY + + + +Coomb-Firtrees say that Life is a moan, + And Clyffe-hill Clump says "Yea!" +But Yell'ham says a thing of its own: + It's not "Gray, gray + Is Life alway!" + That Yell'ham says, + Nor that Life is for ends unknown. + +It says that Life would signify + A thwarted purposing: +That we come to live, and are called to die, + Yes, that's the thing + In fall, in spring, + That Yell'ham says:- + "Life offers--to deny!" + +1902. + + + +A YOUNG MAN'S EPIGRAM ON EXISTENCE + + + +A senseless school, where we must give +Our lives that we may learn to live! +A dolt is he who memorizes +Lessons that leave no time for prizes. + +16 W. P. V., 1866. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Time's Laughingstocks etc., by Thomas Hardy + diff --git a/old/tmsls10.zip b/old/tmsls10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..c0e7116 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/tmsls10.zip |