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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Wessex Poems and Other Verses, by Thomas
+Hardy, Illustrated by Thomas Hardy
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: Wessex Poems and Other Verses
+
+
+Author: Thomas Hardy
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 30, 2015  [eBook #3167]
+[This file was first posted on January 30, 2001]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WESSEX POEMS AND OTHER VERSES***
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1919 Macmillan and Co. “Wessex Poems and Other
+Verses; Poems of the Past and the Present” edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@pglaf.org
+
+
+
+
+
+                             WESSEX POEMS AND
+                               OTHER VERSES
+
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                    BY
+                               THOMAS HARDY
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                        MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
+                       ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
+                                   1919
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                                COPYRIGHT
+
+   “_Wessex Poems_”: _First Edition_, _Crown_ 8vo, 1898.  _New Edition_
+                                  1903.
+    _First Pocket Edition June_ 1907.  _Reprinted January_ 1909, 1913
+
+     “_Poems_, _Past and Present_”: _First edition_ 1901 (dated 1902)
+         _Second Edition_ 1903.  _First Pocket Edition June_ 1907
+                _Reprinted January_ 1908, 1913, 1918, 1919
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE TO WESSEX POEMS
+
+
+OF the miscellaneous collection of verse that follows, only four pieces
+have been published, though many were written long ago, and other partly
+written.  In some few cases the verses were turned into prose and printed
+as such, it having been unanticipated at that time that they might see
+the light.
+
+Whenever an ancient and legitimate word of the district, for which there
+was no equivalent in received English, suggested itself as the most
+natural, nearest, and often only expression of a thought, it has been
+made use of, on what seemed good grounds.
+
+The pieces are in a large degree dramatic or personative in conception;
+and this even where they are not obviously so.
+
+The dates attached to some of the poems do not apply to the rough
+sketches given in illustration, which have been recently made, and, as
+may be surmised, are inserted for personal and local reasons rather than
+for their intrinsic qualities.
+
+                                                                     T. H.
+
+_September_ 1898.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                          PAGE
+THE TEMPORARY THE ALL                        1
+AMABEL                                       4
+HAP                                          7
+“IN VISION I ROAMED”                         9
+AT A BRIDAL                                 11
+POSTPONEMENT                                13
+A CONFESSION TO A FRIEND IN TROUBLE         15
+NEUTRAL TONES                               17
+SHE                                         19
+HER INITIALS                                21
+HER DILEMMA                                 23
+REVULSION                                   27
+SHE, TO HIM, I.                             31
+   ,,     ,,   II.                          33
+   ,,     ,,   III.                         35
+   ,,     ,,   IV.                          37
+DITTY                                       39
+THE SERGEANT’S SONG                         43
+VALENCIENNES                                45
+SAN SEBASTIAN                               51
+THE STRANGER’S SONG                         59
+THE BURGHERS                                61
+LEIPZIG                                     67
+THE PEASANT’S CONFESSION                    79
+THE ALARM                                   91
+HER DEATH AND AFTER                        103
+THE DANCE AT THE PHŒNIX                    115
+THE CASTERBRIDGE CAPTAINS                  125
+A SIGN-SEEKER                              129
+MY CICELY                                  133
+HER IMMORTALITY                            143
+THE IVY-WIFE                               147
+A MEETING WITH DESPAIR                     149
+UNKNOWING                                  153
+FRIENDS BEYOND                             155
+TO OUTER NATURE                            159
+THOUGHTS OF PHENA                          163
+MIDDLE-AGE ENTHUSIASMS                     167
+IN A WOOD                                  169
+TO A LADY                                  173
+TO AN ORPHAN CHILD                         175
+NATURE’S QUESTIONING                       177
+THE IMPERCIPIENT                           181
+AT AN INN                                  187
+THE SLOW NATURE                            191
+IN A EWELEAZE NEAR WEATHERBURY             195
+THE FIRE AT TRANTER SWEATLEY’S             201
+HEIRESS AND ARCHITECT                      211
+THE TWO MEN                                217
+LINES                                      223
+“I LOOK INTO MY GLASS”                     227
+
+                 [Picture: Sketch of tower with sun-dial]
+
+
+
+
+THE TEMPORARY THE ALL
+
+
+   CHANGE and chancefulness in my flowering youthtime,
+   Set me sun by sun near to one unchosen;
+   Wrought us fellow-like, and despite divergence,
+      Friends interlinked us.
+
+   “Cherish him can I while the true one forthcome—
+   Come the rich fulfiller of my prevision;
+   Life is roomy yet, and the odds unbounded.”
+      So self-communed I.
+
+   Thwart my wistful way did a damsel saunter,
+   Fair, the while unformed to be all-eclipsing;
+   “Maiden meet,” held I, “till arise my forefelt
+      Wonder of women.”
+
+   Long a visioned hermitage deep desiring,
+   Tenements uncouth I was fain to house in;
+   “Let such lodging be for a breath-while,” thought I,
+      “Soon a more seemly.
+
+   “Then, high handiwork will I make my life-deed,
+   Truth and Light outshow; but the ripe time pending,
+   Intermissive aim at the thing sufficeth.”
+      Thus I . . . But lo, me!
+
+   Mistress, friend, place, aims to be bettered straightway,
+   Bettered not has Fate or my hand’s achieving;
+   Sole the showance those of my onward earth-track—
+      Never transcended!
+
+
+
+
+AMABEL
+
+
+   I MARKED her ruined hues,
+   Her custom-straitened views,
+   And asked, “Can there indwell
+      My Amabel?”
+
+   I looked upon her gown,
+   Once rose, now earthen brown;
+   The change was like the knell
+      Of Amabel.
+
+   Her step’s mechanic ways
+   Had lost the life of May’s;
+   Her laugh, once sweet in swell,
+      Spoilt Amabel.
+
+   I mused: “Who sings the strain
+   I sang ere warmth did wane?
+   Who thinks its numbers spell
+      His Amabel?”—
+
+   Knowing that, though Love cease,
+   Love’s race shows undecrease;
+   All find in dorp or dell
+      An Amabel.
+
+   —I felt that I could creep
+   To some housetop, and weep,
+   That Time the tyrant fell
+      Ruled Amabel!
+
+   I said (the while I sighed
+   That love like ours had died),
+   “Fond things I’ll no more tell
+      To Amabel,
+
+   “But leave her to her fate,
+   And fling across the gate,
+   ‘Till the Last Trump, farewell,
+      O Amabel!’”
+
+1865.
+
+                     [Picture: Sketch of hour-glass]
+
+
+
+
+HAP
+
+
+   IF but some vengeful god would call to me
+   From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,
+   Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
+   That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!”
+
+   Then would I bear, and clench myself, and die,
+   Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
+   Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
+   Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.
+
+   But not so.  How arrives it joy lies slain,
+   And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
+   —Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
+   And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan . . .
+   These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
+   Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.
+
+1866.
+
+
+
+
+“IN VISION I ROAMED”
+TO —
+
+
+   IN vision I roamed the flashing Firmament,
+   So fierce in blazon that the Night waxed wan,
+   As though with an awed sense of such ostent;
+   And as I thought my spirit ranged on and on
+
+   In footless traverse through ghast heights of sky,
+   To the last chambers of the monstrous Dome,
+   Where stars the brightest here to darkness die:
+   Then, any spot on our own Earth seemed Home!
+
+   And the sick grief that you were far away
+   Grew pleasant thankfulness that you were near?
+   Who might have been, set on some outstep sphere,
+   Less than a Want to me, as day by day
+   I lived unware, uncaring all that lay
+   Locked in that Universe taciturn and drear.
+
+1866.
+
+
+
+
+AT A BRIDAL
+TO —
+
+
+   WHEN you paced forth, to wait maternity,
+   A dream of other offspring held my mind,
+   Compounded of us twain as Love designed;
+   Rare forms, that corporate now will never be!
+
+   Should I, too, wed as slave to Mode’s decree,
+   And each thus found apart, of false desire,
+   A stolid line, whom no high aims will fire
+   As had fired ours could ever have mingled we;
+
+   And, grieved that lives so matched should mis-compose,
+   Each mourn the double waste; and question dare
+   To the Great Dame whence incarnation flows.
+   Why those high-purposed children never were:
+   What will she answer?  That she does not care
+   If the race all such sovereign types unknows.
+
+1866.
+
+
+
+
+POSTPONEMENT
+
+
+   SNOW-BOUND in woodland, a mournful word,
+   Dropt now and then from the bill of a bird,
+   Reached me on wind-wafts; and thus I heard,
+      Wearily waiting:—
+
+   “I planned her a nest in a leafless tree,
+   But the passers eyed and twitted me,
+   And said: ‘How reckless a bird is he,
+      Cheerily mating!’
+
+   “Fear-filled, I stayed me till summer-tide,
+   In lewth of leaves to throne her bride;
+   But alas! her love for me waned and died,
+      Wearily waiting.
+
+   “Ah, had I been like some I see,
+   Born to an evergreen nesting-tree,
+   None had eyed and twitted me,
+      Cheerily mating!”
+
+1866.
+
+
+
+
+A CONFESSION TO A FRIEND IN TROUBLE
+
+
+   YOUR troubles shrink not, though I feel them less
+   Here, far away, than when I tarried near;
+   I even smile old smiles—with listlessness—
+   Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries mere.
+
+   A thought too strange to house within my brain
+   Haunting its outer precincts I discern:
+   —_That I will not show zeal again to learn_
+   _Your griefs_, _and sharing them_, _renew my pain_ . . .
+
+   It goes, like murky bird or buccaneer
+   That shapes its lawless figure on the main,
+   And each new impulse tends to make outflee
+   The unseemly instinct that had lodgment here;
+   Yet, comrade old, can bitterer knowledge be
+   Than that, though banned, such instinct was in me!
+
+1866.
+
+
+
+
+NEUTRAL TONES
+
+
+   WE stood by a pond that winter day,
+   And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
+   And a few leaves lay on the starving sod,
+      —They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.
+
+   Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
+   Over tedious riddles solved years ago;
+   And some words played between us to and fro—
+      On which lost the more by our love.
+
+   The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
+   Alive enough to have strength to die;
+   And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
+      Like an ominous bird a-wing . . .
+
+   Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
+   And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
+   Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,
+      And a pond edged with grayish leaves.
+
+1867.
+
+           [Picture: Sketch of church with person outside wall]
+
+
+
+
+SHE
+AT HIS FUNERAL
+
+
+   THEY bear him to his resting-place—
+   In slow procession sweeping by;
+   I follow at a stranger’s space;
+   His kindred they, his sweetheart I.
+   Unchanged my gown of garish dye,
+   Though sable-sad is their attire;
+   But they stand round with griefless eye,
+   Whilst my regret consumes like fire!
+
+187–.
+
+ [Picture: Sketch of open book with two letters hand-written on left-hand
+                                  page]
+
+
+
+
+HER INITIALS
+
+
+   UPON a poet’s page I wrote
+   Of old two letters of her name;
+   Part seemed she of the effulgent thought
+   Whence that high singer’s rapture came.
+   —When now I turn the leaf the same
+   Immortal light illumes the lay,
+   But from the letters of her name
+   The radiance has died away!
+
+1869.
+
+
+
+
+HER DILEMMA
+(IN — CHURCH)
+
+
+   THE two were silent in a sunless church,
+   Whose mildewed walls, uneven paving-stones,
+   And wasted carvings passed antique research;
+   And nothing broke the clock’s dull monotones.
+
+   Leaning against a wormy poppy-head,
+   So wan and worn that he could scarcely stand,
+   —For he was soon to die,—he softly said,
+   “Tell me you love me!”—holding hard her hand.
+
+   She would have given a world to breathe “yes” truly,
+   So much his life seemed handing on her mind,
+   And hence she lied, her heart persuaded throughly
+   ’Twas worth her soul to be a moment kind.
+
+   But the sad need thereof, his nearing death,
+   So mocked humanity that she shamed to prize
+   A world conditioned thus, or care for breath
+   Where Nature such dilemmas could devise.
+
+1866.
+
+               [Picture: Sketch of two people in a church]
+
+
+
+
+REVULSION
+
+
+   THOUGH I waste watches framing words to fetter
+   Some spirit to mine own in clasp and kiss,
+   Out of the night there looms a sense ’twere better
+   To fail obtaining whom one fails to miss.
+
+   For winning love we win the risk of losing,
+   And losing love is as one’s life were riven;
+   It cuts like contumely and keen ill-using
+   To cede what was superfluously given.
+
+   Let me then feel no more the fateful thrilling
+   That devastates the love-worn wooer’s frame,
+   The hot ado of fevered hopes, the chilling
+   That agonizes disappointed aim!
+   So may I live no junctive law fulfilling,
+   And my heart’s table bear no woman’s name.
+
+1866.
+
+    [Picture: Sketch of person walking long path to building on hill]
+
+
+
+
+SHE, TO HIM
+I
+
+
+   WHEN you shall see me in the toils of Time,
+   My lauded beauties carried off from me,
+   My eyes no longer stars as in their prime,
+   My name forgot of Maiden Fair and Free;
+
+   When in your being heart concedes to mind,
+   And judgment, though you scarce its process know,
+   Recalls the excellencies I once enshrined,
+   And you are irked that they have withered so:
+
+   Remembering that with me lies not the blame,
+   That Sportsman Time but rears his brood to kill,
+   Knowing me in my soul the very same—
+   One who would die to spare you touch of ill!—
+   Will you not grant to old affection’s claim
+   The hand of friendship down Life’s sunless hill?
+
+1866.
+
+
+
+
+SHE, TO HIM
+II
+
+
+   PERHAPS, long hence, when I have passed away,
+   Some other’s feature, accent, thought like mine,
+   Will carry you back to what I used to say,
+   And bring some memory of your love’s decline.
+
+   Then you may pause awhile and think, “Poor jade!”
+   And yield a sigh to me—as ample due,
+   Not as the tittle of a debt unpaid
+   To one who could resign her all to you—
+
+   And thus reflecting, you will never see
+   That your thin thought, in two small words conveyed,
+   Was no such fleeting phantom-thought to me,
+   But the Whole Life wherein my part was played;
+   And you amid its fitful masquerade
+   A Thought—as I in yours but seem to be.
+
+1866.
+
+
+
+
+SHE, TO HIM
+III
+
+
+   I WILL be faithful to thee; aye, I will!
+   And Death shall choose me with a wondering eye
+   That he did not discern and domicile
+   One his by right ever since that last Good-bye!
+
+   I have no care for friends, or kin, or prime
+   Of manhood who deal gently with me here;
+   Amid the happy people of my time
+   Who work their love’s fulfilment, I appear
+
+   Numb as a vane that cankers on its point,
+   True to the wind that kissed ere canker came;
+   Despised by souls of Now, who would disjoint
+   The mind from memory, and make Life all aim,
+
+   My old dexterities of hue quite gone,
+   And nothing left for Love to look upon.
+
+1866.
+
+
+
+
+SHE, TO HIM
+IV
+
+
+   This love puts all humanity from me;
+   I can but maledict her, pray her dead,
+   For giving love and getting love of thee—
+   Feeding a heart that else mine own had fed!
+
+   How much I love I know not, life not known,
+   Save as some unit I would add love by;
+   But this I know, my being is but thine own—
+   Fused from its separateness by ecstasy.
+
+   And thus I grasp thy amplitudes, of her
+   Ungrasped, though helped by nigh-regarding eyes;
+   Canst thou then hate me as an envier
+   Who see unrecked what I so dearly prize?
+   Believe me, Lost One, Love is lovelier
+   The more it shapes its moan in selfish-wise.
+
+1866.
+
+
+
+
+DITTY
+(E. L G.)
+
+
+   BENEATH a knap where flown
+      Nestlings play,
+   Within walls of weathered stone,
+      Far away
+   From the files of formal houses,
+   By the bough the firstling browses,
+   Lives a Sweet: no merchants meet,
+   No man barters, no man sells
+      Where she dwells.
+
+   Upon that fabric fair
+      “Here is she!”
+   Seems written everywhere
+      Unto me.
+   But to friends and nodding neighbours,
+   Fellow-wights in lot and labours,
+   Who descry the times as I,
+   No such lucid legend tells
+      Where she dwells.
+
+   Should I lapse to what I was
+      Ere we met;
+   (Such can not be, but because
+      Some forget
+   Let me feign it)—none would notice
+   That where she I know by rote is
+   Spread a strange and withering change,
+   Like a drying of the wells
+      Where she dwells.
+
+   To feel I might have kissed—
+      Loved as true—
+   Otherwhere, nor Mine have missed
+      My life through.
+   Had I never wandered near her,
+   Is a smart severe—severer
+   In the thought that she is nought,
+   Even as I, beyond the dells
+      Where she dwells.
+
+   And Devotion droops her glance
+      To recall
+   What bond-servants of Chance
+      We are all.
+   I but found her in that, going
+   On my errant path unknowing,
+   I did not out-skirt the spot
+   That no spot on earth excels,
+      —Where she dwells!
+
+1870.
+
+                [Picture: Sketch of man in military dress]
+
+
+
+
+THE SERGEANT’S SONG
+(1803)
+
+
+   WHEN Lawyers strive to heal a breach,
+   And Parsons practise what they preach;
+   Then Little Boney he’ll pounce down,
+   And march his men on London town!
+      Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lorum,
+      Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lay!
+
+   When Justices hold equal scales,
+   And Rogues are only found in jails;
+   Then Little Boney he’ll pounce down,
+   And march his men on London town!
+      Rollicum-rorum, &c.
+
+   When Rich Men find their wealth a curse,
+   And fill therewith the Poor Man’s purse;
+   Then Little Boney he’ll pounce down,
+   And march his men on London town!
+      Rollicum-rorum, &c.
+
+   When Husbands with their Wives agree,
+   And Maids won’t wed from modesty;
+   Then Little Boney he’ll pounce down,
+   And march his men on London town!
+      Rollicum-rorum, tol-tol-lorum,
+      Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lay!
+
+1878.
+
+                               _Published in_ “_The Trumpet-Major_,” 1880.
+
+             [Picture: Sketch of cannons overlooking a town]
+
+
+
+
+VALENCIENNES
+(1793)
+
+
+             BY CORP’L TULLIDGE: _see_ “_The Trumpet-Major_”
+                IN MEMORY OF S. C. (PENSIONER).  DIED 184–
+
+      WE trenched, we trumpeted and drummed,
+   And from our mortars tons of iron hummed
+      Ath’art the ditch, the month we bombed
+         The Town o’ Valencieën.
+
+      ’Twas in the June o’ Ninety-dree
+   (The Duke o’ Yark our then Commander been)
+      The German Legion, Guards, and we
+         Laid siege to Valencieën.
+
+      This was the first time in the war
+   That French and English spilled each other’s gore;
+      —Few dreamt how far would roll the roar
+         Begun at Valencieën!
+
+      ’Twas said that we’d no business there
+   A-topperèn the French for disagreën;
+      However, that’s not my affair—
+         We were at Valencieën.
+
+      Such snocks and slats, since war began
+   Never knew raw recruit or veteran:
+      Stone-deaf therence went many a man
+         Who served at Valencieën.
+
+      Into the streets, ath’art the sky,
+   A hundred thousand balls and bombs were fleën;
+      And harmless townsfolk fell to die
+         Each hour at Valencieën!
+
+      And, sweatèn wi’ the bombardiers,
+   A shell was slent to shards anighst my ears:
+      —’Twas nigh the end of hopes and fears
+         For me at Valencieën!
+
+      They bore my wownded frame to camp,
+   And shut my gapèn skull, and washed en cleän,
+      And jined en wi’ a zilver clamp
+         Thik night at Valencieën.
+
+      “We’ve fetched en back to quick from dead;
+   But never more on earth while rose is red
+      Will drum rouse Corpel!” Doctor said
+         O’ me at Valencieën.
+
+      ’Twer true.  No voice o’ friend or foe
+   Can reach me now, or any livèn beën;
+      And little have I power to know
+         Since then at Valencieën!
+
+      I never hear the zummer hums
+   O’ bees; and don’ know when the cuckoo comes;
+      But night and day I hear the bombs
+         We threw at Valencieën . . .
+
+      As for the Duke o’ Yark in war,
+   There be some volk whose judgment o’ en is mean;
+      But this I say—a was not far
+         From great at Valencieën.
+
+      O’ wild wet nights, when all seems sad,
+   My wownds come back, as though new wownds I’d had;
+      But yet—at times I’m sort o’ glad
+         I fout at Valencieën.
+
+      Well: Heaven wi’ its jasper halls
+   Is now the on’y Town I care to be in . . .
+      Good Lord, if Nick should bomb the walls
+         As we did Valencieën!
+
+1878–1897.
+
+
+
+
+SAN SEBASTIAN
+(August 1813)
+
+
+         WITH THOUGHTS OF SERGEANT M— (PENSIONER), WHO DIED 185–.
+
+   “WHY, Sergeant, stray on the Ivel Way,
+   As though at home there were spectres rife?
+   From first to last ’twas a proud career!
+   And your sunny years with a gracious wife
+      Have brought you a daughter dear.
+
+   “I watched her to-day; a more comely maid,
+   As she danced in her muslin bowed with blue,
+   Round a Hintock maypole never gayed.”
+   —“Aye, aye; I watched her this day, too,
+      As it happens,” the Sergeant said.
+
+   “My daughter is now,” he again began,
+   “Of just such an age as one I knew
+   When we of the Line and Forlorn-hope van,
+   On an August morning—a chosen few—
+      Stormed San Sebastian.
+
+   “She’s a score less three; so about was _she_—
+   The maiden I wronged in Peninsular days . . .
+   You may prate of your prowess in lusty times,
+   But as years gnaw inward you blink your bays,
+      And see too well your crimes!
+
+   “We’d stormed it at night, by the vlanker-light
+   Of burning towers, and the mortar’s boom:
+   We’d topped the breach; but had failed to stay,
+   For our files were misled by the baffling gloom;
+      And we said we’d storm by day.
+
+                      [Picture: Sketch of mountain]
+
+   “So, out of the trenches, with features set,
+   On that hot, still morning, in measured pace,
+   Our column climbed; climbed higher yet,
+   Past the fauss’bray, scarp, up the curtain-face,
+      And along the parapet.
+
+   “From the battened hornwork the cannoneers
+   Hove crashing balls of iron fire;
+   On the shaking gap mount the volunteers
+   In files, and as they mount expire
+      Amid curses, groans, and cheers.
+
+   “Five hours did we storm, five hours re-form,
+   As Death cooled those hot blood pricked on;
+   Till our cause was helped by a woe within:
+   They swayed from the summit we’d leapt upon,
+      And madly we entered in.
+
+   “On end for plunder, ’mid rain and thunder
+   That burst with the lull of our cannonade,
+   We vamped the streets in the stifling air—
+   Our hunger unsoothed, our thirst unstayed—
+      And ransacked the buildings there.
+
+   “Down the stony steps of the house-fronts white
+   We rolled rich puncheons of Spanish grape,
+   Till at length, with the fire of the wine alight,
+   I saw at a doorway a fair fresh shape—
+      A woman, a sylph, or sprite.
+
+   “Afeard she fled, and with heated head
+   I pursued to the chamber she called her own;
+   —When might is right no qualms deter,
+   And having her helpless and alone
+      I wreaked my will on her.
+
+   “She raised her beseeching eyes to me,
+   And I heard the words of prayer she sent
+   In her own soft language . . . Seemingly
+   I copied those eyes for my punishment
+      In begetting the girl you see!
+
+   “So, to-day I stand with a God-set brand
+   Like Cain’s, when he wandered from kindred’s ken . . .
+   I served through the war that made Europe free;
+   I wived me in peace-year.  But, hid from men,
+      I bear that mark on me.
+
+   “And I nightly stray on the Ivel Way
+   As though at home there were spectres rife;
+   I delight me not in my proud career;
+   And ’tis coals of fire that a gracious wife
+      Should have brought me a daughter dear!”
+
+
+
+
+THE STRANGER’S SONG
+
+
+    (_As sung by_ MR. CHARLES CHARRINGTON _in the play of_ “_The Three
+                               Wayfarers_”)
+
+               O MY trade it is the rarest one,
+   Simple shepherds all—
+         My trade is a sight to see;
+   For my customers I tie, and take ’em up on high,
+      And waft ’em to a far countree!
+
+   My tools are but common ones,
+               Simple shepherds all—
+         My tools are no sight to see:
+   A little hempen string, and a post whereon to swing,
+      Are implements enough for me!
+
+   To-morrow is my working day,
+            Simple shepherds all—
+         To-morrow is a working day for me:
+   For the farmer’s sheep is slain, and the lad who did it ta’en,
+      And on his soul may God ha’ mer-cy!
+
+                               _Printed in_ “_The Three Strangers_,” 1883.
+
+                  [Picture: Sketch of man in old street]
+
+
+
+
+THE BURGHERS
+(17–)
+
+
+   THE sun had wheeled from Grey’s to Dammer’s Crest,
+   And still I mused on that Thing imminent:
+   At length I sought the High-street to the West.
+
+   The level flare raked pane and pediment
+   And my wrecked face, and shaped my nearing friend
+   Like one of those the Furnace held unshent.
+
+   “I’ve news concerning her,” he said.  “Attend.
+   They fly to-night at the late moon’s first gleam:
+   Watch with thy steel: two righteous thrusts will end
+
+   Her shameless visions and his passioned dream.
+   I’ll watch with thee, to testify thy wrong—
+   To aid, maybe.—Law consecrates the scheme.”
+
+   I started, and we paced the flags along
+   Till I replied: “Since it has come to this
+   I’ll do it!  But alone.  I can be strong.”
+
+   Three hours past Curfew, when the Froom’s mild hiss
+   Reigned sole, undulled by whirr of merchandize,
+   From Pummery-Tout to where the Gibbet is,
+
+   I crossed my pleasaunce hard by Glyd’path Rise,
+   And stood beneath the wall.  Eleven strokes went,
+   And to the door they came, contrariwise,
+
+   And met in clasp so close I had but bent
+   My lifted blade upon them to have let
+   Their two souls loose upon the firmament.
+
+   But something held my arm.  “A moment yet
+   As pray-time ere you wantons die!” I said;
+   And then they saw me.  Swift her gaze was set
+
+   With eye and cry of love illimited
+   Upon her Heart-king.  Never upon me
+   Had she thrown look of love so thorough-sped! . . .
+
+   At once she flung her faint form shieldingly
+   On his, against the vengeance of my vows;
+   The which o’erruling, her shape shielded he.
+
+   Blanked by such love, I stood as in a drowse,
+   And the slow moon edged from the upland nigh,
+   My sad thoughts moving thuswise: “I may house
+
+   And I may husband her, yet what am I
+   But licensed tyrant to this bonded pair?
+   Says Charity, Do as ye would be done by.” . . .
+
+   Hurling my iron to the bushes there,
+   I bade them stay.  And, as if brain and breast
+   Were passive, they walked with me to the stair.
+
+   Inside the house none watched; and on we prest
+   Before a mirror, in whose gleam I read
+   Her beauty, his,—and mine own mien unblest;
+
+   Till at her room I turned.  “Madam,” I said,
+   “Have you the wherewithal for this?  Pray speak.
+   Love fills no cupboard.  You’ll need daily bread.”
+
+   “We’ve nothing, sire,” said she; “and nothing seek.
+   ’Twere base in me to rob my lord unware;
+   Our hands will earn a pittance week by week.”
+
+   And next I saw she’d piled her raiment rare
+   Within the garde-robes, and her household purse,
+   Her jewels, and least lace of personal wear;
+
+   And stood in homespun.  Now grown wholly hers,
+   I handed her the gold, her jewels all,
+   And him the choicest of her robes diverse.
+
+   “I’ll take you to the doorway in the wall,
+   And then adieu,” I to them.  “Friends, withdraw.”
+   They did so; and she went—beyond recall.
+
+   And as I paused beneath the arch I saw
+   Their moonlit figures—slow, as in surprise—
+   Descend the slope, and vanish on the haw.
+
+   “‘Fool,’ some will say,” I thought.  “But who is wise,
+   Save God alone, to weigh my reasons why?”
+   —“Hast thou struck home?” came with the boughs’ night-sighs.
+
+   It was my friend.  “I have struck well.  They fly,
+   But carry wounds that none can cicatrize.”
+   —“Not mortal?” said he.  “Lingering—worse,” said I.
+
+
+
+
+LEIPZIG
+(1813)
+
+
+      _Scene_: _The Master-tradesmen’s Parlour at the Old Ship Inn_,
+                       _Casterbridge_.  _Evening_.
+
+   “OLD Norbert with the flat blue cap—
+      A German said to be—
+   Why let your pipe die on your lap,
+      Your eyes blink absently?”—
+
+   —“Ah! . . . Well, I had thought till my cheek was wet
+      Of my mother—her voice and mien
+   When she used to sing and pirouette,
+      And touse the tambourine
+
+   “To the march that yon street-fiddler plies:
+      She told me ’twas the same
+   She’d heard from the trumpets, when the Allies
+      Her city overcame.
+
+   “My father was one of the German Hussars,
+      My mother of Leipzig; but he,
+   Long quartered here, fetched her at close of the wars,
+      And a Wessex lad reared me.
+
+   “And as I grew up, again and again
+      She’d tell, after trilling that air,
+   Of her youth, and the battles on Leipzig plain
+      And of all that was suffered there! . . .
+
+   “—’Twas a time of alarms.  Three Chiefs-at-arms
+      Combined them to crush One,
+   And by numbers’ might, for in equal fight
+      He stood the matched of none.
+
+   “Carl Schwarzenberg was of the plot,
+      And Blücher, prompt and prow,
+   And Jean the Crown-Prince Bernadotte:
+      Buonaparte was the foe.
+
+   “City and plain had felt his reign
+      From the North to the Middle Sea,
+   And he’d now sat down in the noble town
+      Of the King of Saxony.
+
+   “October’s deep dew its wet gossamer threw
+      Upon Leipzig’s lawns, leaf-strewn,
+   Where lately each fair avenue
+      Wrought shade for summer noon.
+
+   “To westward two dull rivers crept
+      Through miles of marsh and slough,
+   Whereover a streak of whiteness swept—
+      The Bridge of Lindenau.
+
+   “Hard by, in the City, the One, care-tossed,
+      Gloomed over his shrunken power;
+   And without the walls the hemming host
+      Waxed denser every hour.
+
+   “He had speech that night on the morrow’s designs
+      With his chiefs by the bivouac fire,
+   While the belt of flames from the enemy’s lines
+      Flared nigher him yet and nigher.
+
+   “Three sky-lights then from the girdling trine
+      Told, ‘Ready!’  As they rose
+   Their flashes seemed his Judgment-Sign
+      For bleeding Europe’s woes.
+
+   “’Twas seen how the French watch-fires that night
+      Glowed still and steadily;
+   And the Three rejoiced, for they read in the sight
+      That the One disdained to flee . . .
+
+   “—Five hundred guns began the affray
+      On next day morn at nine;
+   Such mad and mangling cannon-play
+      Had never torn human line.
+
+   “Around the town three battles beat,
+      Contracting like a gin;
+   As nearer marched the million feet
+      Of columns closing in.
+
+   “The first battle nighed on the low Southern side;
+      The second by the Western way;
+   The nearing of the third on the North was heard:
+      —The French held all at bay.
+
+   “Against the first band did the Emperor stand;
+      Against the second stood Ney;
+   Marmont against the third gave the order-word:
+      —Thus raged it throughout the day.
+
+   “Fifty thousand sturdy souls on those trampled plains and knolls,
+      Who met the dawn hopefully,
+   And were lotted their shares in a quarrel not theirs,
+      Dropt then in their agony.
+
+   “‘O,’ the old folks said, ‘ye Preachers stern!
+      O so-called Christian time!
+   When will men’s swords to ploughshares turn?
+      When come the promised prime?’ . . .
+
+   “—The clash of horse and man which that day began,
+      Closed not as evening wore;
+   And the morrow’s armies, rear and van,
+      Still mustered more and more.
+
+   “From the City towers the Confederate Powers
+      Were eyed in glittering lines,
+   And up from the vast a murmuring passed
+      As from a wood of pines.
+
+   “‘’Tis well to cover a feeble skill
+      By numbers!’ scoffèd He;
+   ‘But give me a third of their strength, I’d fill
+      Half Hell with their soldiery!’
+
+                [Picture: Sketch of town square, Leipzig?]
+
+   “All that day raged the war they waged,
+      And again dumb night held reign,
+   Save that ever upspread from the dark deathbed
+      A miles-wide pant of pain.
+
+   “Hard had striven brave Ney, the true Bertrand,
+      Victor, and Augereau,
+   Bold Poniatowski, and Lauriston,
+      To stay their overthrow;
+
+   “But, as in the dream of one sick to death
+      There comes a narrowing room
+   That pens him, body and limbs and breath,
+      To wait a hideous doom,
+
+   “So to Napoleon, in the hush
+      That held the town and towers
+   Through these dire nights, a creeping crush
+      Seemed inborne with the hours.
+
+   “One road to the rearward, and but one,
+      Did fitful Chance allow;
+   ’Twas where the Pleiss’ and Elster run—
+      The Bridge of Lindenau.
+
+   “The nineteenth dawned.  Down street and Platz
+      The wasted French sank back,
+   Stretching long lines across the Flats
+      And on the bridge-way track;
+
+   “When there surged on the sky an earthen wave,
+      And stones, and men, as though
+   Some rebel churchyard crew updrave
+      Their sepulchres from below.
+
+   “To Heaven is blown Bridge Lindenau;
+      Wrecked regiments reel therefrom;
+   And rank and file in masses plough
+      The sullen Elster-Strom.
+
+   “A gulf was Lindenau; and dead
+      Were fifties, hundreds, tens;
+   And every current rippled red
+      With Marshal’s blood and men’s.
+
+   “The smart Macdonald swam therein,
+      And barely won the verge;
+   Bold Poniatowski plunged him in
+      Never to re-emerge.
+
+   “Then stayed the strife.  The remnants wound
+      Their Rhineward way pell-mell;
+   And thus did Leipzig City sound
+      An Empire’s passing bell;
+
+   “While in cavalcade, with band and blade,
+      Came Marshals, Princes, Kings;
+   And the town was theirs . . . Ay, as simple maid,
+      My mother saw these things!
+
+   “And whenever those notes in the street begin,
+      I recall her, and that far scene,
+   And her acting of how the Allies marched in,
+      And her touse of the tambourine!”
+
+   [Picture: Sketch of person standing outside bay window, looking in]
+
+
+
+
+THE PEASANT’S CONFESSION
+
+
+    “Si le maréchal Grouchy avait été rejoint par l’officier que Napoléon
+    lui avait expédié la veille à dix heures du soir, toute question eût
+    disparu.  Mais cet officier n’était point parvenu à sa destination,
+    ainsi que le maréchal n’a cessé de l’affirmer toute sa vie, et il
+    faut l’en croire, car autrement il n’aurait eu aucune raison pour
+    hésiter.  Cet officier avait-il été pris? avait-il passé à l’ennemi?
+    C’est ce qu’on a toujours ignoré.”
+
+                             —THIERS: _Histoire de l’Empire_.  “Waterloo.”
+
+   GOOD Father! . . . ’Twas an eve in middle June,
+      And war was waged anew
+   By great Napoleon, who for years had strewn
+      Men’s bones all Europe through.
+
+   Three nights ere this, with columned corps he’d crossed
+      The Sambre at Charleroi,
+   To move on Brussels, where the English host
+      Dallied in Parc and Bois.
+
+   The yestertide we’d heard the gloomy gun
+      Growl through the long-sunned day
+   From Quatre-Bras and Ligny; till the dun
+      Twilight suppressed the fray;
+
+   Albeit therein—as lated tongues bespoke—
+      Brunswick’s high heart was drained,
+   And Prussia’s Line and Landwehr, though unbroke,
+      Stood cornered and constrained.
+
+   And at next noon-time Grouchy slowly passed
+      With thirty thousand men:
+   We hoped thenceforth no army, small or vast,
+      Would trouble us again.
+
+   My hut lay deeply in a vale recessed,
+      And never a soul seemed nigh
+   When, reassured at length, we went to rest—
+      My children, wife, and I.
+
+   But what was this that broke our humble ease?
+      What noise, above the rain,
+   Above the dripping of the poplar trees
+      That smote along the pane?
+
+   —A call of mastery, bidding me arise,
+      Compelled me to the door,
+   At which a horseman stood in martial guise—
+      Splashed—sweating from every pore.
+
+   Had I seen Grouchy?  Yes?  Which track took he?
+      Could I lead thither on?—
+   Fulfilment would ensure gold pieces three,
+      Perchance more gifts anon.
+
+   “I bear the Emperor’s mandate,” then he said,
+      “Charging the Marshal straight
+   To strike between the double host ahead
+      Ere they co-operate,
+
+   “Engaging Blücher till the Emperor put
+      Lord Wellington to flight,
+   And next the Prussians.  This to set afoot
+      Is my emprise to-night.”
+
+   I joined him in the mist; but, pausing, sought
+      To estimate his say.
+   Grouchy had made for Wavre; and yet, on thought,
+      I did not lead that way.
+
+   I mused: “If Grouchy thus instructed be,
+      The clash comes sheer hereon;
+   My farm is stript.  While, as for pieces three,
+      Money the French have none.
+
+   “Grouchy unwarned, moreo’er, the English win,
+      And mine is left to me—
+   They buy, not borrow.”—Hence did I begin
+      To lead him treacherously.
+
+   By Joidoigne, near to east, as we ondrew,
+      Dawn pierced the humid air;
+   And eastward faced I with him, though I knew
+      Never marched Grouchy there.
+
+   Near Ottignies we passed, across the Dyle
+      (Lim’lette left far aside),
+   And thence direct toward Pervez and Noville
+      Through green grain, till he cried:
+
+   “I doubt thy conduct, man! no track is here—
+      I doubt thy gagèd word!”
+   Thereat he scowled on me, and pranced me near,
+      And pricked me with his sword.
+
+   “Nay, Captain, hold!  We skirt, not trace the course
+      Of Grouchy,” said I then:
+   “As we go, yonder went he, with his force
+      Of thirty thousand men.”
+
+   —At length noon nighed; when west, from Saint-John’s-Mound,
+      A hoarse artillery boomed,
+   And from Saint-Lambert’s upland, chapel-crowned,
+      The Prussian squadrons loomed.
+
+   Then to the wayless wet gray ground he leapt;
+      “My mission fails!” he cried;
+   “Too late for Grouchy now to intercept,
+      For, peasant, you have lied!”
+
+   He turned to pistol me.  I sprang, and drew
+      The sabre from his flank,
+   And ’twixt his nape and shoulder, ere he knew,
+      I struck, and dead he sank.
+
+                      [Picture: Sketch of landscape]
+
+   I hid him deep in nodding rye and oat—
+      His shroud green stalks and loam;
+   His requiem the corn-blade’s husky note—
+      And then I hastened home, . . .
+
+   —Two armies writhe in coils of red and blue,
+      And brass and iron clang
+   From Goumont, past the front of Waterloo,
+      To Pap’lotte and Smohain.
+
+   The Guard Imperial wavered on the height;
+      The Emperor’s face grew glum;
+   “I sent,” he said, “to Grouchy yesternight,
+      And yet he does not come!”
+
+   ’Twas then, Good Father, that the French espied,
+      Streaking the summer land,
+   The men of Blücher.  But the Emperor cried,
+      “Grouchy is now at hand!”
+
+   And meanwhile Vand’leur, Vivian, Maitland, Kempt,
+      Met d’Erlon, Friant, Ney;
+   But Grouchy—mis-sent, blamed, yet blame-exempt—
+      Grouchy was far away.
+
+   By even, slain or struck, Michel the strong,
+      Bold Travers, Dnop, Delord,
+   Smart Guyot, Reil-le, l’Heriter, Friant,
+      Scattered that champaign o’er.
+
+   Fallen likewise wronged Duhesme, and skilled Lobau
+      Did that red sunset see;
+   Colbert, Legros, Blancard! . . . And of the foe
+      Picton and Ponsonby;
+
+   With Gordon, Canning, Blackman, Ompteda,
+      L’Estrange, Delancey, Packe,
+   Grose, D’Oyly, Stables, Morice, Howard, Hay,
+      Von Schwerin, Watzdorf, Boek,
+
+   Smith, Phelips, Fuller, Lind, and Battersby,
+      And hosts of ranksmen round . . .
+   Memorials linger yet to speak to thee
+      Of those that bit the ground!
+
+   The Guards’ last column yielded; dykes of dead
+      Lay between vale and ridge,
+   As, thinned yet closing, faint yet fierce, they sped
+      In packs to Genappe Bridge.
+
+   Safe was my stock; my capple cow unslain;
+         Intact each cock and hen;
+   But Grouchy far at Wavre all day had lain,
+      And thirty thousand men.
+
+   O Saints, had I but lost my earing corn
+      And saved the cause once prized!
+   O Saints, why such false witness had I borne
+      When late I’d sympathized! . . .
+
+   So now, being old, my children eye askance
+      My slowly dwindling store,
+   And crave my mite; till, worn with tarriance,
+      I care for life no more.
+
+   To Almighty God henceforth I stand confessed,
+      And Virgin-Saint Marie;
+   O Michael, John, and Holy Ones in rest,
+      Entreat the Lord for me!
+
+             [Picture: Silhouette of solder standing on hill]
+
+
+
+
+THE ALARM
+(1803)
+
+
+                       _See_ “_The Trumpet-Major_”
+
+            IN MEMORY OF ONE OF THE WRITER’S FAMILY WHO WAS A
+                  VOLUNTEER DURING THE WAR WITH NAPOLEON
+
+         IN a ferny byway
+         Near the great South-Wessex Highway,
+      A homestead raised its breakfast-smoke aloft;
+   The dew-damps still lay steamless, for the sun had made no sky-way,
+         And twilight cloaked the croft.
+
+         ’Twas hard to realize on
+         This snug side the mute horizon
+      That beyond it hostile armaments might steer,
+   Save from seeing in the porchway a fair woman weep with eyes on
+         A harnessed Volunteer.
+
+         In haste he’d flown there
+         To his comely wife alone there,
+      While marching south hard by, to still her fears,
+   For she soon would be a mother, and few messengers were known there
+         In these campaigning years.
+
+         ’Twas time to be Good-bying,
+         Since the assembly-hour was nighing
+      In royal George’s town at six that morn;
+   And betwixt its wharves and this retreat were ten good miles of hieing
+      Ere ring of bugle-horn.
+
+         “I’ve laid in food, Dear,
+         And broached the spiced and brewed, Dear;
+      And if our July hope should antedate,
+   Let the char-wench mount and gallop by the halterpath and wood, Dear,
+         And fetch assistance straight.
+
+         “As for Buonaparte, forget him;
+         He’s not like to land!  But let him,
+      Those strike with aim who strike for wives and sons!
+   And the war-boats built to float him; ’twere but wanted to upset him
+         A slat from Nelson’s guns!
+
+         “But, to assure thee,
+         And of creeping fears to cure thee,
+      If he _should_ be rumoured anchoring in the Road,
+   Drive with the nurse to Kingsbere; and let nothing thence allure thee
+         Till we’ve him safe-bestowed.
+
+         “Now, to turn to marching matters:—
+         I’ve my knapsack, firelock, spatters,
+      Crossbelts, priming-horn, stock, bay’net, blackball, clay,
+   Pouch, magazine, flints, flint-box that at every quick-step clatters;
+      . . . My heart, Dear; that must stay!”
+
+         —With breathings broken
+         Farewell was kissed unspoken,
+      And they parted there as morning stroked the panes;
+   And the Volunteer went on, and turned, and twirled his glove for
+   token,
+      And took the coastward lanes.
+
+         When above He’th Hills he found him,
+         He saw, on gazing round him,
+      The Barrow-Beacon burning—burning low,
+   As if, perhaps, uplighted ever since he’d homeward bound him;
+         And it meant: Expect the Foe!
+
+      [Picture: Sketch of person riding with wide landscape behind]
+
+         Leaving the byway,
+         And following swift the highway,
+      Car and chariot met he, faring fast inland;
+   “He’s anchored, Soldier!” shouted some: “God save thee, marching thy
+   way,
+      Th’lt front him on the strand!”
+
+         He slowed; he stopped; he paltered
+         Awhile with self, and faltered,
+      “Why courting misadventure shoreward roam?
+   To Molly, surely!  Seek the woods with her till times have altered;
+         Charity favours home.
+
+         “Else, my denying
+         He would come she’ll read as lying—
+      Think the Barrow-Beacon must have met my eyes—
+   That my words were not unwareness, but deceit of her, while trying
+         My life to jeopardize.
+
+         “At home is stocked provision,
+         And to-night, without suspicion,
+      We might bear it with us to a covert near;
+   Such sin, to save a childing wife, would earn it Christ’s remission,
+      Though none forgive it here!”
+
+         While thus he, thinking,
+         A little bird, quick drinking
+      Among the crowfoot tufts the river bore,
+   Was tangled in their stringy arms, and fluttered, well-nigh sinking,
+      Near him, upon the moor.
+
+         He stepped in, reached, and seized it,
+         And, preening, had released it
+      But that a thought of Holy Writ occurred,
+   And Signs Divine ere battle, till it seemed him Heaven had pleased it
+      As guide to send the bird.
+
+         “O Lord, direct me! . . .
+         Doth Duty now expect me
+      To march a-coast, or guard my weak ones near?
+   Give this bird a flight according, that I thence know to elect me
+      The southward or the rear.”
+
+         He loosed his clasp; when, rising,
+         The bird—as if surmising—
+      Bore due to southward, crossing by the Froom,
+   And Durnover Great-Field and Fort, the soldier clear advising—
+         Prompted he wist by Whom.
+
+         Then on he panted
+         By grim Mai-Don, and slanted
+      Up the steep Ridge-way, hearkening betwixt whiles;
+   Till, nearing coast and harbour, he beheld the shore-line planted
+      With Foot and Horse for miles.
+
+         Mistrusting not the omen,
+         He gained the beach, where Yeomen,
+      Militia, Fencibles, and Pikemen bold,
+   With Regulars in thousands, were enmassed to meet the Foemen,
+      Whose fleet had not yet shoaled.
+
+         Captain and Colonel,
+         Sere Generals, Ensigns vernal,
+      Were there; of neighbour-natives, Michel, Smith,
+   Meggs, Bingham, Gambier, Cunningham, roused by the hued nocturnal
+      Swoop on their land and kith.
+
+         But Buonaparte still tarried;
+         His project had miscarried;
+      At the last hour, equipped for victory,
+   The fleet had paused; his subtle combinations had been parried
+      By British strategy.
+
+         Homeward returning
+         Anon, no beacons burning,
+      No alarms, the Volunteer, in modest bliss,
+   Te Deum sang with wife and friends: “We praise Thee, Lord, discerning
+         That Thou hast helped in this!”
+
+
+
+
+HER DEATH AND AFTER
+
+
+   ’TWAS a death-bed summons, and forth I went
+   By the way of the Western Wall, so drear
+   On that winter night, and sought a gate—
+         The home, by Fate,
+      Of one I had long held dear.
+
+   And there, as I paused by her tenement,
+   And the trees shed on me their rime and hoar,
+   I thought of the man who had left her lone—
+         Him who made her his own
+      When I loved her, long before.
+
+   The rooms within had the piteous shine
+   That home-things wear when there’s aught amiss;
+   From the stairway floated the rise and fall
+         Of an infant’s call,
+      Whose birth had brought her to this.
+
+   Her life was the price she would pay for that whine—
+   For a child by the man she did not love.
+   “But let that rest for ever,” I said,
+         And bent my tread
+      To the chamber up above.
+
+   She took my hand in her thin white own,
+   And smiled her thanks—though nigh too weak—
+   And made them a sign to leave us there
+         Then faltered, ere
+      She could bring herself to speak.
+
+   “’Twas to see you before I go—he’ll condone
+   Such a natural thing now my time’s not much—
+   When Death is so near it hustles hence
+         All passioned sense
+      Between woman and man as such!
+
+   “My husband is absent.  As heretofore
+   The City detains him.  But, in truth,
+   He has not been kind . . . I will speak no blame,
+         But—the child is lame;
+      O, I pray she may reach his ruth!
+
+   “Forgive past days—I can say no more—
+   Maybe if we’d wedded you’d now repine! . . .
+   But I treated you ill.  I was punished.  Farewell!
+         —Truth shall I tell?
+      Would the child were yours and mine!
+
+   “As a wife I was true.  But, such my unease
+   That, could I insert a deed back in Time,
+   I’d make her yours, to secure your care;
+         And the scandal bear,
+      And the penalty for the crime!”
+
+   —When I had left, and the swinging trees
+   Rang above me, as lauding her candid say,
+   Another was I.  Her words were enough:
+         Came smooth, came rough,
+      I felt I could live my day.
+
+   Next night she died; and her obsequies
+   In the Field of Tombs, by the Via renowned,
+   Had her husband’s heed.  His tendance spent,
+         I often went
+      And pondered by her mound.
+
+   All that year and the next year whiled,
+   And I still went thitherward in the gloam;
+   But the Town forgot her and her nook,
+         And her husband took
+      Another Love to his home.
+
+   And the rumour flew that the lame lone child
+   Whom she wished for its safety child of mine,
+   Was treated ill when offspring came
+         Of the new-made dame,
+      And marked a more vigorous line.
+
+                      [Picture: Sketch of cemetery]
+
+   A smarter grief within me wrought
+   Than even at loss of her so dear;
+   Dead the being whose soul my soul suffused,
+         Her child ill-used,
+      I helpless to interfere!
+
+   One eve as I stood at my spot of thought
+   In the white-stoned Garth, brooding thus her wrong,
+   Her husband neared; and to shun his view
+         By her hallowed mew
+      I went from the tombs among
+
+   To the Cirque of the Gladiators which faced—
+   That haggard mark of Imperial Rome,
+   Whose Pagan echoes mock the chime
+         Of our Christian time:
+      It was void, and I inward clomb.
+
+   Scarce night the sun’s gold touch displaced
+   From the vast Rotund and the neighbouring dead
+   When her husband followed; bowed; half-passed,
+         With lip upcast;
+      Then, halting, sullenly said:
+
+   “It is noised that you visit my first wife’s tomb.
+   Now, I gave her an honoured name to bear
+   While living, when dead.  So I’ve claim to ask
+         By what right you task
+      My patience by vigiling there?
+
+   “There’s decency even in death, I assume;
+   Preserve it, sir, and keep away;
+   For the mother of my first-born you
+         Show mind undue!
+      —Sir, I’ve nothing more to say.”
+
+   A desperate stroke discerned I then—
+   God pardon—or pardon not—the lie;
+   She had sighed that she wished (lest the child should pine
+         Of slights) ’twere mine,
+      So I said: “But the father I.
+
+   “That you thought it yours is the way of men;
+   But I won her troth long ere your day:
+   You learnt how, in dying, she summoned me?
+         ’Twas in fealty.
+      —Sir, I’ve nothing more to say,
+
+   “Save that, if you’ll hand me my little maid,
+   I’ll take her, and rear her, and spare you toil.
+   Think it more than a friendly act none can;
+         I’m a lonely man,
+      While you’ve a large pot to boil.
+
+   “If not, and you’ll put it to ball or blade—
+   To-night, to-morrow night, anywhen—
+   I’ll meet you here . . . But think of it,
+         And in season fit
+      Let me hear from you again.”
+
+   —Well, I went away, hoping; but nought I heard
+   Of my stroke for the child, till there greeted me
+   A little voice that one day came
+         To my window-frame
+      And babbled innocently:
+
+   “My father who’s not my own, sends word
+   I’m to stay here, sir, where I belong!”
+   Next a writing came: “Since the child was the fruit
+         Of your lawless suit,
+      Pray take her, to right a wrong.”
+
+   And I did.  And I gave the child my love,
+   And the child loved me, and estranged us none.
+   But compunctions loomed; for I’d harmed the dead
+         By what I’d said
+      For the good of the living one.
+
+   —Yet though, God wot, I am sinner enough,
+   And unworthy the woman who drew me so,
+   Perhaps this wrong for her darling’s good
+         She forgives, or would,
+      If only she could know!
+
+                   [Picture: Sketch of tree-lined path]
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+             [Picture: Sketch of a decorative stave of music]
+
+
+
+
+THE DANCE AT THE PHŒNIX
+
+
+   TO Jenny came a gentle youth
+      From inland leazes lone,
+   His love was fresh as apple-blooth
+      By Parrett, Yeo, or Tone.
+   And duly he entreated her
+   To be his tender minister,
+      And call him aye her own.
+
+   Fair Jenny’s life had hardly been
+      A life of modesty;
+   At Casterbridge experience keen
+      Of many loves had she
+   From scarcely sixteen years above;
+   Among them sundry troopers of
+      The King’s-Own Cavalry.
+
+   But each with charger, sword, and gun,
+      Had bluffed the Biscay wave;
+   And Jenny prized her gentle one
+      For all the love he gave.
+   She vowed to be, if they were wed,
+   His honest wife in heart and head
+      From bride-ale hour to grave.
+
+   Wedded they were.  Her husband’s trust
+      In Jenny knew no bound,
+   And Jenny kept her pure and just,
+      Till even malice found
+   No sin or sign of ill to be
+   In one who walked so decently
+      The duteous helpmate’s round.
+
+   Two sons were born, and bloomed to men,
+      And roamed, and were as not:
+   Alone was Jenny left again
+      As ere her mind had sought
+   A solace in domestic joys,
+   And ere the vanished pair of boys
+      Were sent to sun her cot.
+
+   She numbered near on sixty years,
+      And passed as elderly,
+   When, in the street, with flush of fears,
+      One day discovered she,
+   From shine of swords and thump of drum.
+   Her early loves from war had come,
+      The King’s-Own Cavalry.
+
+   She turned aside, and bowed her head
+      Anigh Saint Peter’s door;
+   “Alas for chastened thoughts!” she said;
+      “I’m faded now, and hoar,
+   And yet those notes—they thrill me through,
+   And those gay forms move me anew
+      As in the years of yore!” . . .
+
+   ’Twas Christmas, and the Phœnix Inn
+      Was lit with tapers tall,
+   For thirty of the trooper men
+      Had vowed to give a ball
+   As “Theirs” had done (’twas handed down)
+   When lying in the selfsame town
+      Ere Buonaparté’s fall.
+
+   That night the throbbing “Soldier’s Joy,”
+      The measured tread and sway
+   Of “Fancy-Lad” and “Maiden Coy,”
+      Reached Jenny as she lay
+   Beside her spouse; till springtide blood
+   Seemed scouring through her like a flood
+      That whisked the years away.
+
+   She rose, and rayed, and decked her head
+      Where the bleached hairs ran thin;
+   Upon her cap two bows of red
+      She fixed with hasty pin;
+   Unheard descending to the street,
+   She trod the flags with tune-led feet,
+      And stood before the Inn.
+
+   Save for the dancers’, not a sound
+      Disturbed the icy air;
+   No watchman on his midnight round
+      Or traveller was there;
+   But over All-Saints’, high and bright,
+   Pulsed to the music Sirius white,
+      The Wain by Bullstake Square.
+
+   She knocked, but found her further stride
+      Checked by a sergeant tall:
+   “Gay Granny, whence come you?” he cried;
+      “This is a private ball.”
+   —“No one has more right here than me!
+   Ere you were born, man,” answered she,
+      “I knew the regiment all!”
+
+   “Take not the lady’s visit ill!”
+      Upspoke the steward free;
+   “We lack sufficient partners still,
+      So, prithee let her be!”
+   They seized and whirled her ’mid the maze,
+   And Jenny felt as in the days
+      Of her immodesty.
+
+   Hour chased each hour, and night advanced;
+      She sped as shod with wings;
+   Each time and every time she danced—
+      Reels, jigs, poussettes, and flings:
+   They cheered her as she soared and swooped,
+   (She’d learnt ere art in dancing drooped
+      From hops to slothful swings).
+
+   The favourite Quick-step “Speed the Plough”—
+      (Cross hands, cast off, and wheel)—
+   “The Triumph,” “Sylph,” “The Row-dow-dow,”
+      Famed “Major Malley’s Reel,”
+   “The Duke of York’s,” “The Fairy Dance,”
+   “The Bridge of Lodi” (brought from France),
+      She beat out, toe and heel.
+
+   The “Fall of Paris” clanged its close,
+      And Peter’s chime told four,
+   When Jenny, bosom-beating, rose
+      To seek her silent door.
+   They tiptoed in escorting her,
+   Lest stroke of heel or clink of spur
+      Should break her goodman’s snore.
+
+   The fire that late had burnt fell slack
+      When lone at last stood she;
+   Her nine-and-fifty years came back;
+      She sank upon her knee
+   Beside the durn, and like a dart
+   A something arrowed through her heart
+      In shoots of agony.
+
+   Their footsteps died as she leant there,
+      Lit by the morning star
+   Hanging above the moorland, where
+      The aged elm-rows are;
+   And, as o’ernight, from Pummery Ridge
+   To Maembury Ring and Standfast Bridge
+      No life stirred, near or far.
+
+   Though inner mischief worked amain,
+      She reached her husband’s side;
+   Where, toil-weary, as he had lain
+      Beneath the patchwork pied
+   When yestereve she’d forthward crept,
+   And as unwitting, still he slept
+      Who did in her confide.
+
+   A tear sprang as she turned and viewed
+      His features free from guile;
+   She kissed him long, as when, just wooed,
+      She chose his domicile.
+   She felt she could have given her life
+   To be the single-hearted wife
+      That she had been erstwhile.
+
+   Time wore to six.  Her husband rose
+      And struck the steel and stone;
+   He glanced at Jenny, whose repose
+      Seemed deeper than his own.
+   With dumb dismay, on closer sight,
+   He gathered sense that in the night,
+      Or morn, her soul had flown.
+
+   When told that some too mighty strain
+      For one so many-yeared
+   Had burst her bosom’s master-vein,
+      His doubts remained unstirred.
+   His Jenny had not left his side
+   Betwixt the eve and morning-tide:
+      —The King’s said not a word.
+
+   Well! times are not as times were then,
+      Nor fair ones half so free;
+   And truly they were martial men,
+      The King’s-Own Cavalry.
+   And when they went from Casterbridge
+   And vanished over Mellstock Ridge,
+      ’Twas saddest morn to see.
+
+              [Picture: Two lines of military men on horses]
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+                    [Picture: Sketch of wooden panel]
+
+
+
+
+THE CASTERBRIDGE CAPTAINS
+(KHYBER PASS, 1842)
+
+
+              A TRADITION OF J. B. L—, T. G. B—, AND J. L—.
+
+   THREE captains went to Indian wars,
+      And only one returned:
+   Their mate of yore, he singly wore
+      The laurels all had earned.
+
+   At home he sought the ancient aisle
+      Wherein, untrumped of fame,
+   The three had sat in pupilage,
+      And each had carved his name.
+
+   The names, rough-hewn, of equal size,
+      Stood on the panel still;
+   Unequal since.—“’Twas theirs to aim,
+      Mine was it to fulfil!”
+
+   —“Who saves his life shall lose it, friends!”
+      Outspake the preacher then,
+   Unweeting he his listener, who
+      Looked at the names again.
+
+   That he had come and they’d been stayed,
+      ’Twas but the chance of war:
+   Another chance, and they’d sat here,
+      And he had lain afar.
+
+   Yet saw he something in the lives
+      Of those who’d ceased to live
+   That sphered them with a majesty
+      Which living failed to give.
+
+   Transcendent triumph in return
+      No longer lit his brain;
+   Transcendence rayed the distant urn
+      Where slept the fallen twain.
+
+                        [Picture: Sketch of comet]
+
+
+
+
+A SIGN-SEEKER
+
+
+   I MARK the months in liveries dank and dry,
+      The noontides many-shaped and hued;
+      I see the nightfall shades subtrude,
+   And hear the monotonous hours clang negligently by.
+
+   I view the evening bonfires of the sun
+      On hills where morning rains have hissed;
+      The eyeless countenance of the mist
+   Pallidly rising when the summer droughts are done.
+
+   I have seen the lightning-blade, the leaping star,
+      The cauldrons of the sea in storm,
+      Have felt the earthquake’s lifting arm,
+   And trodden where abysmal fires and snow-cones are.
+
+   I learn to prophesy the hid eclipse,
+      The coming of eccentric orbs;
+      To mete the dust the sky absorbs,
+   To weigh the sun, and fix the hour each planet dips.
+
+   I witness fellow earth-men surge and strive;
+      Assemblies meet, and throb, and part;
+      Death’s soothing finger, sorrow’s smart;
+   —All the vast various moils that mean a world alive.
+
+   But that I fain would wot of shuns my sense—
+      Those sights of which old prophets tell,
+      Those signs the general word so well,
+   Vouchsafed to their unheed, denied my long suspense.
+
+   In graveyard green, behind his monument
+      To glimpse a phantom parent, friend,
+      Wearing his smile, and “Not the end!”
+   Outbreathing softly: that were blest enlightenment;
+
+   Or, if a dead Love’s lips, whom dreams reveal
+      When midnight imps of King Decay
+      Delve sly to solve me back to clay,
+   Should leave some print to prove her spirit-kisses real;
+
+   Or, when Earth’s Frail lie bleeding of her Strong,
+      If some Recorder, as in Writ,
+      Near to the weary scene should flit
+   And drop one plume as pledge that Heaven inscrolls the wrong.
+
+   —There are who, rapt to heights of trancéd trust,
+      These tokens claim to feel and see,
+      Read radiant hints of times to be—
+   Of heart to heart returning after dust to dust.
+
+   Such scope is granted not to lives like mine . . .
+      I have lain in dead men’s beds, have walked
+      The tombs of those with whom I’d talked,
+   Called many a gone and goodly one to shape a sign,
+
+   And panted for response.  But none replies;
+      No warnings loom, nor whisperings
+      To open out my limitings,
+   And Nescience mutely muses: When a man falls he lies.
+
+        [Picture: Sketch of person on horseback in wide landscape]
+
+
+
+
+MY CICELY
+(17–)
+
+
+   “ALIVE?”—And I leapt in my wonder,
+      Was faint of my joyance,
+   And grasses and grove shone in garments
+      Of glory to me.
+
+   “She lives, in a plenteous well-being,
+      To-day as aforehand;
+   The dead bore the name—though a rare one—
+      The name that bore she.”
+
+   She lived . . . I, afar in the city
+      Of frenzy-led factions,
+   Had squandered green years and maturer
+      In bowing the knee
+
+   To Baals illusive and specious,
+      Till chance had there voiced me
+   That one I loved vainly in nonage
+      Had ceased her to be.
+
+   The passion the planets had scowled on,
+      And change had let dwindle,
+   Her death-rumour smartly relifted
+      To full apogee.
+
+   I mounted a steed in the dawning
+      With acheful remembrance,
+   And made for the ancient West Highway
+      To far Exonb’ry.
+
+   Passing heaths, and the House of Long Sieging,
+      I neared the thin steeple
+   That tops the fair fane of Poore’s olden
+      Episcopal see;
+
+   And, changing anew my onbearer,
+      I traversed the downland
+   Whereon the bleak hill-graves of Chieftains
+      Bulge barren of tree;
+
+   And still sadly onward I followed
+      That Highway the Icen,
+   Which trails its pale riband down Wessex
+      O’er lynchet and lea.
+
+   Along through the Stour-bordered Forum,
+      Where Legions had wayfared,
+   And where the slow river upglasses
+      Its green canopy,
+
+   And by Weatherbury Castle, and thencefrom
+      Through Casterbridge held I
+   Still on, to entomb her my vision
+      Saw stretched pallidly.
+
+   No highwayman’s trot blew the night-wind
+      To me so life-weary,
+   But only the creak of the gibbets
+      Or waggoners’ jee.
+
+   Triple-ramparted Maidon gloomed grayly
+      Above me from southward,
+   And north the hill-fortress of Eggar,
+      And square Pummerie.
+
+   The Nine-Pillared Cromlech, the Bride-streams,
+      The Axe, and the Otter
+   I passed, to the gate of the city
+      Where Exe scents the sea;
+
+   Till, spent, in the graveacre pausing,
+      I learnt ’twas not my Love
+   To whom Mother Church had just murmured
+      A last lullaby.
+
+   —“Then, where dwells the Canon’s kinswoman,
+      My friend of aforetime?”—
+   (’Twas hard to repress my heart-heavings
+      And new ecstasy.)
+
+   “She wedded.”—“Ah!”—“Wedded beneath her—
+      She keeps the stage-hostel
+   Ten miles hence, beside the great Highway—
+      The famed Lions-Three.
+
+   “Her spouse was her lackey—no option
+      ’Twixt wedlock and worse things;
+   A lapse over-sad for a lady
+      Of her pedigree!”
+
+   I shuddered, said nothing, and wandered
+      To shades of green laurel:
+   Too ghastly had grown those first tidings
+      So brightsome of blee!
+
+   For, on my ride hither, I’d halted
+      Awhile at the Lions,
+   And her—her whose name had once opened
+      My heart as a key—
+
+   I’d looked on, unknowing, and witnessed
+      Her jests with the tapsters,
+   Her liquor-fired face, her thick accents
+      In naming her fee.
+
+   “O God, why this seeming derision!”
+      I cried in my anguish:
+   “O once Loved, O fair Unforgotten—
+      That Thing—meant it thee!
+
+   “Inurned and at peace, lost but sainted,
+      Were grief I could compass;
+   Depraved—’tis for Christ’s poor dependent
+      A cruel decree!”
+
+   I backed on the Highway; but passed not
+      The hostel.  Within there
+   Too mocking to Love’s re-expression
+      Was Time’s repartee!
+
+   Uptracking where Legions had wayfared,
+      By cromlechs unstoried,
+   And lynchets, and sepultured Chieftains,
+      In self-colloquy,
+
+   A feeling stirred in me and strengthened
+      That _she_ was not my Love,
+   But she of the garth, who lay rapt in
+      Her long reverie.
+
+   And thence till to-day I persuade me
+      That this was the true one;
+   That Death stole intact her young dearness
+      And innocency.
+
+   Frail-witted, illuded they call me;
+      I may be.  ’Tis better
+   To dream than to own the debasement
+      Of sweet Cicely.
+
+   Moreover I rate it unseemly
+      To hold that kind Heaven
+   Could work such device—to her ruin
+      And my misery.
+
+   So, lest I disturb my choice vision,
+      I shun the West Highway,
+   Even now, when the knaps ring with rhythms
+      From blackbird and bee;
+
+   And feel that with slumber half-conscious
+      She rests in the church-hay,
+   Her spirit unsoiled as in youth-time
+      When lovers were we.
+
+                  [Picture: Sketch of top of church tower]
+
+                                  * * * * *
+
+                   [Picture: Sketch of fields with trees]
+
+
+
+
+HER IMMORTALITY
+
+
+   UPON a noon I pilgrimed through
+      A pasture, mile by mile,
+   Unto the place where I last saw
+      My dead Love’s living smile.
+
+   And sorrowing I lay me down
+      Upon the heated sod:
+   It seemed as if my body pressed
+      The very ground she trod.
+
+   I lay, and thought; and in a trance
+      She came and stood me by—
+   The same, even to the marvellous ray
+      That used to light her eye.
+
+   “You draw me, and I come to you,
+      My faithful one,” she said,
+   In voice that had the moving tone
+      It bore ere breath had fled.
+
+   She said: “’Tis seven years since I died:
+      Few now remember me;
+   My husband clasps another bride;
+      My children’s love has she.
+
+   “My brethren, sisters, and my friends
+      Care not to meet my sprite:
+   Who prized me most I did not know
+      Till I passed down from sight.”
+
+   I said: “My days are lonely here;
+      I need thy smile alway:
+   I’ll use this night my ball or blade,
+      And join thee ere the day.”
+
+   A tremor stirred her tender lips,
+      Which parted to dissuade:
+   “That cannot be, O friend,” she cried;
+      “Think, I am but a Shade!
+
+   “A Shade but in its mindful ones
+      Has immortality;
+   By living, me you keep alive,
+      By dying you slay me.
+
+   “In you resides my single power
+      Of sweet continuance here;
+   On your fidelity I count
+      Through many a coming year.”
+
+   —I started through me at her plight,
+      So suddenly confessed:
+   Dismissing late distaste for life,
+      I craved its bleak unrest.
+
+   “I will not die, my One of all!—
+      To lengthen out thy days
+   I’ll guard me from minutest harms
+      That may invest my ways!”
+
+   She smiled and went.  Since then she comes
+      Oft when her birth-moon climbs,
+   Or at the seasons’ ingresses
+      Or anniversary times;
+
+   But grows my grief.  When I surcease,
+      Through whom alone lives she,
+   Ceases my Love, her words, her ways,
+      Never again to be!
+
+
+
+
+THE IVY-WIFE
+
+
+   I LONGED to love a full-boughed beech
+      And be as high as he:
+   I stretched an arm within his reach,
+      And signalled unity.
+   But with his drip he forced a breach,
+      And tried to poison me.
+
+   I gave the grasp of partnership
+      To one of other race—
+   A plane: he barked him strip by strip
+      From upper bough to base;
+   And me therewith; for gone my grip,
+      My arms could not enlace.
+
+   In new affection next I strove
+      To coll an ash I saw,
+   And he in trust received my love;
+      Till with my soft green claw
+   I cramped and bound him as I wove . . .
+      Such was my love: ha-ha!
+
+   By this I gained his strength and height
+      Without his rivalry.
+   But in my triumph I lost sight
+      Of afterhaps.  Soon he,
+   Being bark-bound, flagged, snapped, fell outright,
+      And in his fall felled me!
+
+
+
+
+A MEETING WITH DESPAIR
+
+
+   AS evening shaped I found me on a moor
+      Which sight could scarce sustain:
+   The black lean land, of featureless contour,
+      Was like a tract in pain.
+
+   “This scene, like my own life,” I said, “is one
+      Where many glooms abide;
+   Toned by its fortune to a deadly dun—
+      Lightless on every side.
+
+   I glanced aloft and halted, pleasure-caught
+      To see the contrast there:
+   The ray-lit clouds gleamed glory; and I thought,
+      “There’s solace everywhere!”
+
+   Then bitter self-reproaches as I stood
+      I dealt me silently
+   As one perverse—misrepresenting Good
+      In graceless mutiny.
+
+   Against the horizon’s dim-discernèd wheel
+      A form rose, strange of mould:
+   That he was hideous, hopeless, I could feel
+      Rather than could behold.
+
+   “’Tis a dead spot, where even the light lies spent
+      To darkness!” croaked the Thing.
+   “Not if you look aloft!” said I, intent
+      On my new reasoning.
+
+   “Yea—but await awhile!” he cried.  “Ho-ho!—
+      Look now aloft and see!”
+   I looked.  There, too, sat night: Heaven’s radiant show
+      Had gone.  Then chuckled he.
+
+
+
+
+UNKNOWING
+
+
+   WHEN, soul in soul reflected,
+   We breathed an æthered air,
+      When we neglected
+      All things elsewhere,
+   And left the friendly friendless
+   To keep our love aglow,
+      We deemed it endless . . .
+      —We did not know!
+
+   When, by mad passion goaded,
+   We planned to hie away,
+      But, unforeboded,
+      The storm-shafts gray
+   So heavily down-pattered
+   That none could forthward go,
+      Our lives seemed shattered . . .
+      —We did not know!
+
+   When I found you, helpless lying,
+   And you waived my deep misprise,
+      And swore me, dying,
+      In phantom-guise
+   To wing to me when grieving,
+   And touch away my woe,
+      We kissed, believing . . .
+      —We did not know!
+
+   But though, your powers outreckoning,
+   You hold you dead and dumb,
+      Or scorn my beckoning,
+      And will not come;
+   And I say, “’Twere mood ungainly
+   To store her memory so:”
+      I say it vainly—
+      I feel and know!
+
+
+
+
+FRIENDS BEYOND
+
+
+   WILLIAM DEWY, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,
+      Robert’s kin, and John’s, and Ned’s,
+   And the Squire, and Lady Susan, lie in Mellstock churchyard now!
+
+   “Gone,” I call them, gone for good, that group of local hearts and
+   heads;
+      Yet at mothy curfew-tide,
+   And at midnight when the noon-heat breathes it back from walls and
+   leads,
+
+   They’ve a way of whispering to me—fellow-wight who yet abide—
+      In the muted, measured note
+   Of a ripple under archways, or a lone cave’s stillicide:
+
+   “We have triumphed: this achievement turns the bane to antidote,
+      Unsuccesses to success,
+   —Many thought-worn eves and morrows to a morrow free of thought.
+
+   “No more need we corn and clothing, feel of old terrestrial stress;
+      Chill detraction stirs no sigh;
+   Fear of death has even bygone us: death gave all that we possess.”
+
+   _W. D._—“Ye mid burn the wold bass-viol that I set such vallie by.”
+      _Squire_.—“You may hold the manse in fee,
+   You may wed my spouse, my children’s memory of me may decry.”
+
+   _Lady_.—“You may have my rich brocades, my laces; take each household
+   key;
+      Ransack coffer, desk, bureau;
+   Quiz the few poor treasures hid there, con the letters kept by me.”
+
+   _Far._—“Ye mid zell my favourite heifer, ye mid let the charlock grow,
+      Foul the grinterns, give up thrift.”
+   _Wife_.—“If ye break my best blue china, children, I shan’t care or
+   ho.”
+
+   _All_. —“We’ve no wish to hear the tidings, how the people’s fortunes
+   shift;
+      What your daily doings are;
+   Who are wedded, born, divided; if your lives beat slow or swift.
+
+   “Curious not the least are we if our intents you make or mar,
+      If you quire to our old tune,
+   If the City stage still passes, if the weirs still roar afar.”
+
+   —Thus, with very gods’ composure, freed those crosses late and soon
+      Which, in life, the Trine allow
+   (Why, none witteth), and ignoring all that haps beneath the moon,
+
+   William Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,
+      Robert’s kin, and John’s, and Ned’s,
+   And the Squire, and Lady Susan, murmur mildly to me now.
+
+               [Picture: Sketch of vase with dead flowers]
+
+
+
+
+TO OUTER NATURE
+
+
+   SHOW thee as I thought thee
+   When I early sought thee,
+      Omen-scouting,
+      All undoubting
+   Love alone had wrought thee—
+
+   Wrought thee for my pleasure,
+   Planned thee as a measure
+      For expounding
+      And resounding
+   Glad things that men treasure.
+
+   O for but a moment
+   Of that old endowment—
+      Light to gaily
+      See thy daily
+   Irisèd embowment!
+
+   But such re-adorning
+   Time forbids with scorning—
+      Makes me see things
+      Cease to be things
+   They were in my morning.
+
+   Fad’st thou, glow-forsaken,
+   Darkness-overtaken!
+      Thy first sweetness,
+      Radiance, meetness,
+   None shall re-awaken.
+
+   Why not sempiternal
+   Thou and I?  Our vernal
+      Brightness keeping,
+      Time outleaping;
+   Passed the hodiernal!
+
+
+
+
+THOUGHTS OF PHENA
+AT NEWS OF HER DEATH
+
+
+         NOT a line of her writing have I,
+            Not a thread of her hair,
+   No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby
+         I may picture her there;
+      And in vain do I urge my unsight
+         To conceive my lost prize
+   At her close, whom I knew when her dreams were upbrimming with light,
+         And with laughter her eyes.
+
+         What scenes spread around her last days,
+            Sad, shining, or dim?
+   Did her gifts and compassions enray and enarch her sweet ways
+         With an aureate nimb?
+      Or did life-light decline from her years,
+         And mischances control
+   Her full day-star; unease, or regret, or forebodings, or fears
+         Disennoble her soul?
+
+         Thus I do but the phantom retain
+            Of the maiden of yore
+   As my relic; yet haply the best of her—fined in my brain
+         It maybe the more
+      That no line of her writing have I,
+         Nor a thread of her hair,
+   No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby
+         I may picture her there.
+
+_March_ 1890.
+
+         [Picture: Sketch of woman cover in sheet lying on couch]
+
+
+
+
+MIDDLE-AGE ENTHUSIASMS
+To M. H.
+
+
+      WE passed where flag and flower
+      Signalled a jocund throng;
+      We said: “Go to, the hour
+      Is apt!”—and joined the song;
+   And, kindling, laughed at life and care,
+   Although we knew no laugh lay there.
+
+      We walked where shy birds stood
+      Watching us, wonder-dumb;
+      Their friendship met our mood;
+      We cried: “We’ll often come:
+   We’ll come morn, noon, eve, everywhen!”
+   —We doubted we should come again.
+
+      We joyed to see strange sheens
+      Leap from quaint leaves in shade;
+      A secret light of greens
+      They’d for their pleasure made.
+   We said: “We’ll set such sorts as these!”
+   —We knew with night the wish would cease.
+
+      “So sweet the place,” we said,
+      “Its tacit tales so dear,
+      Our thoughts, when breath has sped,
+      Will meet and mingle here!” . . .
+   “Words!” mused we.  “Passed the mortal door,
+   Our thoughts will reach this nook no more.”
+
+
+
+
+IN A WOOD
+See “THE WOODLANDERS”
+
+
+   PALE beech and pine-tree blue,
+      Set in one clay,
+   Bough to bough cannot you
+      Bide out your day?
+   When the rains skim and skip,
+   Why mar sweet comradeship,
+   Blighting with poison-drip
+      Neighbourly spray?
+
+   Heart-halt and spirit-lame,
+      City-opprest,
+   Unto this wood I came
+      As to a nest;
+   Dreaming that sylvan peace
+   Offered the harrowed ease—
+   Nature a soft release
+      From men’s unrest.
+
+   But, having entered in,
+      Great growths and small
+   Show them to men akin—
+      Combatants all!
+   Sycamore shoulders oak,
+   Bines the slim sapling yoke,
+   Ivy-spun halters choke
+      Elms stout and tall.
+
+   Touches from ash, O wych,
+      Sting you like scorn!
+   You, too, brave hollies, twitch
+      Sidelong from thorn.
+   Even the rank poplars bear
+   Illy a rival’s air,
+   Cankering in black despair
+      If overborne.
+
+   Since, then, no grace I find
+      Taught me of trees,
+   Turn I back to my kind,
+      Worthy as these.
+   There at least smiles abound,
+   There discourse trills around,
+   There, now and then, are found
+      Life-loyalties.
+
+1887: 1896.
+
+
+
+
+TO A LADY
+OFFENDED BY A BOOK OF THE WRITER’S
+
+
+   NOW that my page upcloses, doomed, maybe,
+   Never to press thy cosy cushions more,
+   Or wake thy ready Yeas as heretofore,
+   Or stir thy gentle vows of faith in me:
+
+   Knowing thy natural receptivity,
+   I figure that, as flambeaux banish eve,
+   My sombre image, warped by insidious heave
+   Of those less forthright, must lose place in thee.
+
+   So be it.  I have borne such.  Let thy dreams
+   Of me and mine diminish day by day,
+   And yield their space to shine of smugger things;
+   Till I shape to thee but in fitful gleams,
+   And then in far and feeble visitings,
+   And then surcease.  Truth will be truth alway.
+
+
+
+
+TO AN ORPHAN CHILD
+A WHIMSEY
+
+
+   AH, child, thou art but half thy darling mother’s;
+      Hers couldst thou wholly be,
+   My light in thee would outglow all in others;
+      She would relive to me.
+   But niggard Nature’s trick of birth
+      Bars, lest she overjoy,
+   Renewal of the loved on earth
+         Save with alloy.
+
+   The Dame has no regard, alas, my maiden,
+      For love and loss like mine—
+   No sympathy with mind-sight memory-laden;
+      Only with fickle eyne.
+   To her mechanic artistry
+      My dreams are all unknown,
+   And why I wish that thou couldst be
+         But One’s alone!
+
+                     [Picture: Sketch of broken key?]
+
+
+
+
+NATURE’S QUESTIONING
+
+
+      WHEN I look forth at dawning, pool,
+         Field, flock, and lonely tree,
+         All seem to gaze at me
+   Like chastened children sitting silent in a school;
+
+      Their faces dulled, constrained, and worn,
+         As though the master’s ways
+         Through the long teaching days
+   Their first terrestrial zest had chilled and overborne.
+
+      And on them stirs, in lippings mere
+         (As if once clear in call,
+         But now scarce breathed at all)—
+   “We wonder, ever wonder, why we find us here!
+
+      “Has some Vast Imbecility,
+         Mighty to build and blend,
+         But impotent to tend,
+   Framed us in jest, and left us now to hazardry?
+
+      “Or come we of an Automaton
+         Unconscious of our pains? . . .
+         Or are we live remains
+   Of Godhead dying downwards, brain and eye now gone?
+
+      “Or is it that some high Plan betides,
+         As yet not understood,
+         Of Evil stormed by Good,
+   We the Forlorn Hope over which Achievement strides?”
+
+      Thus things around.  No answerer I . . .
+         Meanwhile the winds, and rains,
+         And Earth’s old glooms and pains
+   Are still the same, and gladdest Life Death neighbours nigh.
+
+
+
+
+THE IMPERCIPIENT
+(AT A CATHEDRAL SERVICE)
+
+
+   THAT from this bright believing band
+      An outcast I should be,
+   That faiths by which my comrades stand
+      Seem fantasies to me,
+   And mirage-mists their Shining Land,
+      Is a drear destiny.
+
+   Why thus my soul should be consigned
+      To infelicity,
+   Why always I must feel as blind
+      To sights my brethren see,
+   Why joys they’ve found I cannot find,
+      Abides a mystery.
+
+   Since heart of mine knows not that ease
+      Which they know; since it be
+   That He who breathes All’s Well to these
+      Breathes no All’s-Well to me,
+   My lack might move their sympathies
+      And Christian charity!
+
+   I am like a gazer who should mark
+      An inland company
+   Standing upfingered, with, “Hark! hark!
+      The glorious distant sea!”
+   And feel, “Alas, ’tis but yon dark
+      And wind-swept pine to me!”
+
+   Yet I would bear my shortcomings
+      With meet tranquillity,
+   But for the charge that blessed things
+      I’d liefer have unbe.
+   O, doth a bird deprived of wings
+      Go earth-bound wilfully!
+
+                                * * * * *
+
+   Enough.  As yet disquiet clings
+      About us.  Rest shall we.
+
+                  [Picture: Sketch of inside of church]
+
+
+
+
+AT AN INN
+
+
+   WHEN we as strangers sought
+      Their catering care,
+   Veiled smiles bespoke their thought
+      Of what we were.
+   They warmed as they opined
+      Us more than friends—
+   That we had all resigned
+      For love’s dear ends.
+
+   And that swift sympathy
+      With living love
+   Which quicks the world—maybe
+      The spheres above,
+   Made them our ministers,
+      Moved them to say,
+   “Ah, God, that bliss like theirs
+      Would flush our day!”
+
+   And we were left alone
+      As Love’s own pair;
+   Yet never the love-light shone
+      Between us there!
+   But that which chilled the breath
+      Of afternoon,
+   And palsied unto death
+      The pane-fly’s tune.
+
+   The kiss their zeal foretold,
+      And now deemed come,
+   Came not: within his hold
+      Love lingered-numb.
+   Why cast he on our port
+      A bloom not ours?
+   Why shaped us for his sport
+      In after-hours?
+
+   As we seemed we were not
+      That day afar,
+   And now we seem not what
+      We aching are.
+   O severing sea and land,
+      O laws of men,
+   Ere death, once let us stand
+      As we stood then!
+
+
+
+
+THE SLOW NATURE
+(AN INCIDENT OF FROOM VALLEY)
+
+
+   “THY husband—poor, poor Heart!—is dead—
+      Dead, out by Moreford Rise;
+   A bull escaped the barton-shed,
+      Gored him, and there he lies!”
+
+   —“Ha, ha—go away!  ’Tis a tale, methink,
+      Thou joker Kit!” laughed she.
+   “I’ve known thee many a year, Kit Twink,
+      And ever hast thou fooled me!”
+
+   —“But, Mistress Damon—I can swear
+      Thy goodman John is dead!
+   And soon th’lt hear their feet who bear
+      His body to his bed.”
+
+   So unwontedly sad was the merry man’s face—
+      That face which had long deceived—
+   That she gazed and gazed; and then could trace
+      The truth there; and she believed.
+
+   She laid a hand on the dresser-ledge,
+      And scanned far Egdon-side;
+   And stood; and you heard the wind-swept sedge
+      And the rippling Froom; till she cried:
+
+   “O my chamber’s untidied, unmade my bed
+      Though the day has begun to wear!
+   ‘What a slovenly hussif!’ it will be said,
+      When they all go up my stair!”
+
+   She disappeared; and the joker stood
+      Depressed by his neighbour’s doom,
+   And amazed that a wife struck to widowhood
+      Thought first of her unkempt room.
+
+   But a fortnight thence she could take no food,
+      And she pined in a slow decay;
+   While Kit soon lost his mournful mood
+      And laughed in his ancient way.
+
+1894.
+
+
+
+
+IN A EWELEAZE NEAR WEATHERBURY
+
+
+   THE years have gathered grayly
+      Since I danced upon this leaze
+   With one who kindled gaily
+      Love’s fitful ecstasies!
+   But despite the term as teacher,
+      I remain what I was then
+   In each essential feature
+      Of the fantasies of men.
+
+   Yet I note the little chisel
+      Of never-napping Time,
+   Defacing ghast and grizzel
+      The blazon of my prime.
+   When at night he thinks me sleeping,
+      I feel him boring sly
+   Within my bones, and heaping
+      Quaintest pains for by-and-by.
+
+   Still, I’d go the world with Beauty,
+      I would laugh with her and sing,
+   I would shun divinest duty
+      To resume her worshipping.
+   But she’d scorn my brave endeavour,
+      She would not balm the breeze
+   By murmuring “Thine for ever!”
+      As she did upon this leaze.
+
+1890.
+
+       [Picture: Sketch of pair of glasses on sketch of landscape]
+
+
+
+
+ADDITIONS
+
+
+THE FIRE AT TRANTER SWEATLEY’S
+
+
+   THEY had long met o’ Zundays—her true love and she—
+      And at junketings, maypoles, and flings;
+   But she bode wi’ a thirtover uncle, and he
+   Swore by noon and by night that her goodman should be
+   Naibour Sweatley—a gaffer oft weak at the knee
+   From taking o’ sommat more cheerful than tea—
+      Who tranted, and moved people’s things.
+
+   She cried, “O pray pity me!”  Nought would he hear;
+      Then with wild rainy eyes she obeyed.
+   She chid when her Love was for clinking off wi’ her.
+   The pa’son was told, as the season drew near
+   To throw over pu’pit the names of the peäir
+      As fitting one flesh to be made.
+
+   The wedding-day dawned and the morning drew on;
+      The couple stood bridegroom and bride;
+   The evening was passed, and when midnight had gone
+   The folks horned out, “God save the King,” and anon
+      The two home-along gloomily hied.
+
+   The lover Tim Tankens mourned heart-sick and drear
+      To be thus of his darling deprived:
+   He roamed in the dark ath’art field, mound, and mere,
+   And, a’most without knowing it, found himself near
+   The house of the tranter, and now of his Dear,
+      Where the lantern-light showed ’em arrived.
+
+   The bride sought her cham’er so calm and so pale
+      That a Northern had thought her resigned;
+   But to eyes that had seen her in tide-times of weal,
+   Like the white cloud o’ smoke, the red battle-field’s vail,
+      That look spak’ of havoc behind.
+
+   The bridegroom yet laitered a beaker to drain,
+      Then reeled to the linhay for more,
+   When the candle-snoff kindled some chaff from his grain—
+   Flames spread, and red vlankers, wi’ might and wi’ main,
+      And round beams, thatch, and chimley-tun roar.
+
+   Young Tim away yond, rafted up by the light,
+      Through brimble and underwood tears,
+   Till he comes to the orchet, when crooping thereright
+   In the lewth of a codlin-tree, bivering wi’ fright,
+   Wi’ on’y her night-rail to screen her from sight,
+      His lonesome young Barbree appears.
+
+   Her cwold little figure half-naked he views
+      Played about by the frolicsome breeze,
+   Her light-tripping totties, her ten little tooes,
+   All bare and besprinkled wi’ Fall’s chilly dews,
+   While her great gallied eyes, through her hair hanging loose,
+      Sheened as stars through a tardle o’ trees.
+
+   She eyed en; and, as when a weir-hatch is drawn,
+      Her tears, penned by terror afore,
+   With a rushing of sobs in a shower were strawn,
+   Till her power to pour ’em seemed wasted and gone
+      From the heft o’ misfortune she bore.
+
+   “O Tim, my _own_ Tim I must call ’ee—I will!
+      All the world ha’ turned round on me so!
+   Can you help her who loved ’ee, though acting so ill?
+   Can you pity her misery—feel for her still?
+   When worse than her body so quivering and chill
+      Is her heart in its winter o’ woe!
+
+   “I think I mid almost ha’ borne it,” she said,
+      “Had my griefs one by one come to hand;
+   But O, to be slave to thik husbird for bread,
+   And then, upon top o’ that, driven to wed,
+   And then, upon top o’ that, burnt out o’ bed,
+      Is more than my nater can stand!”
+
+   Tim’s soul like a lion ’ithin en outsprung—
+   (Tim had a great soul when his feelings were wrung)—
+      “Feel for ’ee, dear Barbree?” he cried;
+   And his warm working-jacket about her he flung,
+   Made a back, horsed her up, till behind him she clung
+   Like a chiel on a gipsy, her figure uphung
+      By the sleeves that around her he tied.
+
+   Over piggeries, and mixens, and apples, and hay,
+      They lumpered straight into the night;
+   And finding bylong where a halter-path lay,
+   At dawn reached Tim’s house, on’y seen on their way
+   By a naibour or two who were up wi’ the day;
+      But they gathered no clue to the sight.
+
+   Then tender Tim Tankens he searched here and there
+      For some garment to clothe her fair skin;
+   But though he had breeches and waistcoats to spare,
+   He had nothing quite seemly for Barbree to wear,
+   Who, half shrammed to death, stood and cried on a chair
+      At the caddle she found herself in.
+
+   There was one thing to do, and that one thing he did,
+      He lent her some clouts of his own,
+   And she took ’em perforce; and while in ’em she slid,
+   Tim turned to the winder, as modesty bid,
+   Thinking, “O that the picter my duty keeps hid
+      To the sight o’ my eyes mid be shown!”
+
+   In the tallet he stowed her; there huddied she lay,
+      Shortening sleeves, legs, and tails to her limbs;
+   But most o’ the time in a mortal bad way,
+   Well knowing that there’d be the divel to pay
+   If ’twere found that, instead o’ the elements’ prey,
+      She was living in lodgings at Tim’s.
+
+   “Where’s the tranter?” said men and boys; “where can er be?”
+      “Where’s the tranter?” said Barbree alone.
+   “Where on e’th is the tranter?” said everybod-y:
+   They sifted the dust of his perished roof-tree,
+      And all they could find was a bone.
+
+   Then the uncle cried, “Lord, pray have mercy on me!”
+      And in terror began to repent.
+   But before ’twas complete, and till sure she was free,
+   Barbree drew up her loft-ladder, tight turned her key—
+   Tim bringing up breakfast and dinner and tea—
+      Till the news of her hiding got vent.
+
+   Then followed the custom-kept rout, shout, and flare
+   Of a skimmington-ride through the naibourhood, ere
+      Folk had proof o’ wold Sweatley’s decay.
+   Whereupon decent people all stood in a stare,
+   Saying Tim and his lodger should risk it, and pair:
+   So he took her to church.  An’ some laughing lads there
+   Cried to Tim, “After Sweatley!”  She said, “I declare
+      I stand as a maiden to-day!”
+
+                                           _Written_ 1866; _printed_ 1875.
+
+
+
+HEIRESS AND ARCHITECT
+FOR A. W. B.
+
+
+   SHE sought the Studios, beckoning to her side
+   An arch-designer, for she planned to build.
+   He was of wise contrivance, deeply skilled
+   In every intervolve of high and wide—
+      Well fit to be her guide.
+
+         “Whatever it be,”
+         Responded he,
+   With cold, clear voice, and cold, clear view,
+   “In true accord with prudent fashionings
+   For such vicissitudes as living brings,
+   And thwarting not the law of stable things,
+      That will I do.”
+
+   “Shape me,” she said, “high halls with tracery
+   And open ogive-work, that scent and hue
+   Of buds, and travelling bees, may come in through,
+   The note of birds, and singings of the sea,
+      For these are much to me.”
+
+      “An idle whim!”
+      Broke forth from him
+   Whom nought could warm to gallantries:
+   “Cede all these buds and birds, the zephyr’s call,
+   And scents, and hues, and things that falter all,
+   And choose as best the close and surly wall,
+      For winters freeze.”
+
+      [Picture: Sketch of people carrying a large object up stairs]
+
+   “Then frame,” she cried, “wide fronts of crystal glass,
+   That I may show my laughter and my light—
+   Light like the sun’s by day, the stars’ by night—
+   Till rival heart-queens, envying, wail, ‘Alas,
+      Her glory!’ as they pass.”
+
+      “O maid misled!”
+      He sternly said,
+   Whose facile foresight pierced her dire;
+   “Where shall abide the soul when, sick of glee,
+   It shrinks, and hides, and prays no eye may see?
+   Those house them best who house for secrecy,
+      For you will tire.”
+
+   “A little chamber, then, with swan and dove
+   Ranged thickly, and engrailed with rare device
+   Of reds and purples, for a Paradise
+   Wherein my Love may greet me, I my Love,
+      When he shall know thereof?”
+
+      “This, too, is ill,”
+      He answered still,
+   The man who swayed her like a shade.
+   “An hour will come when sight of such sweet nook
+   Would bring a bitterness too sharp to brook,
+   When brighter eyes have won away his look;
+      For you will fade.”
+
+   Then said she faintly: “O, contrive some way—
+   Some narrow winding turret, quite mine own,
+   To reach a loft where I may grieve alone!
+   It is a slight thing; hence do not, I pray,
+      This last dear fancy slay!”
+
+      “Such winding ways
+      Fit not your days,”
+   Said he, the man of measuring eye;
+   “I must even fashion as my rule declares,
+   To wit: Give space (since life ends unawares)
+   To hale a coffined corpse adown the stairs;
+      For you will die.”
+
+1867.
+
+
+
+THE TWO MEN
+
+
+   THERE were two youths of equal age,
+   Wit, station, strength, and parentage;
+   They studied at the selfsame schools,
+   And shaped their thoughts by common rules.
+
+   One pondered on the life of man,
+   His hopes, his ending, and began
+   To rate the Market’s sordid war
+   As something scarce worth living for.
+
+   “I’ll brace to higher aims,” said he,
+   “I’ll further Truth and Purity;
+   Thereby to mend the mortal lot
+   And sweeten sorrow.  Thrive I not,
+
+   “Winning their hearts, my kind will give
+   Enough that I may lowly live,
+   And house my Love in some dim dell,
+   For pleasing them and theirs so well.”
+
+   Idly attired, with features wan,
+   In secret swift he laboured on:
+   Such press of power had brought much gold
+   Applied to things of meaner mould.
+
+   Sometimes he wished his aims had been
+   To gather gains like other men;
+   Then thanked his God he’d traced his track
+   Too far for wish to drag him back.
+
+   He lookèd from his loft one day
+   To where his slighted garden lay;
+   Nettles and hemlock hid each lawn,
+   And every flower was starved and gone.
+
+   He fainted in his heart, whereon
+   He rose, and sought his plighted one,
+   Resolved to loose her bond withal,
+   Lest she should perish in his fall.
+
+   He met her with a careless air,
+   As though he’d ceased to find her fair,
+   And said: “True love is dust to me;
+   I cannot kiss: I tire of thee!”
+
+   (That she might scorn him was he fain,
+   To put her sooner out of pain;
+   For incensed love breathes quick and dies,
+   When famished love a-lingering lies.)
+
+   Once done, his soul was so betossed,
+   It found no more the force it lost:
+   Hope was his only drink and food,
+   And hope extinct, decay ensued.
+
+   And, living long so closely penned,
+   He had not kept a single friend;
+   He dwindled thin as phantoms be,
+   And drooped to death in poverty . . .
+
+   Meantime his schoolmate had gone out
+   To join the fortune-finding rout;
+   He liked the winnings of the mart,
+   But wearied of the working part.
+
+   He turned to seek a privy lair,
+   Neglecting note of garb and hair,
+   And day by day reclined and thought
+   How he might live by doing nought.
+
+   “I plan a valued scheme,” he said
+   To some.  “But lend me of your bread,
+   And when the vast result looms nigh,
+   In profit you shall stand as I.”
+
+   Yet they took counsel to restrain
+   Their kindness till they saw the gain;
+   And, since his substance now had run,
+   He rose to do what might be done.
+
+   He went unto his Love by night,
+   And said: “My Love, I faint in fight:
+   Deserving as thou dost a crown,
+   My cares shall never drag thee down.”
+
+   (He had descried a maid whose line
+   Would hand her on much corn and wine,
+   And held her far in worth above
+   One who could only pray and love.)
+
+   But this Fair read him; whence he failed
+   To do the deed so blithely hailed;
+   He saw his projects wholly marred,
+   And gloom and want oppressed him hard;
+
+   Till, living to so mean an end,
+   Whereby he’d lost his every friend,
+   He perished in a pauper sty,
+   His mate the dying pauper nigh.
+
+   And moralists, reflecting, said,
+   As “dust to dust” in burial read
+   Was echoed from each coffin-lid,
+   “These men were like in all they did.”
+
+1866.
+
+
+
+LINES
+
+
+_Spoken by Miss_ ADA REHAN _at the Lyceum Theatre_, _July_ 23, 1890, _at
+a performance on behalf of Lady Jeune’s Holiday Fund for City Children_.
+
+   BEFORE we part to alien thoughts and aims,
+   Permit the one brief word the occasion claims:
+   —When mumming and grave projects are allied,
+   Perhaps an Epilogue is justified.
+
+   Our under-purpose has, in truth, to-day
+   Commanded most our musings; least the play:
+   A purpose futile but for your good-will
+   Swiftly responsive to the cry of ill:
+   A purpose all too limited!—to aid
+   Frail human flowerets, sicklied by the shade,
+   In winning some short spell of upland breeze,
+   Or strengthening sunlight on the level leas.
+
+   Who has not marked, where the full cheek should be,
+   Incipient lines of lank flaccidity,
+   Lymphatic pallor where the pink should glow,
+   And where the throb of transport, pulses low?—
+   Most tragical of shapes from Pole to Line,
+   O wondering child, unwitting Time’s design,
+   Why should Art add to Nature’s quandary,
+   And worsen ill by thus immuring thee?
+   —That races do despite unto their own,
+   That Might supernal do indeed condone
+   Wrongs individual for the general ease,
+   Instance the proof in victims such as these.
+
+   Launched into thoroughfares too thronged before,
+   Mothered by those whose protest is “No more!”
+   Vitalized without option: who shall say
+   That did Life hang on choosing—Yea or Nay—
+   They had not scorned it with such penalty,
+   And nothingness implored of Destiny?
+
+   And yet behind the horizon smile serene
+   The down, the cornland, and the stretching green—
+   Space—the child’s heaven: scenes which at least ensure
+   Some palliative for ill they cannot cure.
+
+   Dear friends—now moved by this poor show of ours
+   To make your own long joy in buds and bowers
+   For one brief while the joy of infant eyes,
+   Changing their urban murk to paradise—
+   You have our thanks!—may your reward include
+   More than our thanks, far more: their gratitude.
+
+
+
+“I LOOK INTO MY GLASS”
+
+
+   I LOOK into my glass,
+   And view my wasting skin,
+   And say, “Would God it came to pass
+   My heart had shrunk as thin!”
+
+   For then, I, undistrest
+   By hearts grown cold to me,
+   Could lonely wait my endless rest
+   With equanimity.
+
+   But Time, to make me grieve;
+   Part steals, lets part abide;
+   And shakes this fragile frame at eve
+   With throbbings of noontide.
+
+
+
+
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+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" />
+<title>Wessex Poems and Other Verses, by Thomas Hardy</title>
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+
+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Wessex Poems and Other Verses, by Thomas
+Hardy, Illustrated by Thomas Hardy
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
+other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions 
+whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
+the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at 
+www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
+to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
+
+
+
+
+Title: Wessex Poems and Other Verses
+
+
+Author: Thomas Hardy
+
+
+
+Release Date: January 30, 2015  [eBook #3167]
+[This file was first posted on January 30, 2001]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WESSEX POEMS AND OTHER VERSES***
+</pre>
+<p>Transcribed from the 1919 Macmillan and Co. &ldquo;Wessex
+Poems and Other Verses; Poems of the Past and the Present&rdquo;
+edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org</p>
+<h1>WESSEX POEMS AND<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">OTHER VERSES</span></h1>
+
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="GutSmall">BY</span><br
+/>
+THOMAS HARDY</p>
+
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+
+<div class="gapmediumline">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center">MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED<br />
+ST. MARTIN&rsquo;S STREET, LONDON<br />
+1919</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><a name="pageiv"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. iv</span><span
+class="GutSmall">COPYRIGHT</span></p>
+<p style="text-align: center">&ldquo;<i>Wessex Poems</i>&rdquo;:
+<i>First Edition</i>, <i>Crown</i> 8vo, 1898.&nbsp; <i>New
+Edition</i> 1903.<br />
+<i>First Pocket Edition June</i> 1907.&nbsp; <i>Reprinted
+January</i> 1909, 1913</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">&ldquo;<i>Poems</i>, <i>Past and
+Present</i>&rdquo;: <i>First edition</i> 1901 (dated 1902)<br />
+<i>Second Edition</i> 1903.&nbsp; <i>First Pocket Edition
+June</i> 1907<br />
+<i>Reprinted January</i> 1908, 1913, 1918, 1919</p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<h2><a name="pagev"></a><span class="pagenum">p. v</span>PREFACE
+TO WESSEX POEMS</h2>
+<p><span class="smcap">Of</span> the miscellaneous collection of
+verse that follows, only four pieces have been published, though
+many were written long ago, and other partly written.&nbsp; In
+some few cases the verses were turned into prose and printed as
+such, it having been unanticipated at that time that they might
+see the light.</p>
+<p>Whenever an ancient and legitimate word of the district, for
+which there was no equivalent in received English, suggested
+itself as the most natural, nearest, and often only expression of
+a thought, it has been made use of, on what seemed good
+grounds.</p>
+<p><a name="pagevi"></a><span class="pagenum">p. vi</span>The
+pieces are in a large degree dramatic or personative in
+conception; and this even where they are not obviously so.</p>
+<p>The dates attached to some of the poems do not apply to the
+rough sketches given in illustration, which have been recently
+made, and, as may be surmised, are inserted for personal and
+local reasons rather than for their intrinsic qualities.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">T. H.</p>
+<p><i>September</i> 1898.</p>
+<h2><a name="pageix"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+ix</span>CONTENTS</h2>
+<table>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span
+class="GutSmall">PAGE</span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">The Temporary the All</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page1">1</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Amabel</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page4">4</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Hap</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page7">7</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">In Vision I
+Roamed</span>&rdquo;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page9">9</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">At a Bridal</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page11">11</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Postponement</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page13">13</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">A Confession to a Friend in
+Trouble</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page15">15</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Neutral Tones</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page17">17</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">She</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page19">19</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Her Initials</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page21">21</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Her Dilemma</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page23">23</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Revulsion</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page27">27</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">She, To Him</span>, I.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page31">31</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;,,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+,,&nbsp;&nbsp; II.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page33">33</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;,,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+,,&nbsp;&nbsp; III.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page35">35</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;,,&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+,,&nbsp;&nbsp; IV.</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page37">37</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Ditty</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page39">39</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">The Sergeant&rsquo;s Song</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page43">43</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Valenciennes</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page45">45</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">San Sebastian</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page51">51</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">The Stranger&rsquo;s Song</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page59">59</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><a name="pagex"></a><span class="pagenum">p. x</span><span
+class="smcap">The Burghers</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page61">61</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Leipzig</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page67">67</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">The Peasant&rsquo;s
+Confession</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page79">79</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">The Alarm</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page91">91</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Her Death and After</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page103">103</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">The Dance at the
+Ph&oelig;nix</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page115">115</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">The Casterbridge Captains</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page125">125</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">A Sign-Seeker</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page129">129</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">My Cicely</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page133">133</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Her Immortality</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page143">143</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">The Ivy-Wife</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page147">147</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">A Meeting with Despair</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page149">149</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Unknowing</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page153">153</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Friends Beyond</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page155">155</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">To Outer Nature</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page159">159</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Thoughts of Phena</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page163">163</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Middle-Age Enthusiasms</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page167">167</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">In a Wood</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page169">169</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">To a Lady</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page173">173</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">To an Orphan Child</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page175">175</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Nature&rsquo;s Questioning</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page177">177</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">The Impercipient</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page181">181</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">At an Inn</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page187">187</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">The Slow Nature</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page191">191</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">In a Eweleaze near
+Weatherbury</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page195">195</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">The Fire at Tranter
+Sweatley&rsquo;s</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page201">201</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Heiress and Architect</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page211">211</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">The Two Men</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page217">217</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p><span class="smcap">Lines</span></p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page223">223</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+<td><p>&ldquo;<span class="smcap">I Look into my
+Glass</span>&rdquo;</p>
+</td>
+<td><p style="text-align: right"><span class="indexpageno"><a
+href="#page227">227</a></span></p>
+</td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page1"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 1</span>
+<a href="images/p1b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of tower with sun-dial"
+title=
+"Sketch of tower with sun-dial"
+ src="images/p1s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h2>THE TEMPORARY THE ALL</h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Change</span> and
+chancefulness in my flowering youthtime,<br />
+Set me sun by sun near to one unchosen;<br />
+Wrought us fellow-like, and despite divergence,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Friends interlinked us.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page2"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+2</span>&ldquo;Cherish him can I while the true one
+forthcome&mdash;<br />
+Come the rich fulfiller of my prevision;<br />
+Life is roomy yet, and the odds unbounded.&rdquo;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; So self-communed I.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Thwart my wistful way did a damsel saunter,<br
+/>
+Fair, the while unformed to be all-eclipsing;<br />
+&ldquo;Maiden meet,&rdquo; held I, &ldquo;till arise my
+forefelt<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Wonder of women.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">Long a visioned hermitage deep desiring,<br />
+Tenements uncouth I was fain to house in;<br />
+&ldquo;Let such lodging be for a breath-while,&rdquo; thought
+I,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &ldquo;Soon a more seemly.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;Then, high handiwork will I make my
+life-deed,<br />
+Truth and Light outshow; but the ripe time pending,<br />
+Intermissive aim at the thing sufficeth.&rdquo;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Thus I . . . But lo, me!</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page3"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+3</span>Mistress, friend, place, aims to be bettered
+straightway,<br />
+Bettered not has Fate or my hand&rsquo;s achieving;<br />
+Sole the showance those of my onward earth-track&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Never transcended!</p>
+<h2><a name="page4"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+4</span>AMABEL</h2>
+<p class="poetry">I <span class="smcap">marked</span> her ruined
+hues,<br />
+Her custom-straitened views,<br />
+And asked, &ldquo;Can there indwell<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; My Amabel?&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">I looked upon her gown,<br />
+Once rose, now earthen brown;<br />
+The change was like the knell<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of Amabel.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page5"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+5</span>Her step&rsquo;s mechanic ways<br />
+Had lost the life of May&rsquo;s;<br />
+Her laugh, once sweet in swell,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Spoilt Amabel.</p>
+<p class="poetry">I mused: &ldquo;Who sings the strain<br />
+I sang ere warmth did wane?<br />
+Who thinks its numbers spell<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; His Amabel?&rdquo;&mdash;</p>
+<p class="poetry">Knowing that, though Love cease,<br />
+Love&rsquo;s race shows undecrease;<br />
+All find in dorp or dell<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; An Amabel.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&mdash;I felt that I could creep<br />
+To some housetop, and weep,<br />
+That Time the tyrant fell<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Ruled Amabel!</p>
+<p class="poetry">I said (the while I sighed<br />
+That love like ours had died),<br />
+&ldquo;Fond things I&rsquo;ll no more tell<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To Amabel,</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page6"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+6</span>&ldquo;But leave her to her fate,<br />
+And fling across the gate,<br />
+&lsquo;Till the Last Trump, farewell,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; O Amabel!&rsquo;&rdquo;</p>
+<p>1865.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p6b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of hour-glass"
+title=
+"Sketch of hour-glass"
+ src="images/p6s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h2><a name="page7"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 7</span>HAP</h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">If</span> but some vengeful
+god would call to me <br />
+From up the sky, and laugh: &ldquo;Thou suffering thing,<br />
+Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,<br />
+That thy love&rsquo;s loss is my hate&rsquo;s
+profiting!&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">Then would I bear, and clench myself, and
+die,<br />
+Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;<br />
+Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I<br />
+Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page8"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+8</span>But not so.&nbsp; How arrives it joy lies slain,<br />
+And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?<br />
+&mdash;Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,<br />
+And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan . . .<br />
+These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown<br />
+Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.</p>
+<p>1866.</p>
+<h2><a name="page9"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+9</span>&ldquo;IN VISION I ROAMED&rdquo;<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">TO &mdash;</span></h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">In</span> vision I roamed
+the flashing Firmament,<br />
+So fierce in blazon that the Night waxed wan,<br />
+As though with an awed sense of such ostent;<br />
+And as I thought my spirit ranged on and on</p>
+<p class="poetry">In footless traverse through ghast heights of
+sky,<br />
+To the last chambers of the monstrous Dome,<br />
+Where stars the brightest here to darkness die:<br />
+Then, any spot on our own Earth seemed Home!</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page10"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+10</span>And the sick grief that you were far away<br />
+Grew pleasant thankfulness that you were near?<br />
+Who might have been, set on some outstep sphere,<br />
+Less than a Want to me, as day by day<br />
+I lived unware, uncaring all that lay<br />
+Locked in that Universe taciturn and drear.</p>
+<p>1866.</p>
+<h2><a name="page11"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 11</span>AT A
+BRIDAL<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">TO &mdash;</span></h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">When</span> you paced
+forth, to wait maternity,<br />
+A dream of other offspring held my mind,<br />
+Compounded of us twain as Love designed;<br />
+Rare forms, that corporate now will never be!</p>
+<p class="poetry">Should I, too, wed as slave to Mode&rsquo;s
+decree,<br />
+And each thus found apart, of false desire,<br />
+A stolid line, whom no high aims will fire<br />
+As had fired ours could ever have mingled we;</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page12"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+12</span>And, grieved that lives so matched should
+mis-compose,<br />
+Each mourn the double waste; and question dare<br />
+To the Great Dame whence incarnation flows.<br />
+Why those high-purposed children never were:<br />
+What will she answer?&nbsp; That she does not care<br />
+If the race all such sovereign types unknows.</p>
+<p>1866.</p>
+<h2><a name="page13"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+13</span>POSTPONEMENT</h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Snow-bound</span> in
+woodland, a mournful word,<br />
+Dropt now and then from the bill of a bird,<br />
+Reached me on wind-wafts; and thus I heard,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Wearily waiting:&mdash;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;I planned her a nest in a leafless
+tree,<br />
+But the passers eyed and twitted me,<br />
+And said: &lsquo;How reckless a bird is he,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Cheerily mating!&rsquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page14"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+14</span>&ldquo;Fear-filled, I stayed me till summer-tide,<br />
+In lewth of leaves to throne her bride;<br />
+But alas! her love for me waned and died,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Wearily waiting.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;Ah, had I been like some I see,<br />
+Born to an evergreen nesting-tree,<br />
+None had eyed and twitted me,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Cheerily mating!&rdquo;</p>
+<p>1866.</p>
+<h2><a name="page15"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 15</span>A
+CONFESSION TO A FRIEND IN TROUBLE</h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Your</span> troubles shrink
+not, though I feel them less<br />
+Here, far away, than when I tarried near;<br />
+I even smile old smiles&mdash;with listlessness&mdash;<br />
+Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries mere.</p>
+<p class="poetry">A thought too strange to house within my
+brain<br />
+Haunting its outer precincts I discern:<br />
+&mdash;<i>That I will not show zeal again to learn</i><br />
+<i>Your griefs</i>, <i>and sharing them</i>, <i>renew my pain</i>
+. . .</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page16"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+16</span>It goes, like murky bird or buccaneer<br />
+That shapes its lawless figure on the main,<br />
+And each new impulse tends to make outflee<br />
+The unseemly instinct that had lodgment here;<br />
+Yet, comrade old, can bitterer knowledge be<br />
+Than that, though banned, such instinct was in me!</p>
+<p>1866.</p>
+<h2><a name="page17"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+17</span>NEUTRAL TONES</h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">We</span> stood by a pond
+that winter day,<br />
+And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,<br />
+And a few leaves lay on the starving sod,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &mdash;They had fallen from an ash, and were
+gray.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove<br />
+Over tedious riddles solved years ago;<br />
+And some words played between us to and fro&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; On which lost the more by our love.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+18</span>The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing<br />
+Alive enough to have strength to die;<br />
+And a grin of bitterness swept thereby<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Like an ominous bird a-wing . . .</p>
+<p class="poetry">Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,<br
+/>
+And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me<br />
+Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And a pond edged with grayish leaves.</p>
+<p>1867.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page19"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 19</span>
+<a href="images/p19b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of church with person outside wall"
+title=
+"Sketch of church with person outside wall"
+ src="images/p19s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h2>SHE<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">AT HIS FUNERAL</span></h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">They</span> bear him to his
+resting-place&mdash;<br />
+In slow procession sweeping by;<br />
+I follow at a stranger&rsquo;s space;<br />
+His kindred they, his sweetheart I.<br />
+Unchanged my gown of garish dye,<br />
+Though sable-sad is their attire;<br />
+But they stand round with griefless eye,<br />
+Whilst my regret consumes like fire!</p>
+<p>187&ndash;.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page21"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 21</span>
+<a href="images/p21b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of open book with two letters hand-written on left-hand
+page"
+title=
+"Sketch of open book with two letters hand-written on left-hand
+page"
+ src="images/p21s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h2>HER INITIALS</h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Upon</span> a poet&rsquo;s
+page I wrote<br />
+Of old two letters of her name;<br />
+Part seemed she of the effulgent thought<br />
+Whence that high singer&rsquo;s rapture came.<br />
+&mdash;When now I turn the leaf the same<br />
+Immortal light illumes the lay,<br />
+But from the letters of her name<br />
+The radiance has died away!</p>
+<p>1869.</p>
+<h2><a name="page23"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 23</span>HER
+DILEMMA<br />
+(IN &mdash; CHURCH)</h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> two were silent
+in a sunless church,<br />
+Whose mildewed walls, uneven paving-stones,<br />
+And wasted carvings passed antique research;<br />
+And nothing broke the clock&rsquo;s dull monotones.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Leaning against a wormy poppy-head,<br />
+So wan and worn that he could scarcely stand,<br />
+<a name="page24"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 24</span>&mdash;For
+he was soon to die,&mdash;he softly said,<br />
+&ldquo;Tell me you love me!&rdquo;&mdash;holding hard her
+hand.</p>
+<p class="poetry">She would have given a world to breathe
+&ldquo;yes&rdquo; truly,<br />
+So much his life seemed handing on her mind,<br />
+And hence she lied, her heart persuaded throughly<br />
+&rsquo;Twas worth her soul to be a moment kind.</p>
+<p class="poetry">But the sad need thereof, his nearing death,<br
+/>
+So mocked humanity that she shamed to prize<br />
+A world conditioned thus, or care for breath<br />
+Where Nature such dilemmas could devise.</p>
+<p>1866.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p25b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of two people in a church"
+title=
+"Sketch of two people in a church"
+ src="images/p25s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h2><a name="page27"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+27</span>REVULSION</h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Though</span> I waste
+watches framing words to fetter <br />
+Some spirit to mine own in clasp and kiss,<br />
+Out of the night there looms a sense &rsquo;twere better<br />
+To fail obtaining whom one fails to miss.</p>
+<p class="poetry">For winning love we win the risk of losing,<br
+/>
+And losing love is as one&rsquo;s life were riven;<br />
+It cuts like contumely and keen ill-using<br />
+To cede what was superfluously given.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page28"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+28</span>Let me then feel no more the fateful thrilling<br />
+That devastates the love-worn wooer&rsquo;s frame,<br />
+The hot ado of fevered hopes, the chilling<br />
+That agonizes disappointed aim!<br />
+So may I live no junctive law fulfilling,<br />
+And my heart&rsquo;s table bear no woman&rsquo;s name.</p>
+<p>1866.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p30b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of person walking long path to building on hill"
+title=
+"Sketch of person walking long path to building on hill"
+ src="images/p30s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h2><a name="page31"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 31</span>SHE,
+TO HIM<br />
+I</h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">When</span> you shall see
+me in the toils of Time,<br />
+My lauded beauties carried off from me,<br />
+My eyes no longer stars as in their prime,<br />
+My name forgot of Maiden Fair and Free;</p>
+<p class="poetry">When in your being heart concedes to mind,<br
+/>
+And judgment, though you scarce its process know,<br />
+Recalls the excellencies I once enshrined,<br />
+And you are irked that they have withered so:</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page32"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+32</span>Remembering that with me lies not the blame,<br />
+That Sportsman Time but rears his brood to kill,<br />
+Knowing me in my soul the very same&mdash;<br />
+One who would die to spare you touch of ill!&mdash;<br />
+Will you not grant to old affection&rsquo;s claim<br />
+The hand of friendship down Life&rsquo;s sunless hill?</p>
+<p>1866.</p>
+<h2><a name="page33"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 33</span>SHE,
+TO HIM<br />
+II</h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Perhaps</span>, long hence,
+when I have passed away,<br />
+Some other&rsquo;s feature, accent, thought like mine,<br />
+Will carry you back to what I used to say,<br />
+And bring some memory of your love&rsquo;s decline.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Then you may pause awhile and think,
+&ldquo;Poor jade!&rdquo;<br />
+And yield a sigh to me&mdash;as ample due,<br />
+Not as the tittle of a debt unpaid<br />
+To one who could resign her all to you&mdash;</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page34"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+34</span>And thus reflecting, you will never see<br />
+That your thin thought, in two small words conveyed,<br />
+Was no such fleeting phantom-thought to me,<br />
+But the Whole Life wherein my part was played;<br />
+And you amid its fitful masquerade<br />
+A Thought&mdash;as I in yours but seem to be.</p>
+<p>1866.</p>
+<h2><a name="page35"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 35</span>SHE,
+TO HIM<br />
+III</h2>
+<p class="poetry">I <span class="smcap">will</span> be faithful
+to thee; aye, I will!<br />
+And Death shall choose me with a wondering eye <br />
+That he did not discern and domicile<br />
+One his by right ever since that last Good-bye!</p>
+<p class="poetry">I have no care for friends, or kin, or prime<br
+/>
+Of manhood who deal gently with me here;<br />
+Amid the happy people of my time<br />
+Who work their love&rsquo;s fulfilment, I appear</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page36"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+36</span>Numb as a vane that cankers on its point,<br />
+True to the wind that kissed ere canker came;<br />
+Despised by souls of Now, who would disjoint<br />
+The mind from memory, and make Life all aim,</p>
+<p class="poetry">My old dexterities of hue quite gone,<br />
+And nothing left for Love to look upon.</p>
+<p>1866.</p>
+<h2><a name="page37"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 37</span>SHE,
+TO HIM<br />
+IV</h2>
+<p class="poetry">This love puts all humanity from me;<br />
+I can but maledict her, pray her dead,<br />
+For giving love and getting love of thee&mdash;<br />
+Feeding a heart that else mine own had fed!</p>
+<p class="poetry">How much I love I know not, life not known,<br
+/>
+Save as some unit I would add love by;<br />
+But this I know, my being is but thine own&mdash;<br />
+Fused from its separateness by ecstasy.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page38"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+38</span>And thus I grasp thy amplitudes, of her<br />
+Ungrasped, though helped by nigh-regarding eyes;<br />
+Canst thou then hate me as an envier<br />
+Who see unrecked what I so dearly prize?<br />
+Believe me, Lost One, Love is lovelier<br />
+The more it shapes its moan in selfish-wise.</p>
+<p>1866.</p>
+<h2><a name="page39"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+39</span>DITTY<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">(E. L G.)</span></h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Beneath</span> a knap where
+flown<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Nestlings play,<br />
+Within walls of weathered stone,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Far away<br />
+From the files of formal houses,<br />
+By the bough the firstling browses,<br />
+Lives a Sweet: no merchants meet,<br />
+No man barters, no man sells<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Where she dwells.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page40"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+40</span>Upon that fabric fair<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &ldquo;Here is she!&rdquo;<br />
+Seems written everywhere<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Unto me.<br />
+But to friends and nodding neighbours,<br />
+Fellow-wights in lot and labours,<br />
+Who descry the times as I,<br />
+No such lucid legend tells<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Where she dwells.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Should I lapse to what I was<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Ere we met;<br />
+(Such can not be, but because<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Some forget<br />
+Let me feign it)&mdash;none would notice<br />
+That where she I know by rote is<br />
+Spread a strange and withering change,<br />
+Like a drying of the wells<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Where she dwells.</p>
+<p class="poetry">To feel I might have kissed&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Loved as true&mdash;<br />
+Otherwhere, nor Mine have missed<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; My life through.<br />
+<a name="page41"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 41</span>Had I
+never wandered near her,<br />
+Is a smart severe&mdash;severer<br />
+In the thought that she is nought,<br />
+Even as I, beyond the dells<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Where she dwells.</p>
+<p class="poetry">And Devotion droops her glance<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To recall<br />
+What bond-servants of Chance<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; We are all.<br />
+I but found her in that, going<br />
+On my errant path unknowing,<br />
+I did not out-skirt the spot<br />
+That no spot on earth excels,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &mdash;Where she dwells!</p>
+<p>1870.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page43"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 43</span>
+<a href="images/p43b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of man in military dress"
+title=
+"Sketch of man in military dress"
+ src="images/p43s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h2>THE SERGEANT&rsquo;S SONG<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">(1803)</span></h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">When</span> Lawyers strive
+to heal a breach,<br />
+And Parsons practise what they preach;<br />
+Then Little Boney he&rsquo;ll pounce down,<br />
+And march his men on London town!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lorum,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lay!</p>
+<p class="poetry">When Justices hold equal scales,<br />
+And Rogues are only found in jails;<br />
+<a name="page44"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 44</span>Then
+Little Boney he&rsquo;ll pounce down,<br />
+And march his men on London town!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Rollicum-rorum, &amp;c.</p>
+<p class="poetry">When Rich Men find their wealth a curse,<br />
+And fill therewith the Poor Man&rsquo;s purse;<br />
+Then Little Boney he&rsquo;ll pounce down,<br />
+And march his men on London town!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Rollicum-rorum, &amp;c.</p>
+<p class="poetry">When Husbands with their Wives agree,<br />
+And Maids won&rsquo;t wed from modesty;<br />
+Then Little Boney he&rsquo;ll pounce down,<br />
+And march his men on London town!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Rollicum-rorum, tol-tol-lorum,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lay!</p>
+<p>1878.</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Published in</i> &ldquo;<i>The
+Trumpet-Major</i>,&rdquo; 1880.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page45"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 45</span>
+<a href="images/p45b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of cannons overlooking a town"
+title=
+"Sketch of cannons overlooking a town"
+ src="images/p45s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h2>VALENCIENNES<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">(1793)</span></h2>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">By Corp&rsquo;l
+Tullidge</span>: <i>see</i> &ldquo;<i>The
+Trumpet-Major</i>&rdquo;<br />
+<span class="smcap">In Memory of</span> S. C. (<span
+class="smcap">Pensioner</span>).&nbsp; <span
+class="smcap">Died</span> 184&ndash;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">We</span>
+trenched, we trumpeted and drummed,<br />
+And from our mortars tons of iron hummed<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Ath&rsquo;art the ditch, the month we bombed<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The Town o&rsquo;
+Valencie&euml;n.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a name="page46"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 46</span>&rsquo;Twas in the June o&rsquo;
+Ninety-dree<br />
+(The Duke o&rsquo; Yark our then Commander been)<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The German Legion, Guards, and we<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Laid siege to Valencie&euml;n.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;This was the first time in
+the war<br />
+That French and English spilled each other&rsquo;s gore;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &mdash;Few dreamt how far would roll the roar<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Begun at Valencie&euml;n!</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&rsquo;Twas said that
+we&rsquo;d no business there<br />
+A-topper&egrave;n the French for disagre&euml;n;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; However, that&rsquo;s not my affair&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We were at Valencie&euml;n.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Such snocks and slats, since
+war began<br />
+Never knew raw recruit or veteran:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Stone-deaf therence went many a man<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Who served at Valencie&euml;n.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a name="page47"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 47</span>Into the streets, ath&rsquo;art the
+sky,<br />
+A hundred thousand balls and bombs were fle&euml;n;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And harmless townsfolk fell to die<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Each hour at Valencie&euml;n!</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;And, sweat&egrave;n wi&rsquo;
+the bombardiers,<br />
+A shell was slent to shards anighst my ears:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &mdash;&rsquo;Twas nigh the end of hopes and
+fears<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; For me at Valencie&euml;n!</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;They bore my wownded frame to
+camp,<br />
+And shut my gap&egrave;n skull, and washed en cle&auml;n,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And jined en wi&rsquo; a zilver clamp<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Thik night at Valencie&euml;n.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve fetched en
+back to quick from dead;<br />
+But never more on earth while rose is red<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Will drum rouse Corpel!&rdquo; Doctor said<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; O&rsquo; me at
+Valencie&euml;n.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a name="page48"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 48</span>&rsquo;Twer true.&nbsp; No voice
+o&rsquo; friend or foe<br />
+Can reach me now, or any liv&egrave;n be&euml;n;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And little have I power to know<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Since then at Valencie&euml;n!</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;I never hear the zummer
+hums<br />
+O&rsquo; bees; and don&rsquo; know when the cuckoo comes;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; But night and day I hear the bombs<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; We threw at Valencie&euml;n . .
+.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;As for the Duke o&rsquo; Yark
+in war,<br />
+There be some volk whose judgment o&rsquo; en is mean;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; But this I say&mdash;a was not far<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; From great at Valencie&euml;n.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O&rsquo; wild wet nights,
+when all seems sad,<br />
+My wownds come back, as though new wownds I&rsquo;d had;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; But yet&mdash;at times I&rsquo;m sort o&rsquo;
+glad<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I fout at Valencie&euml;n.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a name="page49"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 49</span>Well: Heaven wi&rsquo; its jasper
+halls<br />
+Is now the on&rsquo;y Town I care to be in . . .<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Good Lord, if Nick should bomb the walls<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; As we did Valencie&euml;n!</p>
+<p>1878&ndash;1897.</p>
+<h2><a name="page51"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 51</span>SAN
+SEBASTIAN<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">(August 1813)</span></h2>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">With Thoughts
+of Sergeant</span> M&mdash; (<span
+class="smcap">Pensioner</span>), <span class="smcap">who
+died</span> 185&ndash;.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Why</span>,
+Sergeant, stray on the Ivel Way,<br />
+As though at home there were spectres rife?<br />
+From first to last &rsquo;twas a proud career!<br />
+And your sunny years with a gracious wife<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Have brought you a daughter dear.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page52"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+52</span>&ldquo;I watched her to-day; a more comely maid,<br />
+As she danced in her muslin bowed with blue,<br />
+Round a Hintock maypole never gayed.&rdquo;<br />
+&mdash;&ldquo;Aye, aye; I watched her this day, too,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; As it happens,&rdquo; the Sergeant said.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;My daughter is now,&rdquo; he again
+began,<br />
+&ldquo;Of just such an age as one I knew<br />
+When we of the Line and Forlorn-hope van,<br />
+On an August morning&mdash;a chosen few&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Stormed San Sebastian.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;She&rsquo;s a score less three; so about
+was <i>she</i>&mdash;<br />
+The maiden I wronged in Peninsular days . . .<br />
+You may prate of your prowess in lusty times,<br />
+But as years gnaw inward you blink your bays,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And see too well your crimes!</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;We&rsquo;d stormed it at night, by the
+vlanker-light<br />
+Of burning towers, and the mortar&rsquo;s boom:<br />
+We&rsquo;d topped the breach; but had failed to stay,<br />
+For our files were misled by the baffling gloom;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And we said we&rsquo;d storm by day.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p53b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of mountain"
+title=
+"Sketch of mountain"
+ src="images/p53s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page55"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+55</span>&ldquo;So, out of the trenches, with features set,<br />
+On that hot, still morning, in measured pace,<br />
+Our column climbed; climbed higher yet,<br />
+Past the fauss&rsquo;bray, scarp, up the curtain-face,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And along the parapet.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;From the battened hornwork the
+cannoneers<br />
+Hove crashing balls of iron fire;<br />
+On the shaking gap mount the volunteers<br />
+In files, and as they mount expire<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Amid curses, groans, and cheers.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;Five hours did we storm, five hours
+re-form,<br />
+As Death cooled those hot blood pricked on;<br />
+Till our cause was helped by a woe within:<br />
+They swayed from the summit we&rsquo;d leapt upon,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And madly we entered in.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;On end for plunder, &rsquo;mid rain and
+thunder<br />
+That burst with the lull of our cannonade,<br />
+We vamped the streets in the stifling air&mdash;<br />
+Our hunger unsoothed, our thirst unstayed&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And ransacked the buildings there.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page56"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+56</span>&ldquo;Down the stony steps of the house-fronts white<br
+/>
+We rolled rich puncheons of Spanish grape,<br />
+Till at length, with the fire of the wine alight,<br />
+I saw at a doorway a fair fresh shape&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; A woman, a sylph, or sprite.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;Afeard she fled, and with heated head<br
+/>
+I pursued to the chamber she called her own;<br />
+&mdash;When might is right no qualms deter,<br />
+And having her helpless and alone<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I wreaked my will on her.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;She raised her beseeching eyes to me,<br
+/>
+And I heard the words of prayer she sent<br />
+In her own soft language . . . Seemingly<br />
+I copied those eyes for my punishment<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; In begetting the girl you see!</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;So, to-day I stand with a God-set
+brand<br />
+Like Cain&rsquo;s, when he wandered from kindred&rsquo;s ken . .
+.<br />
+<a name="page57"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 57</span>I served
+through the war that made Europe free;<br />
+I wived me in peace-year.&nbsp; But, hid from men,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I bear that mark on me.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;And I nightly stray on the Ivel Way<br
+/>
+As though at home there were spectres rife;<br />
+I delight me not in my proud career;<br />
+And &rsquo;tis coals of fire that a gracious wife<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Should have brought me a daughter dear!&rdquo;</p>
+<h2><a name="page59"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 59</span>THE
+STRANGER&rsquo;S SONG</h2>
+<p style="text-align: center">(<i>As sung by</i> <span
+class="smcap">Mr</span>. <span class="smcap">Charles
+Charrington</span> <i>in the play of</i> &ldquo;<i>The Three
+Wayfarers</i>&rdquo;)</p>
+<p
+class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;O
+<span class="smcap">my</span> trade it is the rarest one,<br />
+Simple shepherds all&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; My trade is a sight to see;<br />
+For my customers I tie, and take &rsquo;em up on high,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And waft &rsquo;em to a far countree!</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page60"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+60</span>My tools are but common ones,<br />
+
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;
+Simple shepherds all&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; My tools are no sight to see:<br
+/>
+A little hempen string, and a post whereon to swing,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Are implements enough for me!</p>
+<p class="poetry">To-morrow is my working day,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Simple shepherds
+all&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To-morrow is a working day for
+me:<br />
+For the farmer&rsquo;s sheep is slain, and the lad who did it
+ta&rsquo;en,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And on his soul may God ha&rsquo; mer-cy!</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Printed in</i> &ldquo;<i>The
+Three Strangers</i>,&rdquo; 1883.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page61"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 61</span>
+<a href="images/p61b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of man in old street"
+title=
+"Sketch of man in old street"
+ src="images/p61s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h2>THE BURGHERS<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">(17&ndash;)</span></h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> sun had wheeled
+from Grey&rsquo;s to Dammer&rsquo;s Crest,<br />
+And still I mused on that Thing imminent:<br />
+At length I sought the High-street to the West.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page62"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+62</span>The level flare raked pane and pediment<br />
+And my wrecked face, and shaped my nearing friend<br />
+Like one of those the Furnace held unshent.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve news concerning her,&rdquo;
+he said.&nbsp; &ldquo;Attend.<br />
+They fly to-night at the late moon&rsquo;s first gleam:<br />
+Watch with thy steel: two righteous thrusts will end</p>
+<p class="poetry">Her shameless visions and his passioned
+dream.<br />
+I&rsquo;ll watch with thee, to testify thy wrong&mdash;<br />
+To aid, maybe.&mdash;Law consecrates the scheme.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">I started, and we paced the flags along<br />
+Till I replied: &ldquo;Since it has come to this<br />
+I&rsquo;ll do it!&nbsp; But alone.&nbsp; I can be
+strong.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">Three hours past Curfew, when the Froom&rsquo;s
+mild hiss<br />
+Reigned sole, undulled by whirr of merchandize,<br />
+From Pummery-Tout to where the Gibbet is,</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page63"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+63</span>I crossed my pleasaunce hard by Glyd&rsquo;path Rise,<br
+/>
+And stood beneath the wall.&nbsp; Eleven strokes went,<br />
+And to the door they came, contrariwise,</p>
+<p class="poetry">And met in clasp so close I had but bent<br />
+My lifted blade upon them to have let<br />
+Their two souls loose upon the firmament.</p>
+<p class="poetry">But something held my arm.&nbsp; &ldquo;A
+moment yet<br />
+As pray-time ere you wantons die!&rdquo; I said;<br />
+And then they saw me.&nbsp; Swift her gaze was set</p>
+<p class="poetry">With eye and cry of love illimited<br />
+Upon her Heart-king.&nbsp; Never upon me<br />
+Had she thrown look of love so thorough-sped! . . .</p>
+<p class="poetry">At once she flung her faint form shieldingly<br
+/>
+On his, against the vengeance of my vows;<br />
+The which o&rsquo;erruling, her shape shielded he.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+64</span>Blanked by such love, I stood as in a drowse,<br />
+And the slow moon edged from the upland nigh,<br />
+My sad thoughts moving thuswise: &ldquo;I may house</p>
+<p class="poetry">And I may husband her, yet what am I<br />
+But licensed tyrant to this bonded pair?<br />
+Says Charity, Do as ye would be done by.&rdquo; . . .</p>
+<p class="poetry">Hurling my iron to the bushes there,<br />
+I bade them stay.&nbsp; And, as if brain and breast<br />
+Were passive, they walked with me to the stair.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Inside the house none watched; and on we
+prest<br />
+Before a mirror, in whose gleam I read<br />
+Her beauty, his,&mdash;and mine own mien unblest;</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page65"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+65</span>Till at her room I turned.&nbsp; &ldquo;Madam,&rdquo; I
+said,<br />
+&ldquo;Have you the wherewithal for this?&nbsp; Pray speak.<br />
+Love fills no cupboard.&nbsp; You&rsquo;ll need daily
+bread.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve nothing, sire,&rdquo; said
+she; &ldquo;and nothing seek.<br />
+&rsquo;Twere base in me to rob my lord unware;<br />
+Our hands will earn a pittance week by week.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">And next I saw she&rsquo;d piled her raiment
+rare<br />
+Within the garde-robes, and her household purse,<br />
+Her jewels, and least lace of personal wear;</p>
+<p class="poetry">And stood in homespun.&nbsp; Now grown wholly
+hers,<br />
+I handed her the gold, her jewels all,<br />
+And him the choicest of her robes diverse.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page66"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+66</span>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll take you to the doorway in the
+wall,<br />
+And then adieu,&rdquo; I to them.&nbsp; &ldquo;Friends,
+withdraw.&rdquo;<br />
+They did so; and she went&mdash;beyond recall.</p>
+<p class="poetry">And as I paused beneath the arch I saw<br />
+Their moonlit figures&mdash;slow, as in surprise&mdash;<br />
+Descend the slope, and vanish on the haw.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;&lsquo;Fool,&rsquo; some will
+say,&rdquo; I thought.&nbsp; &ldquo;But who is wise,<br />
+Save God alone, to weigh my reasons why?&rdquo;<br />
+&mdash;&ldquo;Hast thou struck home?&rdquo; came with the
+boughs&rsquo; night-sighs.</p>
+<p class="poetry">It was my friend.&nbsp; &ldquo;I have struck
+well.&nbsp; They fly,<br />
+But carry wounds that none can cicatrize.&rdquo;<br />
+&mdash;&ldquo;Not mortal?&rdquo; said he.&nbsp;
+&ldquo;Lingering&mdash;worse,&rdquo; said I.</p>
+<h2><a name="page67"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+67</span>LEIPZIG<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">(1813)</span></h2>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>Scene</i>: <i>The
+Master-tradesmen&rsquo;s Parlour at the Old Ship Inn</i>,
+<i>Casterbridge</i>.&nbsp; <i>Evening</i>.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Old</span> Norbert
+with the flat blue cap&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; A German said to be&mdash;<br />
+Why let your pipe die on your lap,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Your eyes blink absently?&rdquo;&mdash;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&mdash;&ldquo;Ah! . . . Well, I had thought
+till my cheek was wet<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of my mother&mdash;her voice and mien<br />
+When she used to sing and pirouette,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And touse the tambourine</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page68"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+68</span>&ldquo;To the march that yon street-fiddler plies:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; She told me &rsquo;twas the same<br />
+She&rsquo;d heard from the trumpets, when the Allies<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Her city overcame.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;My father was one of the German
+Hussars,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; My mother of Leipzig; but he,<br />
+Long quartered here, fetched her at close of the wars,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And a Wessex lad reared me.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;And as I grew up, again and again<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; She&rsquo;d tell, after trilling that air,<br />
+Of her youth, and the battles on Leipzig plain<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And of all that was suffered there! . . .</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;&mdash;&rsquo;Twas a time of
+alarms.&nbsp; Three Chiefs-at-arms<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Combined them to crush One,<br />
+And by numbers&rsquo; might, for in equal fight<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; He stood the matched of none.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page69"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+69</span>&ldquo;Carl Schwarzenberg was of the plot,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And Bl&uuml;cher, prompt and prow,<br />
+And Jean the Crown-Prince Bernadotte:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Buonaparte was the foe.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;City and plain had felt his reign<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; From the North to the Middle Sea,<br />
+And he&rsquo;d now sat down in the noble town<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of the King of Saxony.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;October&rsquo;s deep dew its wet
+gossamer threw<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Upon Leipzig&rsquo;s lawns, leaf-strewn,<br />
+Where lately each fair avenue<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Wrought shade for summer noon.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;To westward two dull rivers crept<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Through miles of marsh and slough,<br />
+Whereover a streak of whiteness swept&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The Bridge of Lindenau.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;Hard by, in the City, the One,
+care-tossed,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Gloomed over his shrunken power;<br />
+And without the walls the hemming host<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Waxed denser every hour.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page70"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+70</span>&ldquo;He had speech that night on the morrow&rsquo;s
+designs<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; With his chiefs by the bivouac fire,<br />
+While the belt of flames from the enemy&rsquo;s lines<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Flared nigher him yet and nigher.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;Three sky-lights then from the girdling
+trine<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Told, &lsquo;Ready!&rsquo;&nbsp; As they rose<br />
+Their flashes seemed his Judgment-Sign<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; For bleeding Europe&rsquo;s woes.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;&rsquo;Twas seen how the French
+watch-fires that night<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Glowed still and steadily;<br />
+And the Three rejoiced, for they read in the sight<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; That the One disdained to flee . . .</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;&mdash;Five hundred guns began the
+affray<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; On next day morn at nine;<br />
+Such mad and mangling cannon-play<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Had never torn human line.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page71"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+71</span>&ldquo;Around the town three battles beat,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Contracting like a gin;<br />
+As nearer marched the million feet<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of columns closing in.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;The first battle nighed on the low
+Southern side;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The second by the Western way;<br />
+The nearing of the third on the North was heard:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &mdash;The French held all at bay.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;Against the first band did the Emperor
+stand;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Against the second stood Ney;<br />
+Marmont against the third gave the order-word:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &mdash;Thus raged it throughout the day.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;Fifty thousand sturdy souls on those
+trampled plains and knolls,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Who met the dawn hopefully,<br />
+And were lotted their shares in a quarrel not theirs,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Dropt then in their agony.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page72"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+72</span>&ldquo;&lsquo;O,&rsquo; the old folks said, &lsquo;ye
+Preachers stern!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; O so-called Christian time!<br />
+When will men&rsquo;s swords to ploughshares turn?<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; When come the promised prime?&rsquo; . . .</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;&mdash;The clash of horse and man which
+that day began,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Closed not as evening wore;<br />
+And the morrow&rsquo;s armies, rear and van,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Still mustered more and more.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;From the City towers the Confederate
+Powers<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Were eyed in glittering lines,<br />
+And up from the vast a murmuring passed<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; As from a wood of pines.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;&lsquo;&rsquo;Tis well to cover a feeble
+skill<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; By numbers!&rsquo; scoff&egrave;d He;<br />
+&lsquo;But give me a third of their strength, I&rsquo;d fill<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Half Hell with their soldiery!&rsquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p74b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of town square, Leipzig?"
+title=
+"Sketch of town square, Leipzig?"
+ src="images/p74s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page75"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+75</span>&ldquo;All that day raged the war they waged,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And again dumb night held reign,<br />
+Save that ever upspread from the dark deathbed<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; A miles-wide pant of pain.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;Hard had striven brave Ney, the true
+Bertrand,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Victor, and Augereau,<br />
+Bold Poniatowski, and Lauriston,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To stay their overthrow;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;But, as in the dream of one sick to
+death<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; There comes a narrowing room<br />
+That pens him, body and limbs and breath,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To wait a hideous doom,</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;So to Napoleon, in the hush<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; That held the town and towers<br />
+Through these dire nights, a creeping crush<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Seemed inborne with the hours.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page76"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+76</span>&ldquo;One road to the rearward, and but one,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Did fitful Chance allow;<br />
+&rsquo;Twas where the Pleiss&rsquo; and Elster run&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The Bridge of Lindenau.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;The nineteenth dawned.&nbsp; Down street
+and Platz<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The wasted French sank back,<br />
+Stretching long lines across the Flats<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And on the bridge-way track;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;When there surged on the sky an earthen
+wave,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And stones, and men, as though<br />
+Some rebel churchyard crew updrave<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Their sepulchres from below.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;To Heaven is blown Bridge Lindenau;<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Wrecked regiments reel therefrom;<br />
+And rank and file in masses plough<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The sullen Elster-Strom.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page77"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+77</span>&ldquo;A gulf was Lindenau; and dead<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Were fifties, hundreds, tens;<br />
+And every current rippled red<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; With Marshal&rsquo;s blood and men&rsquo;s.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;The smart Macdonald swam therein,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And barely won the verge;<br />
+Bold Poniatowski plunged him in<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Never to re-emerge.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;Then stayed the strife.&nbsp; The
+remnants wound<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Their Rhineward way pell-mell;<br />
+And thus did Leipzig City sound<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; An Empire&rsquo;s passing bell;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;While in cavalcade, with band and
+blade,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Came Marshals, Princes, Kings;<br />
+And the town was theirs . . . Ay, as simple maid,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; My mother saw these things!</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page78"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+78</span>&ldquo;And whenever those notes in the street begin,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I recall her, and that far scene,<br />
+And her acting of how the Allies marched in,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And her touse of the tambourine!&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p78b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of person standing outside bay window, looking in"
+title=
+"Sketch of person standing outside bay window, looking in"
+ src="images/p78s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h2><a name="page79"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 79</span>THE
+PEASANT&rsquo;S CONFESSION</h2>
+<blockquote><p>&ldquo;Si le mar&eacute;chal Grouchy avait
+&eacute;t&eacute; rejoint par l&rsquo;officier que
+Napol&eacute;on lui avait exp&eacute;di&eacute; la veille
+&agrave; dix heures du soir, toute question e&ucirc;t
+disparu.&nbsp; Mais cet officier n&rsquo;&eacute;tait point
+parvenu &agrave; sa destination, ainsi que le mar&eacute;chal
+n&rsquo;a cess&eacute; de l&rsquo;affirmer toute sa vie, et il
+faut l&rsquo;en croire, car autrement il n&rsquo;aurait eu aucune
+raison pour h&eacute;siter.&nbsp; Cet officier avait-il
+&eacute;t&eacute; pris? avait-il pass&eacute; &agrave;
+l&rsquo;ennemi?&nbsp; C&rsquo;est ce qu&rsquo;on a toujours
+ignor&eacute;.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right">&mdash;<span
+class="smcap">Thiers</span>: <i>Histoire de
+l&rsquo;Empire</i>.&nbsp; &ldquo;Waterloo.&rdquo;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Good</span> Father! . . .
+&rsquo;Twas an eve in middle June,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And war was waged anew<br />
+By great Napoleon, who for years had strewn<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Men&rsquo;s bones all Europe through.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page80"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+80</span>Three nights ere this, with columned corps he&rsquo;d
+crossed<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The Sambre at Charleroi,<br />
+To move on Brussels, where the English host<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Dallied in Parc and Bois.</p>
+<p class="poetry">The yestertide we&rsquo;d heard the gloomy
+gun<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Growl through the long-sunned day<br />
+From Quatre-Bras and Ligny; till the dun<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Twilight suppressed the fray;</p>
+<p class="poetry">Albeit therein&mdash;as lated tongues
+bespoke&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Brunswick&rsquo;s high heart was drained,<br />
+And Prussia&rsquo;s Line and Landwehr, though unbroke,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Stood cornered and constrained.</p>
+<p class="poetry">And at next noon-time Grouchy slowly passed<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; With thirty thousand men:<br />
+We hoped thenceforth no army, small or vast,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Would trouble us again.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page81"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+81</span>My hut lay deeply in a vale recessed,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And never a soul seemed nigh<br />
+When, reassured at length, we went to rest&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; My children, wife, and I.</p>
+<p class="poetry">But what was this that broke our humble
+ease?<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; What noise, above the rain,<br />
+Above the dripping of the poplar trees<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; That smote along the pane?</p>
+<p class="poetry">&mdash;A call of mastery, bidding me arise,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Compelled me to the door,<br />
+At which a horseman stood in martial guise&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Splashed&mdash;sweating from every pore.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Had I seen Grouchy?&nbsp; Yes?&nbsp; Which
+track took he?<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Could I lead thither on?&mdash;<br />
+Fulfilment would ensure gold pieces three,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Perchance more gifts anon.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page82"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+82</span>&ldquo;I bear the Emperor&rsquo;s mandate,&rdquo; then
+he said,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &ldquo;Charging the Marshal straight<br />
+To strike between the double host ahead<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Ere they co-operate,</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;Engaging Bl&uuml;cher till the Emperor
+put<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Lord Wellington to flight,<br />
+And next the Prussians.&nbsp; This to set afoot<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Is my emprise to-night.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">I joined him in the mist; but, pausing,
+sought<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To estimate his say.<br />
+Grouchy had made for Wavre; and yet, on thought,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I did not lead that way.</p>
+<p class="poetry">I mused: &ldquo;If Grouchy thus instructed
+be,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The clash comes sheer hereon;<br />
+My farm is stript.&nbsp; While, as for pieces three,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Money the French have none.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+83</span>&ldquo;Grouchy unwarned, moreo&rsquo;er, the English
+win,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And mine is left to me&mdash;<br />
+They buy, not borrow.&rdquo;&mdash;Hence did I begin<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To lead him treacherously.</p>
+<p class="poetry">By Joidoigne, near to east, as we ondrew,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Dawn pierced the humid air;<br />
+And eastward faced I with him, though I knew<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Never marched Grouchy there.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Near Ottignies we passed, across the Dyle<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; (Lim&rsquo;lette left far aside),<br />
+And thence direct toward Pervez and Noville<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Through green grain, till he cried:</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;I doubt thy conduct, man! no track is
+here&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I doubt thy gag&egrave;d word!&rdquo;<br />
+Thereat he scowled on me, and pranced me near,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And pricked me with his sword.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page84"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+84</span>&ldquo;Nay, Captain, hold!&nbsp; We skirt, not trace the
+course<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of Grouchy,&rdquo; said I then:<br />
+&ldquo;As we go, yonder went he, with his force<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of thirty thousand men.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&mdash;At length noon nighed; when west, from
+Saint-John&rsquo;s-Mound,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; A hoarse artillery boomed,<br />
+And from Saint-Lambert&rsquo;s upland, chapel-crowned,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The Prussian squadrons loomed.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Then to the wayless wet gray ground he
+leapt;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &ldquo;My mission fails!&rdquo; he cried;<br />
+&ldquo;Too late for Grouchy now to intercept,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; For, peasant, you have lied!&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">He turned to pistol me.&nbsp; I sprang, and
+drew<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The sabre from his flank,<br />
+And &rsquo;twixt his nape and shoulder, ere he knew,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I struck, and dead he sank.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p85b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of landscape"
+title=
+"Sketch of landscape"
+ src="images/p85s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page87"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+87</span>I hid him deep in nodding rye and oat&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; His shroud green stalks and loam;<br />
+His requiem the corn-blade&rsquo;s husky note&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And then I hastened home, . . .</p>
+<p class="poetry">&mdash;Two armies writhe in coils of red and
+blue,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And brass and iron clang<br />
+From Goumont, past the front of Waterloo,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To Pap&rsquo;lotte and Smohain.</p>
+<p class="poetry">The Guard Imperial wavered on the height;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The Emperor&rsquo;s face grew glum;<br />
+&ldquo;I sent,&rdquo; he said, &ldquo;to Grouchy yesternight,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And yet he does not come!&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&rsquo;Twas then, Good Father, that the French
+espied,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Streaking the summer land,<br />
+The men of Bl&uuml;cher.&nbsp; But the Emperor cried,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &ldquo;Grouchy is now at hand!&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page88"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+88</span>And meanwhile Vand&rsquo;leur, Vivian, Maitland,
+Kempt,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Met d&rsquo;Erlon, Friant, Ney;<br />
+But Grouchy&mdash;mis-sent, blamed, yet blame-exempt&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Grouchy was far away.</p>
+<p class="poetry">By even, slain or struck, Michel the strong,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Bold Travers, Dnop, Delord,<br />
+Smart Guyot, Reil-le, l&rsquo;Heriter, Friant,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Scattered that champaign o&rsquo;er.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Fallen likewise wronged Duhesme, and skilled
+Lobau<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Did that red sunset see;<br />
+Colbert, Legros, Blancard! . . . And of the foe<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Picton and Ponsonby;</p>
+<p class="poetry">With Gordon, Canning, Blackman, Ompteda,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; L&rsquo;Estrange, Delancey, Packe,<br />
+Grose, D&rsquo;Oyly, Stables, Morice, Howard, Hay,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Von Schwerin, Watzdorf, Boek,</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page89"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+89</span>Smith, Phelips, Fuller, Lind, and Battersby,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And hosts of ranksmen round . . .<br />
+Memorials linger yet to speak to thee<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of those that bit the ground!</p>
+<p class="poetry">The Guards&rsquo; last column yielded; dykes of
+dead<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Lay between vale and ridge,<br />
+As, thinned yet closing, faint yet fierce, they sped<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; In packs to Genappe Bridge.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Safe was my stock; my capple cow unslain;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Intact each cock and hen;<br />
+But Grouchy far at Wavre all day had lain,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And thirty thousand men.</p>
+<p class="poetry">O Saints, had I but lost my earing corn<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And saved the cause once prized!<br />
+O Saints, why such false witness had I borne<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; When late I&rsquo;d sympathized! . . .</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page90"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+90</span>So now, being old, my children eye askance<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; My slowly dwindling store,<br />
+And crave my mite; till, worn with tarriance,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I care for life no more.</p>
+<p class="poetry">To Almighty God henceforth I stand
+confessed,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And Virgin-Saint Marie;<br />
+O Michael, John, and Holy Ones in rest,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Entreat the Lord for me!</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page91"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 91</span>
+<a href="images/p91b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Silhouette of solder standing on hill"
+title=
+"Silhouette of solder standing on hill"
+ src="images/p91s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h2>THE ALARM<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">(1803)</span></h2>
+<p style="text-align: center"><i>See</i> &ldquo;<i>The
+Trumpet-Major</i>&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><span class="smcap">In Memory of
+one of the Writer&rsquo;s Family who was a</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Volunteer during the War with
+Napoleon</span></p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span
+class="smcap">In</span> a ferny byway<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Near the great South-Wessex
+Highway,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; A homestead raised its breakfast-smoke aloft;<br />
+The dew-damps still lay steamless, for the sun had made no
+sky-way,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And twilight cloaked the
+croft.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a
+name="page92"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 92</span>&rsquo;Twas
+hard to realize on<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; This snug side the mute horizon<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; That beyond it hostile armaments might steer,<br />
+Save from seeing in the porchway a fair woman weep with eyes
+on<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; A harnessed Volunteer.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;In haste
+he&rsquo;d flown there<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To his comely wife alone there,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; While marching south hard by, to still her fears,<br
+/>
+For she soon would be a mother, and few messengers were known
+there<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; In these campaigning years.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&rsquo;Twas
+time to be Good-bying,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Since the assembly-hour was
+nighing<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; In royal George&rsquo;s town at six that morn;<br />
+And betwixt its wharves and this retreat were ten good miles of
+hieing<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Ere ring of bugle-horn.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a
+name="page93"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+93</span>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve laid in food, Dear,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And broached the spiced and
+brewed, Dear;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And if our July hope should antedate,<br />
+Let the char-wench mount and gallop by the halterpath and wood,
+Dear,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And fetch assistance straight.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;As
+for Buonaparte, forget him;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; He&rsquo;s not like to land!&nbsp;
+But let him,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Those strike with aim who strike for wives and
+sons!<br />
+And the war-boats built to float him; &rsquo;twere but wanted to
+upset him<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; A slat from Nelson&rsquo;s
+guns!</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;But,
+to assure thee,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And of creeping fears to cure
+thee,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; If he <i>should</i> be rumoured anchoring in the
+Road,<br />
+Drive with the nurse to Kingsbere; and let nothing thence allure
+thee<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Till we&rsquo;ve him
+safe-bestowed.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a
+name="page94"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 94</span>&ldquo;Now,
+to turn to marching matters:&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I&rsquo;ve my knapsack, firelock,
+spatters,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Crossbelts, priming-horn, stock, bay&rsquo;net,
+blackball, clay, <br />
+Pouch, magazine, flints, flint-box that at every quick-step
+clatters;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; . . . My heart, Dear; that must stay!&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&mdash;With
+breathings broken<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Farewell was kissed unspoken,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And they parted there as morning stroked the
+panes;<br />
+And the Volunteer went on, and turned, and twirled his glove for
+token,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And took the coastward lanes.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;When above
+He&rsquo;th Hills he found him,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; He saw, on gazing round him,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The Barrow-Beacon burning&mdash;burning low,<br />
+As if, perhaps, uplighted ever since he&rsquo;d homeward bound
+him;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And it meant: Expect the Foe!</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p95b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of person riding with wide landscape behind"
+title=
+"Sketch of person riding with wide landscape behind"
+ src="images/p95s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a
+name="page97"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 97</span>Leaving the
+byway,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And following swift the
+highway,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Car and chariot met he, faring fast inland;<br />
+&ldquo;He&rsquo;s anchored, Soldier!&rdquo; shouted some:
+&ldquo;God save thee, marching thy way,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Th&rsquo;lt front him on the strand!&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He slowed;
+he stopped; he paltered<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Awhile with self, and faltered,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &ldquo;Why courting misadventure shoreward roam?<br
+/>
+To Molly, surely!&nbsp; Seek the woods with her till times have
+altered;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Charity favours home.</p>
+<p
+class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;Else,
+my denying<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; He would come she&rsquo;ll read as
+lying&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Think the Barrow-Beacon must have met my
+eyes&mdash;<br />
+That my words were not unwareness, but deceit of her, while
+trying<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; My life to jeopardize.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a
+name="page98"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 98</span>&ldquo;At
+home is stocked provision,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And to-night, without
+suspicion,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; We might bear it with us to a covert near;<br />
+Such sin, to save a childing wife, would earn it Christ&rsquo;s
+remission,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Though none forgive it here!&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;While thus
+he, thinking,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; A little bird, quick drinking<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Among the crowfoot tufts the river bore,<br />
+Was tangled in their stringy arms, and fluttered, well-nigh
+sinking,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Near him, upon the moor.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He stepped
+in, reached, and seized it,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And, preening, had released it<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; But that a thought of Holy Writ occurred,<br />
+And Signs Divine ere battle, till it seemed him Heaven had
+pleased it<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; As guide to send the bird.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a
+name="page99"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 99</span>&ldquo;O
+Lord, direct me! . . .<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Doth Duty now expect me<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To march a-coast, or guard my weak ones near?<br />
+Give this bird a flight according, that I thence know to elect
+me<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The southward or the rear.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;He loosed
+his clasp; when, rising,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The bird&mdash;as if
+surmising&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Bore due to southward, crossing by the Froom,<br />
+And Durnover Great-Field and Fort, the soldier clear
+advising&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Prompted he wist by Whom.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Then on he
+panted<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; By grim Mai-Don, and slanted<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Up the steep Ridge-way, hearkening betwixt
+whiles;<br />
+Till, nearing coast and harbour, he beheld the shore-line
+planted<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; With Foot and Horse for miles.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a
+name="page100"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 100</span>Mistrusting
+not the omen,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; He gained the beach, where
+Yeomen,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Militia, Fencibles, and Pikemen bold,<br />
+With Regulars in thousands, were enmassed to meet the Foemen,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Whose fleet had not yet shoaled.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Captain and
+Colonel,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sere Generals, Ensigns vernal,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Were there; of neighbour-natives, Michel, Smith,<br
+/>
+Meggs, Bingham, Gambier, Cunningham, roused by the hued
+nocturnal<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Swoop on their land and kith.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;But
+Buonaparte still tarried;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; His project had miscarried;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; At the last hour, equipped for victory,<br />
+The fleet had paused; his subtle combinations had been parried<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; By British strategy.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a
+name="page101"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 101</span>Homeward
+returning<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Anon, no beacons burning,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; No alarms, the Volunteer, in modest bliss,<br />
+Te Deum sang with wife and friends: &ldquo;We praise Thee, Lord,
+discerning<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; That Thou hast helped in
+this!&rdquo;</p>
+<h2><a name="page103"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 103</span>HER
+DEATH AND AFTER</h2>
+<p class="poetry">&rsquo;<span class="smcap">Twas</span> a
+death-bed summons, and forth I went<br />
+By the way of the Western Wall, so drear<br />
+On that winter night, and sought a gate&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; The home, by Fate,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of one I had long held dear.</p>
+<p class="poetry">And there, as I paused by her tenement,<br />
+And the trees shed on me their rime and hoar,<br />
+I thought of the man who had left her lone&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Him who made her his own<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; When I loved her, long before.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page104"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+104</span>The rooms within had the piteous shine<br />
+That home-things wear when there&rsquo;s aught amiss;<br />
+From the stairway floated the rise and fall<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Of an infant&rsquo;s call,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Whose birth had brought her to this.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Her life was the price she would pay for that
+whine&mdash;<br />
+For a child by the man she did not love.<br />
+&ldquo;But let that rest for ever,&rdquo; I said,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And bent my tread<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To the chamber up above.</p>
+<p class="poetry">She took my hand in her thin white own,<br />
+And smiled her thanks&mdash;though nigh too weak&mdash;<br />
+And made them a sign to leave us there<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Then faltered, ere<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; She could bring herself to speak.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;&rsquo;Twas to see you before I
+go&mdash;he&rsquo;ll condone<br />
+Such a natural thing now my time&rsquo;s not much&mdash;<br />
+<a name="page105"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 105</span>When
+Death is so near it hustles hence<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; All passioned sense<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Between woman and man as such!</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;My husband is absent.&nbsp; As
+heretofore<br />
+The City detains him.&nbsp; But, in truth,<br />
+He has not been kind . . . I will speak no blame,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But&mdash;the child is lame;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; O, I pray she may reach his ruth!</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;Forgive past days&mdash;I can say no
+more&mdash;<br />
+Maybe if we&rsquo;d wedded you&rsquo;d now repine! . . .<br />
+But I treated you ill.&nbsp; I was punished.&nbsp; Farewell!<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &mdash;Truth shall I tell?<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Would the child were yours and mine!</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;As a wife I was true.&nbsp; But, such my
+unease<br />
+That, could I insert a deed back in Time,<br />
+I&rsquo;d make her yours, to secure your care;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And the scandal bear,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And the penalty for the crime!&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page106"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+106</span>&mdash;When I had left, and the swinging trees<br />
+Rang above me, as lauding her candid say,<br />
+Another was I.&nbsp; Her words were enough:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Came smooth, came rough,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I felt I could live my day.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Next night she died; and her obsequies<br />
+In the Field of Tombs, by the Via renowned,<br />
+Had her husband&rsquo;s heed.&nbsp; His tendance spent,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I often went<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And pondered by her mound.</p>
+<p class="poetry">All that year and the next year whiled,<br />
+And I still went thitherward in the gloam;<br />
+But the Town forgot her and her nook,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And her husband took<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Another Love to his home.</p>
+<p class="poetry">And the rumour flew that the lame lone child<br
+/>
+Whom she wished for its safety child of mine,<br />
+<a name="page109"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 109</span>Was
+treated ill when offspring came<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Of the new-made dame,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And marked a more vigorous line.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p107b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of cemetery"
+title=
+"Sketch of cemetery"
+ src="images/p107s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p class="poetry">A smarter grief within me wrought<br />
+Than even at loss of her so dear;<br />
+Dead the being whose soul my soul suffused,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Her child ill-used,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I helpless to interfere!</p>
+<p class="poetry">One eve as I stood at my spot of thought<br />
+In the white-stoned Garth, brooding thus her wrong,<br />
+Her husband neared; and to shun his view<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; By her hallowed mew<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I went from the tombs among</p>
+<p class="poetry">To the Cirque of the Gladiators which
+faced&mdash;<br />
+That haggard mark of Imperial Rome,<br />
+Whose Pagan echoes mock the chime<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Of our Christian time:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; It was void, and I inward clomb.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page110"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+110</span>Scarce night the sun&rsquo;s gold touch displaced<br />
+From the vast Rotund and the neighbouring dead<br />
+When her husband followed; bowed; half-passed,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; With lip upcast;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Then, halting, sullenly said:</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;It is noised that you visit my first
+wife&rsquo;s tomb.<br />
+Now, I gave her an honoured name to bear<br />
+While living, when dead.&nbsp; So I&rsquo;ve claim to ask<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; By what right you task<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; My patience by vigiling there?</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;There&rsquo;s decency even in death, I
+assume;<br />
+Preserve it, sir, and keep away;<br />
+For the mother of my first-born you<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Show mind undue!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &mdash;Sir, I&rsquo;ve nothing more to
+say.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">A desperate stroke discerned I then&mdash;<br
+/>
+God pardon&mdash;or pardon not&mdash;the lie;<br />
+<a name="page111"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 111</span>She had
+sighed that she wished (lest the child should pine<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Of slights) &rsquo;twere mine,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; So I said: &ldquo;But the father I.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;That you thought it yours is the way of
+men;<br />
+But I won her troth long ere your day:<br />
+You learnt how, in dying, she summoned me?<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; &rsquo;Twas in fealty.<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &mdash;Sir, I&rsquo;ve nothing more to say,</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;Save that, if you&rsquo;ll hand me my
+little maid,<br />
+I&rsquo;ll take her, and rear her, and spare you toil.<br />
+Think it more than a friendly act none can;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I&rsquo;m a lonely man,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; While you&rsquo;ve a large pot to boil.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;If not, and you&rsquo;ll put it to ball
+or blade&mdash;<br />
+To-night, to-morrow night, anywhen&mdash;<br />
+I&rsquo;ll meet you here . . . But think of it,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And in season fit<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Let me hear from you again.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page112"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+112</span>&mdash;Well, I went away, hoping; but nought I heard<br
+/>
+Of my stroke for the child, till there greeted me<br />
+A little voice that one day came<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To my window-frame<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And babbled innocently:</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;My father who&rsquo;s not my own, sends
+word<br />
+I&rsquo;m to stay here, sir, where I belong!&rdquo;<br />
+Next a writing came: &ldquo;Since the child was the fruit<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Of your lawless suit,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Pray take her, to right a wrong.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">And I did.&nbsp; And I gave the child my
+love,<br />
+And the child loved me, and estranged us none.<br />
+But compunctions loomed; for I&rsquo;d harmed the dead<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; By what I&rsquo;d said<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; For the good of the living one.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page113"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+113</span>&mdash;Yet though, God wot, I am sinner enough,<br />
+And unworthy the woman who drew me so,<br />
+Perhaps this wrong for her darling&rsquo;s good<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; She forgives, or would,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; If only she could know!</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p113b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of tree-lined path"
+title=
+"Sketch of tree-lined path"
+ src="images/p113s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page115"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 115</span>
+<a href="images/p115b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of a decorative stave of music"
+title=
+"Sketch of a decorative stave of music"
+ src="images/p115s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h2>THE DANCE AT THE PH&OElig;NIX</h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">To</span> Jenny came a
+gentle youth<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; From inland leazes lone,<br />
+His love was fresh as apple-blooth<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; By Parrett, Yeo, or Tone.<br />
+And duly he entreated her<br />
+To be his tender minister,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And call him aye her own.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Fair Jenny&rsquo;s life had hardly been<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; A life of modesty;<br />
+At Casterbridge experience keen<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of many loves had she<br />
+<a name="page116"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 116</span>From
+scarcely sixteen years above;<br />
+Among them sundry troopers of<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The King&rsquo;s-Own Cavalry.</p>
+<p class="poetry">But each with charger, sword, and gun,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Had bluffed the Biscay wave;<br />
+And Jenny prized her gentle one<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; For all the love he gave.<br />
+She vowed to be, if they were wed,<br />
+His honest wife in heart and head<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; From bride-ale hour to grave.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Wedded they were.&nbsp; Her husband&rsquo;s
+trust<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; In Jenny knew no bound,<br />
+And Jenny kept her pure and just,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Till even malice found<br />
+No sin or sign of ill to be<br />
+In one who walked so decently<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The duteous helpmate&rsquo;s round.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Two sons were born, and bloomed to men,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And roamed, and were as not:<br />
+Alone was Jenny left again<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; As ere her mind had sought<br />
+<a name="page117"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 117</span>A solace
+in domestic joys,<br />
+And ere the vanished pair of boys<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Were sent to sun her cot.</p>
+<p class="poetry">She numbered near on sixty years,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And passed as elderly,<br />
+When, in the street, with flush of fears,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; One day discovered she,<br />
+From shine of swords and thump of drum.<br />
+Her early loves from war had come,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The King&rsquo;s-Own Cavalry.</p>
+<p class="poetry">She turned aside, and bowed her head<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Anigh Saint Peter&rsquo;s door;<br />
+&ldquo;Alas for chastened thoughts!&rdquo; she said;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &ldquo;I&rsquo;m faded now, and hoar,<br />
+And yet those notes&mdash;they thrill me through,<br />
+And those gay forms move me anew<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; As in the years of yore!&rdquo; . . .</p>
+<p class="poetry">&rsquo;Twas Christmas, and the Ph&oelig;nix
+Inn<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Was lit with tapers tall,<br />
+For thirty of the trooper men<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Had vowed to give a ball<br />
+<a name="page118"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 118</span>As
+&ldquo;Theirs&rdquo; had done (&rsquo;twas handed down)<br />
+When lying in the selfsame town<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Ere Buonapart&eacute;&rsquo;s fall.</p>
+<p class="poetry">That night the throbbing &ldquo;Soldier&rsquo;s
+Joy,&rdquo;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The measured tread and sway<br />
+Of &ldquo;Fancy-Lad&rdquo; and &ldquo;Maiden Coy,&rdquo;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Reached Jenny as she lay<br />
+Beside her spouse; till springtide blood<br />
+Seemed scouring through her like a flood<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; That whisked the years away.</p>
+<p class="poetry">She rose, and rayed, and decked her head<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Where the bleached hairs ran thin;<br />
+Upon her cap two bows of red<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; She fixed with hasty pin;<br />
+Unheard descending to the street,<br />
+She trod the flags with tune-led feet,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And stood before the Inn.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Save for the dancers&rsquo;, not a sound<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Disturbed the icy air;<br />
+No watchman on his midnight round<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Or traveller was there;<br />
+<a name="page119"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 119</span>But over
+All-Saints&rsquo;, high and bright,<br />
+Pulsed to the music Sirius white,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The Wain by Bullstake Square.</p>
+<p class="poetry">She knocked, but found her further stride<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Checked by a sergeant tall:<br />
+&ldquo;Gay Granny, whence come you?&rdquo; he cried;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &ldquo;This is a private ball.&rdquo;<br />
+&mdash;&ldquo;No one has more right here than me!<br />
+Ere you were born, man,&rdquo; answered she,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &ldquo;I knew the regiment all!&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;Take not the lady&rsquo;s visit
+ill!&rdquo;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Upspoke the steward free;<br />
+&ldquo;We lack sufficient partners still,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; So, prithee let her be!&rdquo;<br />
+They seized and whirled her &rsquo;mid the maze,<br />
+And Jenny felt as in the days<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of her immodesty.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Hour chased each hour, and night advanced;<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; She sped as shod with wings;<br />
+Each time and every time she danced&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Reels, jigs, poussettes, and flings:<br />
+<a name="page120"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 120</span>They
+cheered her as she soared and swooped,<br />
+(She&rsquo;d learnt ere art in dancing drooped<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; From hops to slothful swings).</p>
+<p class="poetry">The favourite Quick-step &ldquo;Speed the
+Plough&rdquo;&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; (Cross hands, cast off, and wheel)&mdash;<br />
+&ldquo;The Triumph,&rdquo; &ldquo;Sylph,&rdquo; &ldquo;The
+Row-dow-dow,&rdquo;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Famed &ldquo;Major Malley&rsquo;s Reel,&rdquo;<br />
+&ldquo;The Duke of York&rsquo;s,&rdquo; &ldquo;The Fairy
+Dance,&rdquo;<br />
+&ldquo;The Bridge of Lodi&rdquo; (brought from France),<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; She beat out, toe and heel.</p>
+<p class="poetry">The &ldquo;Fall of Paris&rdquo; clanged its
+close,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And Peter&rsquo;s chime told four,<br />
+When Jenny, bosom-beating, rose<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To seek her silent door.<br />
+They tiptoed in escorting her,<br />
+Lest stroke of heel or clink of spur<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Should break her goodman&rsquo;s snore.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page121"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+121</span>The fire that late had burnt fell slack<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; When lone at last stood she;<br />
+Her nine-and-fifty years came back;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; She sank upon her knee <br />
+Beside the durn, and like a dart<br />
+A something arrowed through her heart<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; In shoots of agony.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Their footsteps died as she leant there,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Lit by the morning star<br />
+Hanging above the moorland, where<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The aged elm-rows are;<br />
+And, as o&rsquo;ernight, from Pummery Ridge<br />
+To Maembury Ring and Standfast Bridge<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; No life stirred, near or far.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Though inner mischief worked amain,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; She reached her husband&rsquo;s side;<br />
+Where, toil-weary, as he had lain<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Beneath the patchwork pied<br />
+When yestereve she&rsquo;d forthward crept,<br />
+And as unwitting, still he slept<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Who did in her confide.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page122"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+122</span>A tear sprang as she turned and viewed<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; His features free from guile;<br />
+She kissed him long, as when, just wooed,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; She chose his domicile.<br />
+She felt she could have given her life<br />
+To be the single-hearted wife<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; That she had been erstwhile.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Time wore to six.&nbsp; Her husband rose<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And struck the steel and stone;<br />
+He glanced at Jenny, whose repose<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Seemed deeper than his own.<br />
+With dumb dismay, on closer sight,<br />
+He gathered sense that in the night,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Or morn, her soul had flown.</p>
+<p class="poetry">When told that some too mighty strain<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; For one so many-yeared<br />
+Had burst her bosom&rsquo;s master-vein,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; His doubts remained unstirred.<br />
+His Jenny had not left his side<br />
+Betwixt the eve and morning-tide:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &mdash;The King&rsquo;s said not a word.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page123"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+123</span>Well! times are not as times were then,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Nor fair ones half so free;<br />
+And truly they were martial men,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The King&rsquo;s-Own Cavalry.<br />
+And when they went from Casterbridge<br />
+And vanished over Mellstock Ridge,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &rsquo;Twas saddest morn to see.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p123b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Two lines of military men on horses"
+title=
+"Two lines of military men on horses"
+ src="images/p123s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page125"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 125</span>
+<a href="images/p125b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of wooden panel"
+title=
+"Sketch of wooden panel"
+ src="images/p125s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h2>THE CASTERBRIDGE CAPTAINS<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">(KHYBER PASS, 1842)</span></h2>
+<p style="text-align: center">A <span class="smcap">Tradition
+of</span> J. B. L&mdash;, T. G. B&mdash;, AND J. L&mdash;.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Three</span> captains went
+to Indian wars,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And only one returned:<br />
+Their mate of yore, he singly wore<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The laurels all had earned.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page126"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+126</span>At home he sought the ancient aisle<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Wherein, untrumped of fame,<br />
+The three had sat in pupilage,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And each had carved his name.</p>
+<p class="poetry">The names, rough-hewn, of equal size,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Stood on the panel still;<br />
+Unequal since.&mdash;&ldquo;&rsquo;Twas theirs to aim,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Mine was it to fulfil!&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&mdash;&ldquo;Who saves his life shall lose it,
+friends!&rdquo;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Outspake the preacher then,<br />
+Unweeting he his listener, who<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Looked at the names again.</p>
+<p class="poetry">That he had come and they&rsquo;d been
+stayed,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &rsquo;Twas but the chance of war:<br />
+Another chance, and they&rsquo;d sat here,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And he had lain afar.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page127"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+127</span>Yet saw he something in the lives<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of those who&rsquo;d ceased to live<br />
+That sphered them with a majesty<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Which living failed to give.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Transcendent triumph in return<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; No longer lit his brain;<br />
+Transcendence rayed the distant urn<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Where slept the fallen twain.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page129"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 129</span>
+<a href="images/p129b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of comet"
+title=
+"Sketch of comet"
+ src="images/p129s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h2>A SIGN-SEEKER</h2>
+<p class="poetry">I <span class="smcap">mark</span> the months in
+liveries dank and dry,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The noontides many-shaped and hued;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I see the nightfall shades subtrude,<br />
+And hear the monotonous hours clang negligently by.</p>
+<p class="poetry">I view the evening bonfires of the sun<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; On hills where morning rains have hissed;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The eyeless countenance of the mist<br />
+Pallidly rising when the summer droughts are done.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page130"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+130</span>I have seen the lightning-blade, the leaping star,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The cauldrons of the sea in storm,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Have felt the earthquake&rsquo;s lifting arm,<br />
+And trodden where abysmal fires and snow-cones are.</p>
+<p class="poetry">I learn to prophesy the hid eclipse,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The coming of eccentric orbs;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To mete the dust the sky absorbs,<br />
+To weigh the sun, and fix the hour each planet dips.</p>
+<p class="poetry">I witness fellow earth-men surge and strive;<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Assemblies meet, and throb, and part;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Death&rsquo;s soothing finger, sorrow&rsquo;s
+smart;<br />
+&mdash;All the vast various moils that mean a world alive.</p>
+<p class="poetry">But that I fain would wot of shuns my
+sense&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Those sights of which old prophets tell,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Those signs the general word so well,<br />
+Vouchsafed to their unheed, denied my long suspense.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page131"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+131</span>In graveyard green, behind his monument<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To glimpse a phantom parent, friend,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Wearing his smile, and &ldquo;Not the end!&rdquo;<br
+/>
+Outbreathing softly: that were blest enlightenment;</p>
+<p class="poetry">Or, if a dead Love&rsquo;s lips, whom dreams
+reveal<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; When midnight imps of King Decay<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Delve sly to solve me back to clay,<br />
+Should leave some print to prove her spirit-kisses real;</p>
+<p class="poetry">Or, when Earth&rsquo;s Frail lie bleeding of
+her Strong,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; If some Recorder, as in Writ,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Near to the weary scene should flit<br />
+And drop one plume as pledge that Heaven inscrolls the wrong.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&mdash;There are who, rapt to heights of
+tranc&eacute;d trust,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; These tokens claim to feel and see,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Read radiant hints of times to be&mdash;<br />
+Of heart to heart returning after dust to dust.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page132"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+132</span>Such scope is granted not to lives like mine . . .<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I have lain in dead men&rsquo;s beds, have walked<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The tombs of those with whom I&rsquo;d talked,<br />
+Called many a gone and goodly one to shape a sign,</p>
+<p class="poetry">And panted for response.&nbsp; But none
+replies;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; No warnings loom, nor whisperings<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To open out my limitings,<br />
+And Nescience mutely muses: When a man falls he lies.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page133"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 133</span>
+<a href="images/p133b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of person on horseback in wide landscape"
+title=
+"Sketch of person on horseback in wide landscape"
+ src="images/p133s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h2>MY CICELY<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">(17&ndash;)</span></h2>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;<span
+class="smcap">Alive</span>?&rdquo;&mdash;And I leapt in my
+wonder,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Was faint of my joyance,<br />
+And grasses and grove shone in garments<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of glory to me.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;She lives, in a plenteous well-being,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To-day as aforehand;<br />
+The dead bore the name&mdash;though a rare one&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The name that bore she.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page134"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+134</span>She lived . . . I, afar in the city<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of frenzy-led factions,<br />
+Had squandered green years and maturer<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; In bowing the knee</p>
+<p class="poetry">To Baals illusive and specious,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Till chance had there voiced me<br />
+That one I loved vainly in nonage<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Had ceased her to be.</p>
+<p class="poetry">The passion the planets had scowled on,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And change had let dwindle,<br />
+Her death-rumour smartly relifted<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To full apogee.</p>
+<p class="poetry">I mounted a steed in the dawning<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; With acheful remembrance,<br />
+And made for the ancient West Highway<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To far Exonb&rsquo;ry.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Passing heaths, and the House of Long
+Sieging,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I neared the thin steeple<br />
+<a name="page135"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 135</span>That
+tops the fair fane of Poore&rsquo;s olden<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Episcopal see;</p>
+<p class="poetry">And, changing anew my onbearer,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I traversed the downland<br />
+Whereon the bleak hill-graves of Chieftains<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Bulge barren of tree;</p>
+<p class="poetry">And still sadly onward I followed<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; That Highway the Icen,<br />
+Which trails its pale riband down Wessex<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; O&rsquo;er lynchet and lea.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Along through the Stour-bordered Forum,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Where Legions had wayfared,<br />
+And where the slow river upglasses<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Its green canopy,</p>
+<p class="poetry">And by Weatherbury Castle, and thencefrom<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Through Casterbridge held I<br />
+Still on, to entomb her my vision<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Saw stretched pallidly.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page136"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+136</span>No highwayman&rsquo;s trot blew the night-wind<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To me so life-weary,<br />
+But only the creak of the gibbets<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Or waggoners&rsquo; jee.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Triple-ramparted Maidon gloomed grayly<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Above me from southward,<br />
+And north the hill-fortress of Eggar,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And square Pummerie.</p>
+<p class="poetry">The Nine-Pillared Cromlech, the
+Bride-streams,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The Axe, and the Otter<br />
+I passed, to the gate of the city<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Where Exe scents the sea;</p>
+<p class="poetry">Till, spent, in the graveacre pausing,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I learnt &rsquo;twas not my Love<br />
+To whom Mother Church had just murmured<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; A last lullaby.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&mdash;&ldquo;Then, where dwells the
+Canon&rsquo;s kinswoman,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; My friend of aforetime?&rdquo;&mdash;<br />
+<a name="page137"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+137</span>(&rsquo;Twas hard to repress my heart-heavings<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And new ecstasy.)</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;She
+wedded.&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Ah!&rdquo;&mdash;&ldquo;Wedded
+beneath her&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; She keeps the stage-hostel<br />
+Ten miles hence, beside the great Highway&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The famed Lions-Three.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;Her spouse was her lackey&mdash;no
+option<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &rsquo;Twixt wedlock and worse things;<br />
+A lapse over-sad for a lady<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of her pedigree!&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">I shuddered, said nothing, and wandered<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To shades of green laurel:<br />
+Too ghastly had grown those first tidings<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; So brightsome of blee!</p>
+<p class="poetry">For, on my ride hither, I&rsquo;d halted<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Awhile at the Lions,<br />
+And her&mdash;her whose name had once opened<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; My heart as a key&mdash;</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page138"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+138</span>I&rsquo;d looked on, unknowing, and witnessed<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Her jests with the tapsters,<br />
+Her liquor-fired face, her thick accents<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; In naming her fee.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;O God, why this seeming
+derision!&rdquo;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I cried in my anguish:<br />
+&ldquo;O once Loved, O fair Unforgotten&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; That Thing&mdash;meant it thee!</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;Inurned and at peace, lost but
+sainted,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Were grief I could compass;<br />
+Depraved&mdash;&rsquo;tis for Christ&rsquo;s poor dependent<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; A cruel decree!&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">I backed on the Highway; but passed not<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The hostel.&nbsp; Within there<br />
+Too mocking to Love&rsquo;s re-expression<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Was Time&rsquo;s repartee!</p>
+<p class="poetry">Uptracking where Legions had wayfared,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; By cromlechs unstoried,<br />
+And lynchets, and sepultured Chieftains,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; In self-colloquy,</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page139"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+139</span>A feeling stirred in me and strengthened<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; That <i>she</i> was not my Love,<br />
+But she of the garth, who lay rapt in<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Her long reverie.</p>
+<p class="poetry">And thence till to-day I persuade me<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; That this was the true one;<br />
+That Death stole intact her young dearness<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And innocency.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Frail-witted, illuded they call me;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I may be.&nbsp; &rsquo;Tis better<br />
+To dream than to own the debasement<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of sweet Cicely.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Moreover I rate it unseemly<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To hold that kind Heaven<br />
+Could work such device&mdash;to her ruin<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And my misery.</p>
+<p class="poetry">So, lest I disturb my choice vision,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I shun the West Highway,<br />
+Even now, when the knaps ring with rhythms<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; From blackbird and bee;</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page140"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+140</span>And feel that with slumber half-conscious<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; She rests in the church-hay,<br />
+Her spirit unsoiled as in youth-time<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; When lovers were we.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center" class="poetry">
+<a href="images/p140b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of top of church tower"
+title=
+"Sketch of top of church tower"
+ src="images/p140s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+
+<div class="gapspace">&nbsp;</div>
+<p style="text-align: center" class="poetry">
+<a href="images/p142b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of fields with trees"
+title=
+"Sketch of fields with trees"
+ src="images/p142s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h2><a name="page143"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 143</span>HER
+IMMORTALITY</h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Upon</span> a noon I
+pilgrimed through<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; A pasture, mile by mile,<br />
+Unto the place where I last saw<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; My dead Love&rsquo;s living smile.</p>
+<p class="poetry">And sorrowing I lay me down<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Upon the heated sod:<br />
+It seemed as if my body pressed<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The very ground she trod.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page144"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+144</span>I lay, and thought; and in a trance<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; She came and stood me by&mdash;<br />
+The same, even to the marvellous ray<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; That used to light her eye.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;You draw me, and I come to you,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; My faithful one,&rdquo; she said,<br />
+In voice that had the moving tone<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; It bore ere breath had fled.</p>
+<p class="poetry">She said: &ldquo;&rsquo;Tis seven years since I
+died:<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Few now remember me;<br />
+My husband clasps another bride;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; My children&rsquo;s love has she.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;My brethren, sisters, and my friends<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Care not to meet my sprite:<br />
+Who prized me most I did not know<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Till I passed down from sight.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">I said: &ldquo;My days are lonely here;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I need thy smile alway:<br />
+I&rsquo;ll use this night my ball or blade,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And join thee ere the day.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page145"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+145</span>A tremor stirred her tender lips,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Which parted to dissuade:<br />
+&ldquo;That cannot be, O friend,&rdquo; she cried;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &ldquo;Think, I am but a Shade!</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;A Shade but in its mindful ones<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Has immortality;<br />
+By living, me you keep alive,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; By dying you slay me.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;In you resides my single power<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of sweet continuance here;<br />
+On your fidelity I count<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Through many a coming year.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&mdash;I started through me at her plight,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; So suddenly confessed:<br />
+Dismissing late distaste for life,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I craved its bleak unrest.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;I will not die, my One of all!&mdash;<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To lengthen out thy days<br />
+I&rsquo;ll guard me from minutest harms<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; That may invest my ways!&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page146"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+146</span>She smiled and went.&nbsp; Since then she comes<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Oft when her birth-moon climbs,<br />
+Or at the seasons&rsquo; ingresses<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Or anniversary times;</p>
+<p class="poetry">But grows my grief.&nbsp; When I surcease,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Through whom alone lives she,<br />
+Ceases my Love, her words, her ways,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Never again to be!</p>
+<h2><a name="page147"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 147</span>THE
+IVY-WIFE</h2>
+<p class="poetry">I <span class="smcap">longed</span> to love a
+full-boughed beech<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And be as high as he:<br />
+I stretched an arm within his reach,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And signalled unity.<br />
+But with his drip he forced a breach,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And tried to poison me.</p>
+<p class="poetry">I gave the grasp of partnership<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To one of other race&mdash; <br />
+<a name="page148"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 148</span>A plane:
+he barked him strip by strip<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; From upper bough to base;<br />
+And me therewith; for gone my grip,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; My arms could not enlace.</p>
+<p class="poetry">In new affection next I strove<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To coll an ash I saw,<br />
+And he in trust received my love;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Till with my soft green claw<br />
+I cramped and bound him as I wove . . .<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Such was my love: ha-ha!</p>
+<p class="poetry">By this I gained his strength and height<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Without his rivalry.<br />
+But in my triumph I lost sight<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of afterhaps.&nbsp; Soon he,<br />
+Being bark-bound, flagged, snapped, fell outright,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And in his fall felled me!</p>
+<h2><a name="page149"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 149</span>A
+MEETING WITH DESPAIR</h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">As</span> evening shaped I
+found me on a moor<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Which sight could scarce sustain:<br />
+The black lean land, of featureless contour,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Was like a tract in pain.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;This scene, like my own life,&rdquo; I
+said, &ldquo;is one<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Where many glooms abide;<br />
+Toned by its fortune to a deadly dun&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Lightless on every side.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page150"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+150</span>I glanced aloft and halted, pleasure-caught<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To see the contrast there:<br />
+The ray-lit clouds gleamed glory; and I thought,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &ldquo;There&rsquo;s solace everywhere!&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">Then bitter self-reproaches as I stood<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I dealt me silently<br />
+As one perverse&mdash;misrepresenting Good<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; In graceless mutiny.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Against the horizon&rsquo;s
+dim-discern&egrave;d wheel<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; A form rose, strange of mould:<br />
+That he was hideous, hopeless, I could feel<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Rather than could behold.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;&rsquo;Tis a dead spot, where even the
+light lies spent<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To darkness!&rdquo; croaked the Thing.<br />
+&ldquo;Not if you look aloft!&rdquo; said I, intent<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; On my new reasoning.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page151"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+151</span>&ldquo;Yea&mdash;but await awhile!&rdquo; he
+cried.&nbsp; &ldquo;Ho-ho!&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Look now aloft and see!&rdquo;<br />
+I looked.&nbsp; There, too, sat night: Heaven&rsquo;s radiant
+show<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Had gone.&nbsp; Then chuckled he.</p>
+<h2><a name="page153"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+153</span>UNKNOWING</h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">When</span>, soul in soul
+reflected,<br />
+We breathed an &aelig;thered air,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; When we neglected<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; All things elsewhere,<br />
+And left the friendly friendless<br />
+To keep our love aglow,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; We deemed it endless . . .<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &mdash;We did not know!</p>
+<p class="poetry">When, by mad passion goaded,<br />
+We planned to hie away,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <a name="page154"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+154</span>But, unforeboded,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The storm-shafts gray<br />
+So heavily down-pattered<br />
+That none could forthward go,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Our lives seemed shattered . . .<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &mdash;We did not know!</p>
+<p class="poetry">When I found you, helpless lying,<br />
+And you waived my deep misprise,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And swore me, dying,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; In phantom-guise<br />
+To wing to me when grieving,<br />
+And touch away my woe,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; We kissed, believing . . .<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &mdash;We did not know!</p>
+<p class="poetry">But though, your powers outreckoning,<br />
+You hold you dead and dumb,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Or scorn my beckoning,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And will not come;<br />
+And I say, &ldquo;&rsquo;Twere mood ungainly<br />
+To store her memory so:&rdquo;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I say it vainly&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I feel and know!</p>
+<h2><a name="page155"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+155</span>FRIENDS BEYOND</h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">William Dewy</span>,
+Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Robert&rsquo;s kin, and John&rsquo;s, and
+Ned&rsquo;s,<br />
+And the Squire, and Lady Susan, lie in Mellstock churchyard
+now!</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;Gone,&rdquo; I call them, gone for good,
+that group of local hearts and heads;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Yet at mothy curfew-tide,<br />
+And at midnight when the noon-heat breathes it back from walls
+and leads,</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page156"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+156</span>They&rsquo;ve a way of whispering to
+me&mdash;fellow-wight who yet abide&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; In the muted, measured note<br />
+Of a ripple under archways, or a lone cave&rsquo;s
+stillicide:</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;We have triumphed: this achievement
+turns the bane to antidote,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Unsuccesses to success,<br />
+&mdash;Many thought-worn eves and morrows to a morrow free of
+thought.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;No more need we corn and clothing, feel
+of old terrestrial stress;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Chill detraction stirs no sigh;<br />
+Fear of death has even bygone us: death gave all that we
+possess.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry"><i>W. D.</i>&mdash;&ldquo;Ye mid burn the wold
+bass-viol that I set such vallie by.&rdquo;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <i>Squire</i>.&mdash;&ldquo;You may hold the manse
+in fee,<br />
+You may wed my spouse, my children&rsquo;s memory of me may
+decry.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page157"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+157</span><i>Lady</i>.&mdash;&ldquo;You may have my rich
+brocades, my laces; take each household key;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Ransack coffer, desk, bureau;<br />
+Quiz the few poor treasures hid there, con the letters kept by
+me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry"><i>Far.</i>&mdash;&ldquo;Ye mid zell my
+favourite heifer, ye mid let the charlock grow,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Foul the grinterns, give up thrift.&rdquo;<br />
+<i>Wife</i>.&mdash;&ldquo;If ye break my best blue china,
+children, I shan&rsquo;t care or ho.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry"><i>All</i>. &mdash;&ldquo;We&rsquo;ve no wish
+to hear the tidings, how the people&rsquo;s fortunes shift;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; What your daily doings are;<br />
+Who are wedded, born, divided; if your lives beat slow or
+swift.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;Curious not the least are we if our
+intents you make or mar,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; If you quire to our old tune,<br />
+If the City stage still passes, if the weirs still roar
+afar.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page158"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+158</span>&mdash;Thus, with very gods&rsquo; composure, freed
+those crosses late and soon<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Which, in life, the Trine allow<br />
+(Why, none witteth), and ignoring all that haps beneath the
+moon,</p>
+<p class="poetry">William Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow
+late at plough,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Robert&rsquo;s kin, and John&rsquo;s, and
+Ned&rsquo;s,<br />
+And the Squire, and Lady Susan, murmur mildly to me now.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page159"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 159</span>
+<a href="images/p159b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of vase with dead flowers"
+title=
+"Sketch of vase with dead flowers"
+ src="images/p159s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h2>TO OUTER NATURE</h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Show</span> thee as I
+thought thee<br />
+When I early sought thee,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Omen-scouting,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; All undoubting<br />
+Love alone had wrought thee&mdash;</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page160"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+160</span>Wrought thee for my pleasure,<br />
+Planned thee as a measure<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; For expounding<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And resounding<br />
+Glad things that men treasure.</p>
+<p class="poetry">O for but a moment<br />
+Of that old endowment&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Light to gaily<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; See thy daily<br />
+Iris&egrave;d embowment!</p>
+<p class="poetry">But such re-adorning<br />
+Time forbids with scorning&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Makes me see things<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Cease to be things<br />
+They were in my morning.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Fad&rsquo;st thou, glow-forsaken,<br />
+Darkness-overtaken!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Thy first sweetness,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Radiance, meetness,<br />
+None shall re-awaken.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page161"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+161</span>Why not sempiternal<br />
+Thou and I?&nbsp; Our vernal<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Brightness keeping,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Time outleaping;<br />
+Passed the hodiernal!</p>
+<h2><a name="page163"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+163</span>THOUGHTS OF PHENA<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">AT NEWS OF HER DEATH</span></h2>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span
+class="smcap">Not</span> a line of her writing have I,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Not a thread of
+her hair,<br />
+No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I may picture her there;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And in vain do I urge my unsight<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; To conceive my lost prize<br />
+At her close, whom I knew when her dreams were upbrimming with
+light,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And with laughter her eyes.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a
+name="page164"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 164</span>What scenes
+spread around her last days,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Sad, shining, or
+dim?<br />
+Did her gifts and compassions enray and enarch her sweet ways<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; With an aureate nimb?<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Or did life-light decline from her years,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And mischances control<br />
+Her full day-star; unease, or regret, or forebodings, or fears<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Disennoble her soul?</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Thus I do
+but the phantom retain<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Of the maiden of
+yore<br />
+As my relic; yet haply the best of her&mdash;fined in my brain<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; It maybe the more<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; That no line of her writing have I,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Nor a thread of her hair,<br />
+No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; I may picture her there.</p>
+<p><i>March</i> 1890.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p165b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of woman cover in sheet lying on couch"
+title=
+"Sketch of woman cover in sheet lying on couch"
+ src="images/p165s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h2><a name="page167"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+167</span>MIDDLE-AGE ENTHUSIASMS<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">To M. H.</span></h2>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span class="smcap">We</span>
+passed where flag and flower<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Signalled a jocund throng;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; We said: &ldquo;Go to, the hour<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Is apt!&rdquo;&mdash;and joined the song;<br />
+And, kindling, laughed at life and care,<br />
+Although we knew no laugh lay there.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We walked where shy birds
+stood<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Watching us, wonder-dumb;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; <a name="page168"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+168</span>Their friendship met our mood;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; We cried: &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll often come:<br />
+We&rsquo;ll come morn, noon, eve, everywhen!&rdquo;<br />
+&mdash;We doubted we should come again.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;We joyed to see strange
+sheens<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Leap from quaint leaves in shade;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; A secret light of greens<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; They&rsquo;d for their pleasure made.<br />
+We said: &ldquo;We&rsquo;ll set such sorts as these!&rdquo;<br />
+&mdash;We knew with night the wish would cease.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;So sweet the
+place,&rdquo; we said,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &ldquo;Its tacit tales so dear, <br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Our thoughts, when breath has sped,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Will meet and mingle here!&rdquo; . . .<br />
+&ldquo;Words!&rdquo; mused we.&nbsp; &ldquo;Passed the mortal
+door,<br />
+Our thoughts will reach this nook no more.&rdquo;</p>
+<h2><a name="page169"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 169</span>IN A
+WOOD<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">See &ldquo;THE
+WOODLANDERS&rdquo;</span></h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Pale</span> beech and
+pine-tree blue,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Set in one clay,<br />
+Bough to bough cannot you<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Bide out your day?<br />
+When the rains skim and skip,<br />
+Why mar sweet comradeship,<br />
+Blighting with poison-drip<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Neighbourly spray?</p>
+<p class="poetry">Heart-halt and spirit-lame,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; City-opprest,<br />
+<a name="page170"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 170</span>Unto
+this wood I came<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; As to a nest;<br />
+Dreaming that sylvan peace<br />
+Offered the harrowed ease&mdash;<br />
+Nature a soft release<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; From men&rsquo;s unrest.</p>
+<p class="poetry">But, having entered in,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Great growths and small<br />
+Show them to men akin&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Combatants all!<br />
+Sycamore shoulders oak,<br />
+Bines the slim sapling yoke,<br />
+Ivy-spun halters choke<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Elms stout and tall.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Touches from ash, O wych,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Sting you like scorn!<br />
+You, too, brave hollies, twitch<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Sidelong from thorn.<br />
+Even the rank poplars bear<br />
+Illy a rival&rsquo;s air,<br />
+Cankering in black despair<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; If overborne.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page171"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+171</span>Since, then, no grace I find<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Taught me of trees,<br />
+Turn I back to my kind,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Worthy as these.<br />
+There at least smiles abound,<br />
+There discourse trills around,<br />
+There, now and then, are found<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Life-loyalties.</p>
+<p>1887: 1896.</p>
+<h2><a name="page173"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 173</span>TO A
+LADY<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">OFFENDED BY A BOOK OF THE
+WRITER&rsquo;S</span></h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Now</span> that my page
+upcloses, doomed, maybe,<br />
+Never to press thy cosy cushions more,<br />
+Or wake thy ready Yeas as heretofore,<br />
+Or stir thy gentle vows of faith in me:</p>
+<p class="poetry">Knowing thy natural receptivity,<br />
+I figure that, as flambeaux banish eve,<br />
+My sombre image, warped by insidious heave<br />
+Of those less forthright, must lose place in thee.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page174"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+174</span>So be it.&nbsp; I have borne such.&nbsp; Let thy
+dreams<br />
+Of me and mine diminish day by day,<br />
+And yield their space to shine of smugger things;<br />
+Till I shape to thee but in fitful gleams,<br />
+And then in far and feeble visitings,<br />
+And then surcease.&nbsp; Truth will be truth alway.</p>
+<h2><a name="page175"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 175</span>TO
+AN ORPHAN CHILD<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">A WHIMSEY</span></h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Ah</span>, child, thou art
+but half thy darling mother&rsquo;s;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Hers couldst thou wholly be,<br />
+My light in thee would outglow all in others;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; She would relive to me.<br />
+But niggard Nature&rsquo;s trick of birth<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Bars, lest she overjoy,<br />
+Renewal of the loved on earth<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Save with alloy.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page176"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+176</span>The Dame has no regard, alas, my maiden,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; For love and loss like mine&mdash;<br />
+No sympathy with mind-sight memory-laden;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Only with fickle eyne.<br />
+To her mechanic artistry<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; My dreams are all unknown,<br />
+And why I wish that thou couldst be<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But One&rsquo;s alone!</p>
+<p style="text-align: center"><a name="page177"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 177</span>
+<a href="images/p177b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of broken key?"
+title=
+"Sketch of broken key?"
+ src="images/p177s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h2>NATURE&rsquo;S QUESTIONING</h2>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<span
+class="smcap">When</span> I look forth at dawning, pool,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Field, flock, and lonely tree,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; All seem to gaze at me<br />
+Like chastened children sitting silent in a school;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Their faces dulled,
+constrained, and worn,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; As though the master&rsquo;s
+ways<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Through the long teaching days<br
+/>
+Their first terrestrial zest had chilled and overborne.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a name="page178"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 178</span>And on them stirs, in lippings
+mere<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; (As if once clear in call,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But now scarce breathed at
+all)&mdash;<br />
+&ldquo;We wonder, ever wonder, why we find us here!</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;Has some Vast
+Imbecility,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Mighty to build and blend,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; But impotent to tend,<br />
+Framed us in jest, and left us now to hazardry?</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;Or come we of an
+Automaton<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Unconscious of our pains? . . .<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Or are we live remains<br />
+Of Godhead dying downwards, brain and eye now gone?</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;Or is it that some
+high Plan betides,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; As yet not understood,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Of Evil stormed by Good,<br />
+We the Forlorn Hope over which Achievement strides?&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a name="page179"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 179</span>Thus things around.&nbsp; No
+answerer I . . .<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Meanwhile the winds, and rains,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; And Earth&rsquo;s old glooms and
+pains<br />
+Are still the same, and gladdest Life Death neighbours nigh.</p>
+<h2><a name="page181"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 181</span>THE
+IMPERCIPIENT<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">(AT A CATHEDRAL SERVICE)</span></h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">That</span> from this
+bright believing band<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; An outcast I should be,<br />
+That faiths by which my comrades stand<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Seem fantasies to me,<br />
+And mirage-mists their Shining Land,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Is a drear destiny.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Why thus my soul should be consigned<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To infelicity,<br />
+<a name="page182"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 182</span>Why
+always I must feel as blind<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To sights my brethren see,<br />
+Why joys they&rsquo;ve found I cannot find,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Abides a mystery.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Since heart of mine knows not that ease<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Which they know; since it be<br />
+That He who breathes All&rsquo;s Well to these<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Breathes no All&rsquo;s-Well to me,<br />
+My lack might move their sympathies<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And Christian charity!</p>
+<p class="poetry">I am like a gazer who should mark<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; An inland company<br />
+Standing upfingered, with, &ldquo;Hark! hark!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The glorious distant sea!&rdquo;<br />
+And feel, &ldquo;Alas, &rsquo;tis but yon dark<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And wind-swept pine to me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">Yet I would bear my shortcomings<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; With meet tranquillity,<br />
+But for the charge that blessed things<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I&rsquo;d liefer have unbe.<br />
+<a name="page185"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 185</span>O, doth
+a bird deprived of wings<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Go earth-bound wilfully!</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">* * * * *</p>
+<p class="poetry">Enough.&nbsp; As yet disquiet clings<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; About us.&nbsp; Rest shall we.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p183b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of inside of church"
+title=
+"Sketch of inside of church"
+ src="images/p183s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h2><a name="page187"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 187</span>AT
+AN INN</h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">When</span> we as strangers
+sought<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Their catering care,<br />
+Veiled smiles bespoke their thought<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of what we were.<br />
+They warmed as they opined<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Us more than friends&mdash;<br />
+That we had all resigned<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; For love&rsquo;s dear ends.</p>
+<p class="poetry">And that swift sympathy<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; With living love<br />
+<a name="page188"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 188</span>Which
+quicks the world&mdash;maybe<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The spheres above,<br />
+Made them our ministers,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Moved them to say,<br />
+&ldquo;Ah, God, that bliss like theirs<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Would flush our day!&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">And we were left alone<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; As Love&rsquo;s own pair;<br />
+Yet never the love-light shone<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Between us there!<br />
+But that which chilled the breath<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of afternoon,<br />
+And palsied unto death<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The pane-fly&rsquo;s tune.</p>
+<p class="poetry">The kiss their zeal foretold,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And now deemed come,<br />
+Came not: within his hold<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Love lingered-numb.<br />
+Why cast he on our port<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; A bloom not ours?<br />
+Why shaped us for his sport<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; In after-hours?</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page189"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+189</span>As we seemed we were not<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; That day afar,<br />
+And now we seem not what<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; We aching are.<br />
+O severing sea and land,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; O laws of men,<br />
+Ere death, once let us stand<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; As we stood then!</p>
+<h2><a name="page191"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 191</span>THE
+SLOW NATURE<br />
+<span class="GutSmall">(AN INCIDENT OF FROOM VALLEY)</span></h2>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;<span class="smcap">Thy</span>
+husband&mdash;poor, poor Heart!&mdash;is dead&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Dead, out by Moreford Rise;<br />
+A bull escaped the barton-shed,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Gored him, and there he lies!&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&mdash;&ldquo;Ha, ha&mdash;go away!&nbsp;
+&rsquo;Tis a tale, methink,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Thou joker Kit!&rdquo; laughed she.<br />
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ve known thee many a year, Kit Twink,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And ever hast thou fooled me!&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page192"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+192</span>&mdash;&ldquo;But, Mistress Damon&mdash;I can swear<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Thy goodman John is dead!<br />
+And soon th&rsquo;lt hear their feet who bear<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; His body to his bed.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">So unwontedly sad was the merry man&rsquo;s
+face&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; That face which had long deceived&mdash;<br />
+That she gazed and gazed; and then could trace<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The truth there; and she believed.</p>
+<p class="poetry">She laid a hand on the dresser-ledge,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And scanned far Egdon-side;<br />
+And stood; and you heard the wind-swept sedge<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And the rippling Froom; till she cried:</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;O my chamber&rsquo;s untidied, unmade my
+bed<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Though the day has begun to wear!<br />
+&lsquo;What a slovenly hussif!&rsquo; it will be said,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; When they all go up my stair!&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page193"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+193</span>She disappeared; and the joker stood<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Depressed by his neighbour&rsquo;s doom,<br />
+And amazed that a wife struck to widowhood<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Thought first of her unkempt room.</p>
+<p class="poetry">But a fortnight thence she could take no
+food,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And she pined in a slow decay;<br />
+While Kit soon lost his mournful mood<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And laughed in his ancient way.</p>
+<p>1894.</p>
+<h2><a name="page195"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 195</span>IN A
+EWELEAZE NEAR WEATHERBURY</h2>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">The</span> years have
+gathered grayly<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Since I danced upon this leaze<br />
+With one who kindled gaily<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Love&rsquo;s fitful ecstasies!<br />
+But despite the term as teacher,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I remain what I was then<br />
+In each essential feature<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of the fantasies of men.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Yet I note the little chisel<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Of never-napping Time,<br />
+<a name="page196"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 196</span>Defacing
+ghast and grizzel<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The blazon of my prime.<br />
+When at night he thinks me sleeping,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I feel him boring sly<br />
+Within my bones, and heaping<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Quaintest pains for by-and-by.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Still, I&rsquo;d go the world with Beauty,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I would laugh with her and sing,<br />
+I would shun divinest duty<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To resume her worshipping.<br />
+But she&rsquo;d scorn my brave endeavour,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; She would not balm the breeze<br />
+By murmuring &ldquo;Thine for ever!&rdquo;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; As she did upon this leaze.</p>
+<p>1890.</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p197b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of pair of glasses on sketch of landscape"
+title=
+"Sketch of pair of glasses on sketch of landscape"
+ src="images/p197s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<h2><a name="page199"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+199</span>ADDITIONS</h2>
+<h3><a name="page201"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 201</span>THE
+FIRE AT TRANTER SWEATLEY&rsquo;S</h3>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">They</span> had long met
+o&rsquo; Zundays&mdash;her true love and she&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And at junketings, maypoles, and flings;<br />
+But she bode wi&rsquo; a thirtover uncle, and he<br />
+Swore by noon and by night that her goodman should be<br />
+Naibour Sweatley&mdash;a gaffer oft weak at the knee<br />
+From taking o&rsquo; sommat more cheerful than tea&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Who tranted, and moved people&rsquo;s things.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page202"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+202</span>She cried, &ldquo;O pray pity me!&rdquo;&nbsp; Nought
+would he hear;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Then with wild rainy eyes she obeyed.<br />
+She chid when her Love was for clinking off wi&rsquo; her.<br />
+The pa&rsquo;son was told, as the season drew near<br />
+To throw over pu&rsquo;pit the names of the pe&auml;ir<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; As fitting one flesh to be made.</p>
+<p class="poetry">The wedding-day dawned and the morning drew
+on;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The couple stood bridegroom and bride;<br />
+The evening was passed, and when midnight had gone<br />
+The folks horned out, &ldquo;God save the King,&rdquo; and
+anon<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; The two home-along gloomily hied.</p>
+<p class="poetry">The lover Tim Tankens mourned heart-sick and
+drear<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To be thus of his darling deprived:<br />
+He roamed in the dark ath&rsquo;art field, mound, and mere,<br />
+<a name="page203"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 203</span>And,
+a&rsquo;most without knowing it, found himself near<br />
+The house of the tranter, and now of his Dear,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Where the lantern-light showed &rsquo;em
+arrived.</p>
+<p class="poetry">The bride sought her cham&rsquo;er so calm and
+so pale<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; That a Northern had thought her resigned;<br />
+But to eyes that had seen her in tide-times of weal,<br />
+Like the white cloud o&rsquo; smoke, the red battle-field&rsquo;s
+vail,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; That look spak&rsquo; of havoc behind.</p>
+<p class="poetry">The bridegroom yet laitered a beaker to
+drain,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Then reeled to the linhay for more,<br />
+When the candle-snoff kindled some chaff from his grain&mdash;<br
+/>
+Flames spread, and red vlankers, wi&rsquo; might and wi&rsquo;
+main,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And round beams, thatch, and chimley-tun roar.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page204"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+204</span>Young Tim away yond, rafted up by the light,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Through brimble and underwood tears,<br />
+Till he comes to the orchet, when crooping thereright<br />
+In the lewth of a codlin-tree, bivering wi&rsquo; fright,<br />
+Wi&rsquo; on&rsquo;y her night-rail to screen her from sight,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; His lonesome young Barbree appears.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Her cwold little figure half-naked he views<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Played about by the frolicsome breeze,<br />
+Her light-tripping totties, her ten little tooes,<br />
+All bare and besprinkled wi&rsquo; Fall&rsquo;s chilly dews,<br
+/>
+While her great gallied eyes, through her hair hanging loose,<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Sheened as stars through a tardle o&rsquo;
+trees.</p>
+<p class="poetry">She eyed en; and, as when a weir-hatch is
+drawn,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Her tears, penned by terror afore,<br />
+<a name="page205"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 205</span>With a
+rushing of sobs in a shower were strawn,<br />
+Till her power to pour &rsquo;em seemed wasted and gone<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; From the heft o&rsquo; misfortune she bore.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;O Tim, my <i>own</i> Tim I must call
+&rsquo;ee&mdash;I will!<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; All the world ha&rsquo; turned round on me so!<br />
+Can you help her who loved &rsquo;ee, though acting so ill?<br />
+Can you pity her misery&mdash;feel for her still?<br />
+When worse than her body so quivering and chill<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Is her heart in its winter o&rsquo; woe!</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;I think I mid almost ha&rsquo; borne
+it,&rdquo; she said,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &ldquo;Had my griefs one by one come to hand;<br />
+But O, to be slave to thik husbird for bread,<br />
+And then, upon top o&rsquo; that, driven to wed,<br />
+And then, upon top o&rsquo; that, burnt out o&rsquo; bed,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Is more than my nater can stand!&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page206"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+206</span>Tim&rsquo;s soul like a lion &rsquo;ithin en
+outsprung&mdash;<br />
+(Tim had a great soul when his feelings were wrung)&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &ldquo;Feel for &rsquo;ee, dear Barbree?&rdquo; he
+cried;<br />
+And his warm working-jacket about her he flung,<br />
+Made a back, horsed her up, till behind him she clung<br />
+Like a chiel on a gipsy, her figure uphung<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; By the sleeves that around her he tied.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Over piggeries, and mixens, and apples, and
+hay,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; They lumpered straight into the night;<br />
+And finding bylong where a halter-path lay,<br />
+At dawn reached Tim&rsquo;s house, on&rsquo;y seen on their
+way<br />
+By a naibour or two who were up wi&rsquo; the day;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; But they gathered no clue to the sight.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Then tender Tim Tankens he searched here and
+there<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; For some garment to clothe her fair skin;<br />
+<a name="page207"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 207</span>But
+though he had breeches and waistcoats to spare,<br />
+He had nothing quite seemly for Barbree to wear,<br />
+Who, half shrammed to death, stood and cried on a chair<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; At the caddle she found herself in.</p>
+<p class="poetry">There was one thing to do, and that one thing
+he did,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; He lent her some clouts of his own,<br />
+And she took &rsquo;em perforce; and while in &rsquo;em she
+slid,<br />
+Tim turned to the winder, as modesty bid,<br />
+Thinking, &ldquo;O that the picter my duty keeps hid<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; To the sight o&rsquo; my eyes mid be
+shown!&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">In the tallet he stowed her; there huddied she
+lay,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Shortening sleeves, legs, and tails to her limbs;<br
+/>
+But most o&rsquo; the time in a mortal bad way,<br />
+<a name="page208"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 208</span>Well
+knowing that there&rsquo;d be the divel to pay<br />
+If &rsquo;twere found that, instead o&rsquo; the elements&rsquo;
+prey,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; She was living in lodgings at Tim&rsquo;s.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;Where&rsquo;s the tranter?&rdquo; said
+men and boys; &ldquo;where can er be?&rdquo;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; &ldquo;Where&rsquo;s the tranter?&rdquo; said
+Barbree alone.<br />
+&ldquo;Where on e&rsquo;th is the tranter?&rdquo; said
+everybod-y:<br />
+They sifted the dust of his perished roof-tree,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And all they could find was a bone.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page209"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+209</span>Then the uncle cried, &ldquo;Lord, pray have mercy on
+me!&rdquo;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; And in terror began to repent.<br />
+But before &rsquo;twas complete, and till sure she was free,<br
+/>
+Barbree drew up her loft-ladder, tight turned her key&mdash;<br
+/>
+Tim bringing up breakfast and dinner and tea&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Till the news of her hiding got vent.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Then followed the custom-kept rout, shout, and
+flare<br />
+Of a skimmington-ride through the naibourhood, ere<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Folk had proof o&rsquo; wold Sweatley&rsquo;s
+decay.<br />
+Whereupon decent people all stood in a stare,<br />
+Saying Tim and his lodger should risk it, and pair:<br />
+So he took her to church.&nbsp; An&rsquo; some laughing lads
+there<br />
+Cried to Tim, &ldquo;After Sweatley!&rdquo;&nbsp; She said,
+&ldquo;I declare<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; I stand as a maiden to-day!&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: right"><i>Written</i> 1866; <i>printed</i>
+1875.</p>
+<h3><a name="page211"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+211</span>HEIRESS AND ARCHITECT<br />
+<span class="smcap">For</span> A. W. B.</h3>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">She</span> sought the
+Studios, beckoning to her side<br />
+An arch-designer, for she planned to build.<br />
+He was of wise contrivance, deeply skilled<br />
+In every intervolve of high and wide&mdash;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Well fit to be her guide.</p>
+<p
+class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;Whatever
+it be,&rdquo;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; Responded he,<br />
+With cold, clear voice, and cold, clear view,<br />
+<a name="page212"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+212</span>&ldquo;In true accord with prudent fashionings<br />
+For such vicissitudes as living brings,<br />
+And thwarting not the law of stable things,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; That will I do.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;Shape me,&rdquo; she said, &ldquo;high
+halls with tracery<br />
+And open ogive-work, that scent and hue<br />
+Of buds, and travelling bees, may come in through,<br />
+The note of birds, and singings of the sea,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; For these are much to me.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;An idle
+whim!&rdquo;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Broke forth from him<br />
+Whom nought could warm to gallantries:<br />
+&ldquo;Cede all these buds and birds, the zephyr&rsquo;s call,<br
+/>
+And scents, and hues, and things that falter all,<br />
+And choose as best the close and surly wall,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; For winters freeze.&rdquo;</p>
+<p style="text-align: center">
+<a href="images/p213b.jpg">
+<img alt=
+"Sketch of people carrying a large object up stairs"
+title=
+"Sketch of people carrying a large object up stairs"
+ src="images/p213s.jpg" />
+</a></p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page215"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+215</span>&ldquo;Then frame,&rdquo; she cried, &ldquo;wide fronts
+of crystal glass,<br />
+That I may show my laughter and my light&mdash;<br />
+Light like the sun&rsquo;s by day, the stars&rsquo; by
+night&mdash;<br />
+Till rival heart-queens, envying, wail, &lsquo;Alas,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Her glory!&rsquo; as they pass.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;O maid
+misled!&rdquo;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; He sternly said,<br />
+Whose facile foresight pierced her dire;<br />
+&ldquo;Where shall abide the soul when, sick of glee,<br />
+It shrinks, and hides, and prays no eye may see?<br />
+Those house them best who house for secrecy,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; For you will tire.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;A little chamber, then, with swan and
+dove<br />
+Ranged thickly, and engrailed with rare device<br />
+Of reds and purples, for a Paradise<br />
+Wherein my Love may greet me, I my Love,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; When he shall know thereof?&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;<a name="page216"></a><span
+class="pagenum">p. 216</span>&ldquo;This, too, is ill,&rdquo;<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; He answered still,<br />
+The man who swayed her like a shade.<br />
+&ldquo;An hour will come when sight of such sweet nook<br />
+Would bring a bitterness too sharp to brook,<br />
+When brighter eyes have won away his look;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; For you will fade.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">Then said she faintly: &ldquo;O, contrive some
+way&mdash;<br />
+Some narrow winding turret, quite mine own,<br />
+To reach a loft where I may grieve alone!<br />
+It is a slight thing; hence do not, I pray,<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; This last dear fancy slay!&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&ldquo;Such winding ways<br
+/>
+&nbsp;&nbsp; Fit not your days,&rdquo;<br />
+Said he, the man of measuring eye;<br />
+&ldquo;I must even fashion as my rule declares,<br />
+To wit: Give space (since life ends unawares)<br />
+To hale a coffined corpse adown the stairs;<br />
+&nbsp;&nbsp; For you will die.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>1867.</p>
+<h3><a name="page217"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 217</span>THE
+TWO MEN</h3>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">There</span> were two
+youths of equal age,<br />
+Wit, station, strength, and parentage;<br />
+They studied at the selfsame schools,<br />
+And shaped their thoughts by common rules.</p>
+<p class="poetry">One pondered on the life of man,<br />
+His hopes, his ending, and began<br />
+To rate the Market&rsquo;s sordid war<br />
+As something scarce worth living for.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page218"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+218</span>&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll brace to higher aims,&rdquo; said
+he,<br />
+&ldquo;I&rsquo;ll further Truth and Purity;<br />
+Thereby to mend the mortal lot<br />
+And sweeten sorrow.&nbsp; Thrive I not,</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;Winning their hearts, my kind will
+give<br />
+Enough that I may lowly live,<br />
+And house my Love in some dim dell,<br />
+For pleasing them and theirs so well.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">Idly attired, with features wan,<br />
+In secret swift he laboured on:<br />
+Such press of power had brought much gold<br />
+Applied to things of meaner mould.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Sometimes he wished his aims had been<br />
+To gather gains like other men;<br />
+Then thanked his God he&rsquo;d traced his track<br />
+Too far for wish to drag him back.</p>
+<p class="poetry">He look&egrave;d from his loft one day<br />
+To where his slighted garden lay;<br />
+Nettles and hemlock hid each lawn,<br />
+And every flower was starved and gone.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page219"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+219</span>He fainted in his heart, whereon<br />
+He rose, and sought his plighted one,<br />
+Resolved to loose her bond withal,<br />
+Lest she should perish in his fall.</p>
+<p class="poetry">He met her with a careless air,<br />
+As though he&rsquo;d ceased to find her fair,<br />
+And said: &ldquo;True love is dust to me;<br />
+I cannot kiss: I tire of thee!&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">(That she might scorn him was he fain,<br />
+To put her sooner out of pain;<br />
+For incensed love breathes quick and dies,<br />
+When famished love a-lingering lies.)</p>
+<p class="poetry">Once done, his soul was so betossed,<br />
+It found no more the force it lost:<br />
+Hope was his only drink and food,<br />
+And hope extinct, decay ensued.</p>
+<p class="poetry">And, living long so closely penned,<br />
+He had not kept a single friend;<br />
+He dwindled thin as phantoms be,<br />
+And drooped to death in poverty . . .</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page220"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+220</span>Meantime his schoolmate had gone out<br />
+To join the fortune-finding rout;<br />
+He liked the winnings of the mart,<br />
+But wearied of the working part.</p>
+<p class="poetry">He turned to seek a privy lair,<br />
+Neglecting note of garb and hair,<br />
+And day by day reclined and thought<br />
+How he might live by doing nought.</p>
+<p class="poetry">&ldquo;I plan a valued scheme,&rdquo; he
+said<br />
+To some.&nbsp; &ldquo;But lend me of your bread,<br />
+And when the vast result looms nigh,<br />
+In profit you shall stand as I.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">Yet they took counsel to restrain<br />
+Their kindness till they saw the gain;<br />
+And, since his substance now had run,<br />
+He rose to do what might be done.</p>
+<p class="poetry">He went unto his Love by night,<br />
+And said: &ldquo;My Love, I faint in fight:<br />
+Deserving as thou dost a crown,<br />
+My cares shall never drag thee down.&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page221"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+221</span>(He had descried a maid whose line<br />
+Would hand her on much corn and wine,<br />
+And held her far in worth above<br />
+One who could only pray and love.)</p>
+<p class="poetry">But this Fair read him; whence he failed<br />
+To do the deed so blithely hailed;<br />
+He saw his projects wholly marred,<br />
+And gloom and want oppressed him hard;</p>
+<p class="poetry">Till, living to so mean an end,<br />
+Whereby he&rsquo;d lost his every friend,<br />
+He perished in a pauper sty,<br />
+His mate the dying pauper nigh.</p>
+<p class="poetry">And moralists, reflecting, said,<br />
+As &ldquo;dust to dust&rdquo; in burial read<br />
+Was echoed from each coffin-lid,<br />
+&ldquo;These men were like in all they did.&rdquo;</p>
+<p>1866.</p>
+<h3><a name="page223"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+223</span>LINES</h3>
+<p><i>Spoken by Miss</i> <span class="smcap">Ada Rehan</span>
+<i>at the Lyceum Theatre</i>, <i>July</i> 23, 1890, <i>at a
+performance on behalf of Lady Jeune&rsquo;s Holiday Fund for City
+Children</i>.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><span class="smcap">Before</span> we part to
+alien thoughts and aims,<br />
+Permit the one brief word the occasion claims:<br />
+&mdash;When mumming and grave projects are allied,<br />
+Perhaps an Epilogue is justified.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Our under-purpose has, in truth, to-day<br />
+Commanded most our musings; least the play:<br />
+A purpose futile but for your good-will<br />
+Swiftly responsive to the cry of ill:<br />
+<a name="page224"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 224</span>A
+purpose all too limited!&mdash;to aid<br />
+Frail human flowerets, sicklied by the shade,<br />
+In winning some short spell of upland breeze,<br />
+Or strengthening sunlight on the level leas.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Who has not marked, where the full cheek should
+be,<br />
+Incipient lines of lank flaccidity,<br />
+Lymphatic pallor where the pink should glow,<br />
+And where the throb of transport, pulses low?&mdash;<br />
+Most tragical of shapes from Pole to Line,<br />
+O wondering child, unwitting Time&rsquo;s design,<br />
+Why should Art add to Nature&rsquo;s quandary,<br />
+And worsen ill by thus immuring thee?<br />
+&mdash;That races do despite unto their own,<br />
+That Might supernal do indeed condone<br />
+Wrongs individual for the general ease,<br />
+Instance the proof in victims such as these.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page225"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+225</span>Launched into thoroughfares too thronged before,<br />
+Mothered by those whose protest is &ldquo;No more!&rdquo;<br />
+Vitalized without option: who shall say<br />
+That did Life hang on choosing&mdash;Yea or Nay&mdash;<br />
+They had not scorned it with such penalty,<br />
+And nothingness implored of Destiny?</p>
+<p class="poetry">And yet behind the horizon smile serene<br />
+The down, the cornland, and the stretching green&mdash;<br />
+Space&mdash;the child&rsquo;s heaven: scenes which at least
+ensure<br />
+Some palliative for ill they cannot cure.</p>
+<p class="poetry">Dear friends&mdash;now moved by this poor show
+of ours<br />
+To make your own long joy in buds and bowers<br />
+<a name="page226"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 226</span>For one
+brief while the joy of infant eyes,<br />
+Changing their urban murk to paradise&mdash;<br />
+You have our thanks!&mdash;may your reward include<br />
+More than our thanks, far more: their gratitude.</p>
+<h3><a name="page227"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+227</span>&ldquo;I LOOK INTO MY GLASS&rdquo;</h3>
+<p class="poetry">I <span class="smcap">look</span> into my
+glass,<br />
+And view my wasting skin,<br />
+And say, &ldquo;Would God it came to pass<br />
+My heart had shrunk as thin!&rdquo;</p>
+<p class="poetry">For then, I, undistrest<br />
+By hearts grown cold to me,<br />
+Could lonely wait my endless rest<br />
+With equanimity.</p>
+<p class="poetry"><a name="page228"></a><span class="pagenum">p.
+228</span>But Time, to make me grieve;<br />
+Part steals, lets part abide;<br />
+And shakes this fragile frame at eve<br />
+With throbbings of noontide.</p>
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WESSEX POEMS AND OTHER VERSES***</p>
+<pre>
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+</pre></body>
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+Project Gutenberg Etext Wessex Poems and Other Verses, by Hardy
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+Title: Wessex Poems and Other Verses
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+Author: Thomas Hardy
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+
+WESSEX POEMS AND OTHER VERSES
+
+by Thomas Hardy
+
+
+
+
+Contents
+
+Preface
+The Temporary The All
+Amabel
+Hap
+"In Vision I Roamed"
+At a Bridal
+Postponement
+A Confession to a Friend in Trouble
+Neutral Tones
+She
+Her Initials
+Her Dilemma
+Revulsion
+She, To Him, I.
+    "     "   II.
+    "     "   III.
+    "     "   IV.
+Ditty
+The Sergeant's Song
+Valenciennes
+San Sebastian
+The Stranger's Song
+The Burghers
+Leipzig
+The Peasant's Confession
+The Alarm
+Her Death and After
+The Dance at the Phoenix
+The Casterbridge Captains
+A Sign-Seeker
+My Cicely
+Her Immortality
+The Ivy-Wife
+A Meeting with Despair
+Unknowing
+Friends Beyond
+To Outer Nature
+Thoughts of Phena
+Middle-Age Enthusiasms
+In a Wood
+To a Lady
+To an Orphan Child
+Nature's Questioning
+The Impercipient
+At An Inn
+The Slow Nature
+In a Eweleaze Near Weatherbury
+ADDITIONS:
+   The Fire at Tranter Sweatley's
+   Heiress and Architect
+   The Two Men
+   Lines
+   "I Look into my Glass"
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+Of the miscellaneous collection of verse that follows, only four
+pieces have been published, though many were written long ago, and
+other partly written.  In some few cases the verses were turned into
+prose and printed as such, it having been unanticipated at that time
+that they might see the light.
+
+Whenever an ancient and legitimate word of the district, for which
+there was no equivalent in received English, suggested itself as the
+most natural, nearest, and often only expression of a thought, it has
+been made use of, on what seemed good grounds.
+
+The pieces are in a large degree dramatic or personative in
+conception; and this even where they are not obviously so.
+
+The dates attached to some of the poems do not apply to the rough
+sketches given in illustration, which have been recently made, and,
+as may be surmised, are inserted for personal and local reasons
+rather than for their intrinsic qualities.
+
+T. H.
+September 1898.
+
+
+
+
+THE TEMPORARY THE ALL
+
+
+
+Change and chancefulness in my flowering youthtime,
+Set me sun by sun near to one unchosen;
+Wrought us fellow-like, and despite divergence,
+   Friends interlinked us.
+
+"Cherish him can I while the true one forthcome -
+Come the rich fulfiller of my prevision;
+Life is roomy yet, and the odds unbounded."
+   So self-communed I.
+
+Thwart my wistful way did a damsel saunter,
+Fair, the while unformed to be all-eclipsing;
+"Maiden meet," held I, "till arise my forefelt
+   Wonder of women."
+
+Long a visioned hermitage deep desiring,
+Tenements uncouth I was fain to house in;
+"Let such lodging be for a breath-while," thought I,
+   "Soon a more seemly.
+
+"Then, high handiwork will I make my life-deed,
+Truth and Light outshow; but the ripe time pending,
+Intermissive aim at the thing sufficeth."
+   Thus I . . . But lo, me!
+
+Mistress, friend, place, aims to be bettered straightway,
+Bettered not has Fate or my hand's achieving;
+Sole the showance those of my onward earth-track -
+   Never transcended!
+
+
+
+AMABEL
+
+
+
+I marked her ruined hues,
+Her custom-straitened views,
+And asked, "Can there indwell
+   My Amabel?"
+
+I looked upon her gown,
+Once rose, now earthen brown;
+The change was like the knell
+   Of Amabel.
+
+Her step's mechanic ways
+Had lost the life of May's;
+Her laugh, once sweet in swell,
+   Spoilt Amabel.
+
+I mused:  "Who sings the strain
+I sang ere warmth did wane?
+Who thinks its numbers spell
+   His Amabel?" -
+
+Knowing that, though Love cease,
+Love's race shows undecrease;
+All find in dorp or dell
+   An Amabel.
+
+- I felt that I could creep
+To some housetop, and weep,
+That Time the tyrant fell
+   Ruled Amabel!
+
+I said (the while I sighed
+That love like ours had died),
+"Fond things I'll no more tell
+   To Amabel,
+
+"But leave her to her fate,
+And fling across the gate,
+'Till the Last Trump, farewell,
+   O Amabel!'"
+
+1865.
+
+
+
+HAP
+
+
+
+If but some vengeful god would call to me
+From up the sky, and laugh:  "Thou suffering thing,
+Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
+That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!"
+
+Then would I bear, and clench myself, and die,
+Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
+Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
+Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.
+
+But not so.  How arrives it joy lies slain,
+And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?
+- Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,
+And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan . . .
+These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown
+Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.
+
+1866.
+
+
+
+"IN VISION I ROAMED"
+TO -
+
+
+
+In vision I roamed the flashing Firmament,
+So fierce in blazon that the Night waxed wan,
+As though with an awed sense of such ostent;
+And as I thought my spirit ranged on and on
+
+In footless traverse through ghast heights of sky,
+To the last chambers of the monstrous Dome,
+Where stars the brightest here to darkness die:
+Then, any spot on our own Earth seemed Home!
+
+And the sick grief that you were far away
+Grew pleasant thankfulness that you were near?
+Who might have been, set on some outstep sphere,
+Less than a Want to me, as day by day
+I lived unware, uncaring all that lay
+Locked in that Universe taciturn and drear.
+
+1866.
+
+
+
+AT A BRIDAL
+TO -
+
+
+
+When you paced forth, to wait maternity,
+A dream of other offspring held my mind,
+Compounded of us twain as Love designed;
+Rare forms, that corporate now will never be!
+
+Should I, too, wed as slave to Mode's decree,
+And each thus found apart, of false desire,
+A stolid line, whom no high aims will fire
+As had fired ours could ever have mingled we;
+
+And, grieved that lives so matched should mis-compose,
+Each mourn the double waste; and question dare
+To the Great Dame whence incarnation flows.
+Why those high-purposed children never were:
+What will she answer?  That she does not care
+If the race all such sovereign types unknows.
+
+1866.
+
+
+
+POSTPONEMENT
+
+
+
+Snow-bound in woodland, a mournful word,
+Dropt now and then from the bill of a bird,
+Reached me on wind-wafts; and thus I heard,
+   Wearily waiting:-
+
+"I planned her a nest in a leafless tree,
+But the passers eyed and twitted me,
+And said:  'How reckless a bird is he,
+   Cheerily mating!'
+
+"Fear-filled, I stayed me till summer-tide,
+In lewth of leaves to throne her bride;
+But alas! her love for me waned and died,
+   Wearily waiting.
+
+"Ah, had I been like some I see,
+Born to an evergreen nesting-tree,
+None had eyed and twitted me,
+   Cheerily mating!"
+
+1866.
+
+
+
+A CONFESSION TO A FRIEND IN TROUBLE
+
+
+
+Your troubles shrink not, though I feel them less
+Here, far away, than when I tarried near;
+I even smile old smiles--with listlessness -
+Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries mere.
+
+A thought too strange to house within my brain
+Haunting its outer precincts I discern:
+- That I will not show zeal again to learn
+Your griefs, and sharing them, renew my pain . . .
+
+It goes, like murky bird or buccaneer
+That shapes its lawless figure on the main,
+And each new impulse tends to make outflee
+The unseemly instinct that had lodgment here;
+Yet, comrade old, can bitterer knowledge be
+Than that, though banned, such instinct was in me!
+
+1866.
+
+
+
+NEUTRAL TONES
+
+
+
+We stood by a pond that winter day,
+And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
+And a few leaves lay on the starving sod,
+  --They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.
+
+Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
+Over tedious riddles solved years ago;
+And some words played between us to and fro -
+   On which lost the more by our love.
+
+The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
+Alive enough to have strength to die;
+And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
+   Like an ominous bird a-wing . . .
+
+Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
+And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
+Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,
+   And a pond edged with grayish leaves.
+
+1867.
+
+
+
+SHE
+AT HIS FUNERAL
+
+
+
+They bear him to his resting-place -
+In slow procession sweeping by;
+I follow at a stranger's space;
+His kindred they, his sweetheart I.
+Unchanged my gown of garish dye,
+Though sable-sad is their attire;
+But they stand round with griefless eye,
+Whilst my regret consumes like fire!
+
+187-.
+
+
+
+HER INITIALS
+
+
+
+Upon a poet's page I wrote
+Of old two letters of her name;
+Part seemed she of the effulgent thought
+Whence that high singer's rapture came.
+- When now I turn the leaf the same
+Immortal light illumes the lay,
+But from the letters of her name
+The radiance has died away!
+
+1869.
+
+
+
+HER DILEMMA
+(IN --- CHURCH)
+
+
+
+The two were silent in a sunless church,
+Whose mildewed walls, uneven paving-stones,
+And wasted carvings passed antique research;
+And nothing broke the clock's dull monotones.
+
+Leaning against a wormy poppy-head,
+So wan and worn that he could scarcely stand,
+- For he was soon to die,--he softly said,
+"Tell me you love me!"--holding hard her hand.
+
+She would have given a world to breathe "yes" truly,
+So much his life seemed handing on her mind,
+And hence she lied, her heart persuaded throughly
+'Twas worth her soul to be a moment kind.
+
+But the sad need thereof, his nearing death,
+So mocked humanity that she shamed to prize
+A world conditioned thus, or care for breath
+Where Nature such dilemmas could devise.
+
+1866.
+
+
+
+REVULSION
+
+
+
+Though I waste watches framing words to fetter
+Some spirit to mine own in clasp and kiss,
+Out of the night there looms a sense 'twere better
+To fail obtaining whom one fails to miss.
+
+For winning love we win the risk of losing,
+And losing love is as one's life were riven;
+It cuts like contumely and keen ill-using
+To cede what was superfluously given.
+
+Let me then feel no more the fateful thrilling
+That devastates the love-worn wooer's frame,
+The hot ado of fevered hopes, the chilling
+That agonizes disappointed aim!
+So may I live no junctive law fulfilling,
+And my heart's table bear no woman's name.
+
+1866.
+
+
+
+SHE, TO HIM--I
+
+
+
+When you shall see me in the toils of Time,
+My lauded beauties carried off from me,
+My eyes no longer stars as in their prime,
+My name forgot of Maiden Fair and Free;
+
+When in your being heart concedes to mind,
+And judgment, though you scarce its process know,
+Recalls the excellencies I once enshrined,
+And you are irked that they have withered so:
+
+Remembering that with me lies not the blame,
+That Sportsman Time but rears his brood to kill,
+Knowing me in my soul the very same -
+One who would die to spare you touch of ill! -
+Will you not grant to old affection's claim
+The hand of friendship down Life's sunless hill?
+
+1866.
+
+
+
+SHE, TO HIM--II
+
+
+
+Perhaps, long hence, when I have passed away,
+Some other's feature, accent, thought like mine,
+Will carry you back to what I used to say,
+And bring some memory of your love's decline.
+
+Then you may pause awhile and think, "Poor jade!"
+And yield a sigh to me--as ample due,
+Not as the tittle of a debt unpaid
+To one who could resign her all to you -
+
+And thus reflecting, you will never see
+That your thin thought, in two small words conveyed,
+Was no such fleeting phantom-thought to me,
+But the Whole Life wherein my part was played;
+And you amid its fitful masquerade
+A Thought--as I in yours but seem to be.
+
+1866.
+
+
+
+SHE, TO HIM--III
+
+
+
+I will be faithful to thee; aye, I will!
+And Death shall choose me with a wondering eye
+That he did not discern and domicile
+One his by right ever since that last Good-bye!
+
+I have no care for friends, or kin, or prime
+Of manhood who deal gently with me here;
+Amid the happy people of my time
+Who work their love's fulfilment, I appear
+
+Numb as a vane that cankers on its point,
+True to the wind that kissed ere canker came;
+Despised by souls of Now, who would disjoint
+The mind from memory, and make Life all aim,
+
+My old dexterities of hue quite gone,
+And nothing left for Love to look upon.
+
+1866.
+
+
+
+SHE, TO HIM--IV
+
+
+
+This love puts all humanity from me;
+I can but maledict her, pray her dead,
+For giving love and getting love of thee -
+Feeding a heart that else mine own had fed!
+
+How much I love I know not, life not known,
+Save as some unit I would add love by;
+But this I know, my being is but thine own--
+Fused from its separateness by ecstasy.
+
+And thus I grasp thy amplitudes, of her
+Ungrasped, though helped by nigh-regarding eyes;
+Canst thou then hate me as an envier
+Who see unrecked what I so dearly prize?
+Believe me, Lost One, Love is lovelier
+The more it shapes its moan in selfish-wise.
+
+1866.
+
+
+
+DITTY
+(E. L G.)
+
+
+
+Beneath a knap where flown
+   Nestlings play,
+Within walls of weathered stone,
+   Far away
+From the files of formal houses,
+By the bough the firstling browses,
+Lives a Sweet:  no merchants meet,
+No man barters, no man sells
+   Where she dwells.
+
+Upon that fabric fair
+   "Here is she!"
+Seems written everywhere
+   Unto me.
+But to friends and nodding neighbours,
+Fellow-wights in lot and labours,
+Who descry the times as I,
+No such lucid legend tells
+   Where she dwells.
+
+Should I lapse to what I was
+   Ere we met;
+(Such can not be, but because
+   Some forget
+Let me feign it)--none would notice
+That where she I know by rote is
+Spread a strange and withering change,
+Like a drying of the wells
+   Where she dwells.
+
+To feel I might have kissed -
+   Loved as true -
+Otherwhere, nor Mine have missed
+   My life through.
+Had I never wandered near her,
+Is a smart severe--severer
+In the thought that she is nought,
+Even as I, beyond the dells
+   Where she dwells.
+
+And Devotion droops her glance
+   To recall
+What bond-servants of Chance
+   We are all.
+I but found her in that, going
+On my errant path unknowing,
+I did not out-skirt the spot
+That no spot on earth excels,
+  --Where she dwells!
+
+1870.
+
+
+
+THE SERGEANT'S SONG
+(1803)
+
+
+
+When Lawyers strive to heal a breach,
+And Parsons practise what they preach;
+Then Little Boney he'll pounce down,
+And march his men on London town!
+   Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lorum,
+   Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lay!
+
+When Justices hold equal scales,
+And Rogues are only found in jails;
+Then Little Boney he'll pounce down,
+And march his men on London town!
+   Rollicum-rorum, &c.
+
+When Rich Men find their wealth a curse,
+And fill therewith the Poor Man's purse;
+Then Little Boney he'll pounce down,
+And march his men on London town!
+   Rollicum-rorum, &c.
+
+When Husbands with their Wives agree,
+And Maids won't wed from modesty;
+Then Little Boney he'll pounce down,
+And march his men on London town!
+   Rollicum-rorum, tol-tol-lorum,
+   Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lay!
+
+1878.
+
+Published in "The Trumpet-Major," 1880.
+
+
+
+VALENCIENNES
+(1793)
+BY CORP'L TULLIDGE:  see "The Trumpet-Major"
+IN MEMORY OF S. C. (PENSIONER).  DIED 184-
+
+
+
+   We trenched, we trumpeted and drummed,
+And from our mortars tons of iron hummed
+   Ath'art the ditch, the month we bombed
+      The Town o' Valencieen.
+
+   'Twas in the June o' Ninety-dree
+(The Duke o' Yark our then Commander been)
+   The German Legion, Guards, and we
+      Laid siege to Valencieen.
+
+   This was the first time in the war
+That French and English spilled each other's gore;
+  --Few dreamt how far would roll the roar
+      Begun at Valencieen!
+
+   'Twas said that we'd no business there
+A-topperen the French for disagreen;
+   However, that's not my affair -
+      We were at Valencieen.
+
+   Such snocks and slats, since war began
+Never knew raw recruit or veteran:
+   Stone-deaf therence went many a man
+      Who served at Valencieen.
+
+   Into the streets, ath'art the sky,
+A hundred thousand balls and bombs were fleen;
+   And harmless townsfolk fell to die
+      Each hour at Valencieen!
+
+   And, sweaten wi' the bombardiers,
+A shell was slent to shards anighst my ears:
+  --'Twas nigh the end of hopes and fears
+      For me at Valencieen!
+
+   They bore my wownded frame to camp,
+And shut my gapen skull, and washed en clean,
+   And jined en wi' a zilver clamp
+      Thik night at Valencieen.
+
+   "We've fetched en back to quick from dead;
+But never more on earth while rose is red
+   Will drum rouse Corpel!" Doctor said
+      O' me at Valencieen.
+
+   'Twer true.  No voice o' friend or foe
+Can reach me now, or any liven been;
+   And little have I power to know
+      Since then at Valencieen!
+
+   I never hear the zummer hums
+O' bees; and don' know when the cuckoo comes;
+   But night and day I hear the bombs
+      We threw at Valencieen . . .
+
+   As for the Duke o' Yark in war,
+There be some volk whose judgment o' en is mean;
+   But this I say--a was not far
+      From great at Valencieen.
+
+   O' wild wet nights, when all seems sad,
+My wownds come back, as though new wownds I'd had;
+   But yet--at times I'm sort o' glad
+      I fout at Valencieen.
+
+   Well:  Heaven wi' its jasper halls
+Is now the on'y Town I care to be in . . .
+   Good Lord, if Nick should bomb the walls
+      As we did Valencieen!
+
+1878-1897.
+
+
+
+SAN SEBASTIAN
+(August 1813)
+WITH THOUGHTS OF SERGEANT M- (PENSIONER), WHO DIED 185-.
+
+
+
+"Why, Sergeant, stray on the Ivel Way,
+As though at home there were spectres rife?
+From first to last 'twas a proud career!
+And your sunny years with a gracious wife
+   Have brought you a daughter dear.
+
+"I watched her to-day; a more comely maid,
+As she danced in her muslin bowed with blue,
+Round a Hintock maypole never gayed."
+- "Aye, aye; I watched her this day, too,
+   As it happens," the Sergeant said.
+
+"My daughter is now," he again began,
+"Of just such an age as one I knew
+When we of the Line and Forlorn-hope van,
+On an August morning--a chosen few -
+   Stormed San Sebastian.
+
+"She's a score less three; so about was SHE -
+The maiden I wronged in Peninsular days . . .
+You may prate of your prowess in lusty times,
+But as years gnaw inward you blink your bays,
+   And see too well your crimes!
+
+"We'd stormed it at night, by the vlanker-light
+Of burning towers, and the mortar's boom:
+We'd topped the breach; but had failed to stay,
+For our files were misled by the baffling gloom;
+   And we said we'd storm by day.
+
+"So, out of the trenches, with features set,
+On that hot, still morning, in measured pace,
+Our column climbed; climbed higher yet,
+Past the fauss'bray, scarp, up the curtain-face,
+   And along the parapet.
+
+"From the battened hornwork the cannoneers
+Hove crashing balls of iron fire;
+On the shaking gap mount the volunteers
+In files, and as they mount expire
+   Amid curses, groans, and cheers.
+
+"Five hours did we storm, five hours re-form,
+As Death cooled those hot blood pricked on;
+Till our cause was helped by a woe within:
+They swayed from the summit we'd leapt upon,
+   And madly we entered in.
+
+"On end for plunder, 'mid rain and thunder
+That burst with the lull of our cannonade,
+We vamped the streets in the stifling air -
+Our hunger unsoothed, our thirst unstayed -
+   And ransacked the buildings there.
+
+"Down the stony steps of the house-fronts white
+We rolled rich puncheons of Spanish grape,
+Till at length, with the fire of the wine alight,
+I saw at a doorway a fair fresh shape -
+   A woman, a sylph, or sprite.
+
+"Afeard she fled, and with heated head
+I pursued to the chamber she called her own;
+- When might is right no qualms deter,
+And having her helpless and alone
+   I wreaked my will on her.
+
+"She raised her beseeching eyes to me,
+And I heard the words of prayer she sent
+In her own soft language . . . Seemingly
+I copied those eyes for my punishment
+   In begetting the girl you see!
+
+"So, to-day I stand with a God-set brand
+Like Cain's, when he wandered from kindred's ken . . .
+I served through the war that made Europe free;
+I wived me in peace-year.  But, hid from men,
+   I bear that mark on me.
+
+"And I nightly stray on the Ivel Way
+As though at home there were spectres rife;
+I delight me not in my proud career;
+And 'tis coals of fire that a gracious wife
+   Should have brought me a daughter dear!"
+
+
+
+THE STRANGER'S SONG
+(As sung by MR. CHARLES CHARRINGTON in the play of "The Three
+Wayfarers")
+
+
+
+            O my trade it is the rarest one,
+Simple shepherds all -
+      My trade is a sight to see;
+For my customers I tie, and take 'em up on high,
+   And waft 'em to a far countree!
+
+My tools are but common ones,
+            Simple shepherds all -
+      My tools are no sight to see:
+A little hempen string, and a post whereon to swing,
+   Are implements enough for me!
+
+To-morrow is my working day,
+         Simple shepherds all -
+      To-morrow is a working day for me:
+For the farmer's sheep is slain, and the lad who did it ta'en,
+   And on his soul may God ha' mer-cy!
+
+Printed in "The Three Strangers," 1883.
+
+
+
+THE BURGHERS
+(17-)
+
+
+
+The sun had wheeled from Grey's to Dammer's Crest,
+And still I mused on that Thing imminent:
+At length I sought the High-street to the West.
+
+The level flare raked pane and pediment
+And my wrecked face, and shaped my nearing friend
+Like one of those the Furnace held unshent.
+
+"I've news concerning her," he said.  "Attend.
+They fly to-night at the late moon's first gleam:
+Watch with thy steel:  two righteous thrusts will end
+
+Her shameless visions and his passioned dream.
+I'll watch with thee, to testify thy wrong -
+To aid, maybe.--Law consecrates the scheme."
+
+I started, and we paced the flags along
+Till I replied:  "Since it has come to this
+I'll do it!  But alone.  I can be strong."
+
+Three hours past Curfew, when the Froom's mild hiss
+Reigned sole, undulled by whirr of merchandize,
+From Pummery-Tout to where the Gibbet is,
+
+I crossed my pleasaunce hard by Glyd'path Rise,
+And stood beneath the wall.  Eleven strokes went,
+And to the door they came, contrariwise,
+
+And met in clasp so close I had but bent
+My lifted blade upon them to have let
+Their two souls loose upon the firmament.
+
+But something held my arm.  "A moment yet
+As pray-time ere you wantons die!" I said;
+And then they saw me.  Swift her gaze was set
+
+With eye and cry of love illimited
+Upon her Heart-king.  Never upon me
+Had she thrown look of love so thorough-sped! . . .
+
+At once she flung her faint form shieldingly
+On his, against the vengeance of my vows;
+The which o'erruling, her shape shielded he.
+
+Blanked by such love, I stood as in a drowse,
+And the slow moon edged from the upland nigh,
+My sad thoughts moving thuswise:  "I may house
+
+And I may husband her, yet what am I
+But licensed tyrant to this bonded pair?
+Says Charity, Do as ye would be done by." . . .
+
+Hurling my iron to the bushes there,
+I bade them stay.  And, as if brain and breast
+Were passive, they walked with me to the stair.
+
+Inside the house none watched; and on we prest
+Before a mirror, in whose gleam I read
+Her beauty, his,--and mine own mien unblest;
+
+Till at her room I turned.  "Madam," I said,
+"Have you the wherewithal for this?  Pray speak.
+Love fills no cupboard.  You'll need daily bread."
+
+"We've nothing, sire," said she; "and nothing seek.
+'Twere base in me to rob my lord unware;
+Our hands will earn a pittance week by week."
+
+And next I saw she'd piled her raiment rare
+Within the garde-robes, and her household purse,
+Her jewels, and least lace of personal wear;
+
+And stood in homespun.  Now grown wholly hers,
+I handed her the gold, her jewels all,
+And him the choicest of her robes diverse.
+
+"I'll take you to the doorway in the wall,
+And then adieu," I to them.  "Friends, withdraw."
+They did so; and she went--beyond recall.
+
+And as I paused beneath the arch I saw
+Their moonlit figures--slow, as in surprise -
+Descend the slope, and vanish on the haw.
+
+"'Fool,' some will say," I thought.  "But who is wise,
+Save God alone, to weigh my reasons why?"
+- "Hast thou struck home?" came with the boughs' night-sighs.
+
+It was my friend.  "I have struck well.  They fly,
+But carry wounds that none can cicatrize."
+- "Not mortal?" said he.  "Lingering--worse," said I.
+
+
+
+LEIPZIG
+(1813)
+Scene:  The Master-tradesmen's Parlour at the Old Ship Inn,
+Casterbridge.  Evening.
+
+
+
+"Old Norbert with the flat blue cap--
+   A German said to be -
+Why let your pipe die on your lap,
+   Your eyes blink absently?" -
+
+- "Ah! . . . Well, I had thought till my cheek was wet
+   Of my mother--her voice and mien
+When she used to sing and pirouette,
+   And touse the tambourine
+
+"To the march that yon street-fiddler plies:
+   She told me 'twas the same
+She'd heard from the trumpets, when the Allies
+   Her city overcame.
+
+"My father was one of the German Hussars,
+   My mother of Leipzig; but he,
+Long quartered here, fetched her at close of the wars,
+   And a Wessex lad reared me.
+
+"And as I grew up, again and again
+   She'd tell, after trilling that air,
+Of her youth, and the battles on Leipzig plain
+   And of all that was suffered there! . . .
+
+"--'Twas a time of alarms.  Three Chiefs-at-arms
+   Combined them to crush One,
+And by numbers' might, for in equal fight
+   He stood the matched of none.
+
+"Carl Schwarzenberg was of the plot,
+   And Blucher, prompt and prow,
+And Jean the Crown-Prince Bernadotte:
+   Buonaparte was the foe.
+
+"City and plain had felt his reign
+   From the North to the Middle Sea,
+And he'd now sat down in the noble town
+   Of the King of Saxony.
+
+"October's deep dew its wet gossamer threw
+   Upon Leipzig's lawns, leaf-strewn,
+Where lately each fair avenue
+   Wrought shade for summer noon.
+
+"To westward two dull rivers crept
+   Through miles of marsh and slough,
+Whereover a streak of whiteness swept -
+   The Bridge of Lindenau.
+
+"Hard by, in the City, the One, care-tossed,
+   Gloomed over his shrunken power;
+And without the walls the hemming host
+   Waxed denser every hour.
+
+"He had speech that night on the morrow's designs
+   With his chiefs by the bivouac fire,
+While the belt of flames from the enemy's lines
+   Flared nigher him yet and nigher.
+
+"Three sky-lights then from the girdling trine
+   Told, 'Ready!'  As they rose
+Their flashes seemed his Judgment-Sign
+   For bleeding Europe's woes.
+
+"'Twas seen how the French watch-fires that night
+   Glowed still and steadily;
+And the Three rejoiced, for they read in the sight
+   That the One disdained to flee . . .
+
+"--Five hundred guns began the affray
+   On next day morn at nine;
+Such mad and mangling cannon-play
+   Had never torn human line.
+
+"Around the town three battles beat,
+   Contracting like a gin;
+As nearer marched the million feet
+   Of columns closing in.
+
+"The first battle nighed on the low Southern side;
+   The second by the Western way;
+The nearing of the third on the North was heard:
+  --The French held all at bay.
+
+"Against the first band did the Emperor stand;
+   Against the second stood Ney;
+Marmont against the third gave the order-word:
+  --Thus raged it throughout the day.
+
+"Fifty thousand sturdy souls on those trampled plains and knolls,
+   Who met the dawn hopefully,
+And were lotted their shares in a quarrel not theirs,
+   Dropt then in their agony.
+
+"'O,' the old folks said, 'ye Preachers stern!
+   O so-called Christian time!
+When will men's swords to ploughshares turn?
+   When come the promised prime?' . . .
+
+"--The clash of horse and man which that day began,
+   Closed not as evening wore;
+And the morrow's armies, rear and van,
+   Still mustered more and more.
+
+"From the City towers the Confederate Powers
+   Were eyed in glittering lines,
+And up from the vast a murmuring passed
+   As from a wood of pines.
+
+"''Tis well to cover a feeble skill
+   By numbers!' scoffed He;
+'But give me a third of their strength, I'd fill
+   Half Hell with their soldiery!'
+
+"All that day raged the war they waged,
+   And again dumb night held reign,
+Save that ever upspread from the dark deathbed
+   A miles-wide pant of pain.
+
+"Hard had striven brave Ney, the true Bertrand,
+   Victor, and Augereau,
+Bold Poniatowski, and Lauriston,
+   To stay their overthrow;
+
+"But, as in the dream of one sick to death
+   There comes a narrowing room
+That pens him, body and limbs and breath,
+   To wait a hideous doom,
+
+"So to Napoleon, in the hush
+   That held the town and towers
+Through these dire nights, a creeping crush
+   Seemed inborne with the hours.
+
+"One road to the rearward, and but one,
+   Did fitful Chance allow;
+'Twas where the Pleiss' and Elster run -
+   The Bridge of Lindenau.
+
+"The nineteenth dawned.  Down street and Platz
+   The wasted French sank back,
+Stretching long lines across the Flats
+   And on the bridge-way track;
+
+"When there surged on the sky an earthen wave,
+   And stones, and men, as though
+Some rebel churchyard crew updrave
+   Their sepulchres from below.
+
+"To Heaven is blown Bridge Lindenau;
+   Wrecked regiments reel therefrom;
+And rank and file in masses plough
+   The sullen Elster-Strom.
+
+"A gulf was Lindenau; and dead
+   Were fifties, hundreds, tens;
+And every current rippled red
+   With Marshal's blood and men's.
+
+"The smart Macdonald swam therein,
+   And barely won the verge;
+Bold Poniatowski plunged him in
+   Never to re-emerge.
+
+"Then stayed the strife.  The remnants wound
+   Their Rhineward way pell-mell;
+And thus did Leipzig City sound
+   An Empire's passing bell;
+
+"While in cavalcade, with band and blade,
+   Came Marshals, Princes, Kings;
+And the town was theirs . . . Ay, as simple maid,
+   My mother saw these things!
+
+"And whenever those notes in the street begin,
+   I recall her, and that far scene,
+And her acting of how the Allies marched in,
+   And her touse of the tambourine!"
+
+
+
+THE PEASANT'S CONFESSION
+
+
+
+"Si le marechal Grouchy avait ete rejoint par l'officier que Napoleon
+lui avait expedie la veille a dix heures du soir, toute question eut
+disparu.  Mais cet officier n'etait point parvenu a sa destination,
+ainsi que le marechal n'a cesse de l'affirmer toute sa vie, et il
+faut l'en croire, car autrement il n'aurait eu aucune raison pour
+hesiter.  Cet officier avait-il ete pris? avait-il passe a l'ennemi?
+C'est ce qu'on a toujours ignore."
+
+- THIERS:  Histoire de l'Empire.  "Waterloo."
+
+Good Father! . . . 'Twas an eve in middle June,
+   And war was waged anew
+By great Napoleon, who for years had strewn
+   Men's bones all Europe through.
+
+Three nights ere this, with columned corps he'd crossed
+   The Sambre at Charleroi,
+To move on Brussels, where the English host
+   Dallied in Parc and Bois.
+
+The yestertide we'd heard the gloomy gun
+   Growl through the long-sunned day
+From Quatre-Bras and Ligny; till the dun
+   Twilight suppressed the fray;
+
+Albeit therein--as lated tongues bespoke -
+   Brunswick's high heart was drained,
+And Prussia's Line and Landwehr, though unbroke,
+   Stood cornered and constrained.
+
+And at next noon-time Grouchy slowly passed
+   With thirty thousand men:
+We hoped thenceforth no army, small or vast,
+   Would trouble us again.
+
+My hut lay deeply in a vale recessed,
+   And never a soul seemed nigh
+When, reassured at length, we went to rest -
+   My children, wife, and I.
+
+But what was this that broke our humble ease?
+   What noise, above the rain,
+Above the dripping of the poplar trees
+   That smote along the pane?
+
+- A call of mastery, bidding me arise,
+   Compelled me to the door,
+At which a horseman stood in martial guise -
+   Splashed--sweating from every pore.
+
+Had I seen Grouchy?  Yes?  Which track took he?
+   Could I lead thither on? -
+Fulfilment would ensure gold pieces three,
+   Perchance more gifts anon.
+
+"I bear the Emperor's mandate," then he said,
+   "Charging the Marshal straight
+To strike between the double host ahead
+   Ere they co-operate,
+
+"Engaging Blucher till the Emperor put
+   Lord Wellington to flight,
+And next the Prussians.  This to set afoot
+   Is my emprise to-night."
+
+I joined him in the mist; but, pausing, sought
+   To estimate his say.
+Grouchy had made for Wavre; and yet, on thought,
+   I did not lead that way.
+
+I mused:  "If Grouchy thus instructed be,
+   The clash comes sheer hereon;
+My farm is stript.  While, as for pieces three,
+   Money the French have none.
+
+"Grouchy unwarned, moreo'er, the English win,
+   And mine is left to me -
+They buy, not borrow."--Hence did I begin
+   To lead him treacherously.
+
+By Joidoigne, near to east, as we ondrew,
+   Dawn pierced the humid air;
+And eastward faced I with him, though I knew
+   Never marched Grouchy there.
+
+Near Ottignies we passed, across the Dyle
+   (Lim'lette left far aside),
+And thence direct toward Pervez and Noville
+   Through green grain, till he cried:
+
+"I doubt thy conduct, man! no track is here -
+   I doubt thy gaged word!"
+Thereat he scowled on me, and pranced me near,
+   And pricked me with his sword.
+
+"Nay, Captain, hold!  We skirt, not trace the course
+   Of Grouchy," said I then:
+"As we go, yonder went he, with his force
+   Of thirty thousand men."
+
+- At length noon nighed; when west, from Saint-John's-Mound,
+   A hoarse artillery boomed,
+And from Saint-Lambert's upland, chapel-crowned,
+   The Prussian squadrons loomed.
+
+Then to the wayless wet gray ground he leapt;
+   "My mission fails!" he cried;
+"Too late for Grouchy now to intercept,
+   For, peasant, you have lied!"
+
+He turned to pistol me.  I sprang, and drew
+   The sabre from his flank,
+And 'twixt his nape and shoulder, ere he knew,
+   I struck, and dead he sank.
+
+I hid him deep in nodding rye and oat -
+   His shroud green stalks and loam;
+His requiem the corn-blade's husky note -
+   And then I hastened home, . . .
+
+- Two armies writhe in coils of red and blue,
+   And brass and iron clang
+From Goumont, past the front of Waterloo,
+   To Pap'lotte and Smohain.
+
+The Guard Imperial wavered on the height;
+   The Emperor's face grew glum;
+"I sent," he said, "to Grouchy yesternight,
+   And yet he does not come!"
+
+'Twas then, Good Father, that the French espied,
+   Streaking the summer land,
+The men of Blucher.  But the Emperor cried,
+   "Grouchy is now at hand!"
+
+And meanwhile Vand'leur, Vivian, Maitland, Kempt,
+   Met d'Erlon, Friant, Ney;
+But Grouchy--mis-sent, blamed, yet blame-exempt -
+   Grouchy was far away.
+
+By even, slain or struck, Michel the strong,
+   Bold Travers, Dnop, Delord,
+Smart Guyot, Reil-le, l'Heriter, Friant,
+   Scattered that champaign o'er.
+
+Fallen likewise wronged Duhesme, and skilled Lobau
+   Did that red sunset see;
+Colbert, Legros, Blancard! . . . And of the foe
+   Picton and Ponsonby;
+
+With Gordon, Canning, Blackman, Ompteda,
+   L'Estrange, Delancey, Packe,
+Grose, D'Oyly, Stables, Morice, Howard, Hay,
+   Von Schwerin, Watzdorf, Boek,
+
+Smith, Phelips, Fuller, Lind, and Battersby,
+   And hosts of ranksmen round . . .
+Memorials linger yet to speak to thee
+   Of those that bit the ground!
+
+The Guards' last column yielded; dykes of dead
+   Lay between vale and ridge,
+As, thinned yet closing, faint yet fierce, they sped
+   In packs to Genappe Bridge.
+
+Safe was my stock; my capple cow unslain;
+      Intact each cock and hen;
+But Grouchy far at Wavre all day had lain,
+   And thirty thousand men.
+
+O Saints, had I but lost my earing corn
+   And saved the cause once prized!
+O Saints, why such false witness had I borne
+   When late I'd sympathized! . . .
+
+So now, being old, my children eye askance
+   My slowly dwindling store,
+And crave my mite; till, worn with tarriance,
+   I care for life no more.
+
+To Almighty God henceforth I stand confessed,
+   And Virgin-Saint Marie;
+O Michael, John, and Holy Ones in rest,
+   Entreat the Lord for me!
+
+
+
+THE ALARM
+(1803)
+See "The Trumpet-Major"
+IN MEMORY OF ONE OF THE WRITER'S FAMILY WHO WAS A VOLUNTEER DURING
+THE WAR WITH NAPOLEON
+
+
+
+      In a ferny byway
+      Near the great South-Wessex Highway,
+   A homestead raised its breakfast-smoke aloft;
+The dew-damps still lay steamless, for the sun had made no sky-way,
+      And twilight cloaked the croft.
+
+      'Twas hard to realize on
+      This snug side the mute horizon
+   That beyond it hostile armaments might steer,
+Save from seeing in the porchway a fair woman weep with eyes on
+      A harnessed Volunteer.
+
+      In haste he'd flown there
+      To his comely wife alone there,
+   While marching south hard by, to still her fears,
+For she soon would be a mother, and few messengers were known there
+      In these campaigning years.
+
+      'Twas time to be Good-bying,
+      Since the assembly-hour was nighing
+   In royal George's town at six that morn;
+And betwixt its wharves and this retreat were ten good miles of
+hieing
+   Ere ring of bugle-horn.
+
+      "I've laid in food, Dear,
+      And broached the spiced and brewed, Dear;
+   And if our July hope should antedate,
+Let the char-wench mount and gallop by the halterpath and wood, Dear,
+      And fetch assistance straight.
+
+      "As for Buonaparte, forget him;
+      He's not like to land!  But let him,
+   Those strike with aim who strike for wives and sons!
+And the war-boats built to float him; 'twere but wanted to upset him
+      A slat from Nelson's guns!
+
+      "But, to assure thee,
+      And of creeping fears to cure thee,
+   If he SHOULD be rumoured anchoring in the Road,
+Drive with the nurse to Kingsbere; and let nothing thence allure thee
+      Till we've him safe-bestowed.
+
+      "Now, to turn to marching matters:-
+      I've my knapsack, firelock, spatters,
+   Crossbelts, priming-horn, stock, bay'net,  blackball, clay,
+Pouch, magazine, flints, flint-box that at every quick-step clatters;
+   . . . My heart, Dear; that must stay!"
+
+     --With breathings broken
+      Farewell was kissed unspoken,
+   And they parted there as morning stroked the panes;
+And the Volunteer went on, and turned, and twirled his glove for
+token,
+   And took the coastward lanes.
+
+      When above He'th Hills he found him,
+      He saw, on gazing round him,
+   The Barrow-Beacon burning--burning low,
+As if, perhaps, uplighted ever since he'd homeward bound him;
+      And it meant:  Expect the Foe!
+
+      Leaving the byway,
+      And following swift the highway,
+   Car and chariot met he, faring fast inland;
+"He's anchored, Soldier!" shouted some:  "God save thee, marching thy
+way,
+   Th'lt front him on the strand!"
+
+      He slowed; he stopped; he paltered
+      Awhile with self, and faltered,
+   "Why courting misadventure shoreward roam?
+To Molly, surely!  Seek the woods with her till times have altered;
+      Charity favours home.
+
+      Else, my denying
+      He would come she'll read as lying -
+   Think the Barrow-Beacon must have met my eyes--
+That my words were not unwareness, but deceit of her, while trying
+      My life to jeopardize.
+
+      "At home is stocked provision,
+      And to-night, without suspicion,
+   We might bear it with us to a covert near;
+Such sin, to save a childing wife, would earn it Christ's remission,
+   Though none forgive it here!"
+
+      While thus he, thinking,
+      A little bird, quick drinking
+   Among the crowfoot tufts the river bore,
+Was tangled in their stringy arms, and fluttered, well-nigh sinking,
+   Near him, upon the moor.
+
+      He stepped in, reached, and seized it,
+      And, preening, had released it
+   But that a thought of Holy Writ occurred,
+And Signs Divine ere battle, till it seemed him Heaven had pleased it
+   As guide to send the bird.
+
+      "O Lord, direct me! . . .
+      Doth Duty now expect me
+   To march a-coast, or guard my weak ones near?
+Give this bird a flight according, that I thence know to elect me
+   The southward or the rear."
+
+      He loosed his clasp; when, rising,
+      The bird--as if surmising -
+   Bore due to southward, crossing by the Froom,
+And Durnover Great-Field and Fort, the soldier clear advising -
+      Prompted he wist by Whom.
+
+      Then on he panted
+      By grim Mai-Don, and slanted
+   Up the steep Ridge-way, hearkening betwixt whiles;
+Till, nearing coast and harbour, he beheld the shore-line planted
+   With Foot and Horse for miles.
+
+      Mistrusting not the omen,
+      He gained the beach, where Yeomen,
+   Militia, Fencibles, and Pikemen bold,
+With Regulars in thousands, were enmassed to meet the Foemen,
+   Whose fleet had not yet shoaled.
+
+      Captain and Colonel,
+      Sere Generals, Ensigns vernal,
+   Were there; of neighbour-natives, Michel, Smith,
+Meggs, Bingham, Gambier, Cunningham, roused by the hued nocturnal
+   Swoop on their land and kith.
+
+      But Buonaparte still tarried;
+      His project had miscarried;
+   At the last hour, equipped for victory,
+The fleet had paused; his subtle combinations had been parried
+   By British strategy.
+
+      Homeward returning
+      Anon, no beacons burning,
+   No alarms, the Volunteer, in modest bliss,
+Te Deum sang with wife and friends:  "We praise Thee, Lord,
+discerning
+      That Thou hast helped in this!"
+
+
+
+HER DEATH AND AFTER
+
+
+
+'Twas a death-bed summons, and forth I went
+By the way of the Western Wall, so drear
+On that winter night, and sought a gate -
+      The home, by Fate,
+   Of one I had long held dear.
+
+And there, as I paused by her tenement,
+And the trees shed on me their rime and hoar,
+I thought of the man who had left her lone -
+      Him who made her his own
+   When I loved her, long before.
+
+The rooms within had the piteous shine
+That home-things wear when there's aught amiss;
+From the stairway floated the rise and fall
+      Of an infant's call,
+   Whose birth had brought her to this.
+
+Her life was the price she would pay for that whine -
+For a child by the man she did not love.
+"But let that rest for ever," I said,
+      And bent my tread
+   To the chamber up above.
+
+She took my hand in her thin white own,
+And smiled her thanks--though nigh too weak -
+And made them a sign to leave us there
+      Then faltered, ere
+   She could bring herself to speak.
+
+"'Twas to see you before I go--he'll condone
+Such a natural thing now my time's not much--
+When Death is so near it hustles hence
+      All passioned sense
+   Between woman and man as such!
+
+"My husband is absent.  As heretofore
+The City detains him.  But, in truth,
+He has not been kind . . . I will speak no blame,
+      But--the child is lame;
+   O, I pray she may reach his ruth!
+
+"Forgive past days--I can say no more -
+Maybe if we'd wedded you'd now repine! . . .
+But I treated you ill.  I was punished.  Farewell!
+     --Truth shall I tell?
+   Would the child were yours and mine!
+
+"As a wife I was true.  But, such my unease
+That, could I insert a deed back in Time,
+I'd make her yours, to secure your care;
+      And the scandal bear,
+   And the penalty for the crime!"
+
+- When I had left, and the swinging trees
+Rang above me, as lauding her candid say,
+Another was I.  Her words were enough:
+      Came smooth, came rough,
+   I felt I could live my day.
+
+Next night she died; and her obsequies
+In the Field of Tombs, by the Via renowned,
+Had her husband's heed.  His tendance spent,
+      I often went
+   And pondered by her mound.
+
+All that year and the next year whiled,
+And I still went thitherward in the gloam;
+But the Town forgot her and her nook,
+      And her husband took
+   Another Love to his home.
+
+And the rumour flew that the lame lone child
+Whom she wished for its safety child of mine,
+Was treated ill when offspring came
+      Of the new-made dame,
+   And marked a more vigorous line.
+
+A smarter grief within me wrought
+Than even at loss of her so dear;
+Dead the being whose soul my soul suffused,
+      Her child ill-used,
+   I helpless to interfere!
+
+One eve as I stood at my spot of thought
+In the white-stoned Garth, brooding thus her wrong,
+Her husband neared; and to shun his view
+      By her hallowed mew
+   I went from the tombs among
+
+To the Cirque of the Gladiators which faced -
+That haggard mark of Imperial Rome,
+Whose Pagan echoes mock the chime
+      Of our Christian time:
+   It was void, and I inward clomb.
+
+Scarce night the sun's gold touch displaced
+From the vast Rotund and the neighbouring dead
+When her husband followed; bowed; half-passed,
+      With lip upcast;
+   Then, halting, sullenly said:
+
+"It is noised that you visit my first wife's tomb.
+Now, I gave her an honoured name to bear
+While living, when dead.  So I've claim to ask
+      By what right you task
+   My patience by vigiling there?
+
+"There's decency even in death, I assume;
+Preserve it, sir, and keep away;
+For the mother of my first-born you
+      Show mind undue!
+  --Sir, I've nothing more to say."
+
+A desperate stroke discerned I then -
+God pardon--or pardon not--the lie;
+She had sighed that she wished (lest the child should pine
+      Of slights) 'twere mine,
+   So I said:  "But the father I.
+
+"That you thought it yours is the way of men;
+But I won her troth long ere your day:
+You learnt how, in dying, she summoned me?
+      'Twas in fealty.
+  --Sir, I've nothing more to say,
+
+"Save that, if you'll hand me my little maid,
+I'll take her, and rear her, and spare you toil.
+Think it more than a friendly act none can;
+      I'm a lonely man,
+   While you've a large pot to boil.
+
+"If not, and you'll put it to ball or blade -
+To-night, to-morrow night, anywhen -
+I'll meet you here . . . But think of it,
+      And in season fit
+   Let me hear from you again."
+
+- Well, I went away, hoping; but nought I heard
+Of my stroke for the child, till there greeted me
+A little voice that one day came
+      To my window-frame
+   And babbled innocently:
+
+"My father who's not my own, sends word
+I'm to stay here, sir, where I belong!"
+Next a writing came:  "Since the child was the fruit
+      Of your lawless suit,
+   Pray take her, to right a wrong."
+
+And I did.  And I gave the child my love,
+And the child loved me, and estranged us none.
+But compunctions loomed; for I'd harmed the dead
+      By what I'd said
+   For the good of the living one.
+
+- Yet though, God wot, I am sinner enough,
+And unworthy the woman who drew me so,
+Perhaps this wrong for her darling's good
+      She forgives, or would,
+   If only she could know!
+
+
+
+THE DANCE AT THE PHOENIX
+
+
+
+To Jenny came a gentle youth
+   From inland leazes lone,
+His love was fresh as apple-blooth
+   By Parrett, Yeo, or Tone.
+And duly he entreated her
+To be his tender minister,
+   And call him aye her own.
+
+Fair Jenny's life had hardly been
+   A life of modesty;
+At Casterbridge experience keen
+   Of many loves had she
+From scarcely sixteen years above;
+Among them sundry troopers of
+   The King's-Own Cavalry.
+
+But each with charger, sword, and gun,
+   Had bluffed the Biscay wave;
+And Jenny prized her gentle one
+   For all the love he gave.
+She vowed to be, if they were wed,
+His honest wife in heart and head
+   From bride-ale hour to grave.
+
+Wedded they were.  Her husband's trust
+   In Jenny knew no bound,
+And Jenny kept her pure and just,
+   Till even malice found
+No sin or sign of ill to be
+In one who walked so decently
+   The duteous helpmate's round.
+
+Two sons were born, and bloomed to men,
+   And roamed, and were as not:
+Alone was Jenny left again
+   As ere her mind had sought
+A solace in domestic joys,
+And ere the vanished pair of boys
+   Were sent to sun her cot.
+
+She numbered near on sixty years,
+   And passed as elderly,
+When, in the street, with flush of fears,
+   One day discovered she,
+From shine of swords and thump of drum.
+Her early loves from war had come,
+   The King's-Own Cavalry.
+
+She turned aside, and bowed her head
+   Anigh Saint Peter's door;
+"Alas for chastened thoughts!" she said;
+   "I'm faded now, and hoar,
+And yet those notes--they thrill me through,
+And those gay forms move me anew
+   As in the years of yore!" . . .
+
+'Twas Christmas, and the Phoenix Inn
+   Was lit with tapers tall,
+For thirty of the trooper men
+   Had vowed to give a ball
+As "Theirs" had done ('twas handed down)
+When lying in the selfsame town
+   Ere Buonaparte's fall.
+
+That night the throbbing "Soldier's Joy,"
+   The measured tread and sway
+Of "Fancy-Lad" and "Maiden Coy,"
+   Reached Jenny as she lay
+Beside her spouse; till springtide blood
+Seemed scouring through her like a flood
+   That whisked the years away.
+
+She rose, and rayed, and decked her head
+   Where the bleached hairs ran thin;
+Upon her cap two bows of red
+   She fixed with hasty pin;
+Unheard descending to the street,
+She trod the flags with tune-led feet,
+   And stood before the Inn.
+
+Save for the dancers', not a sound
+   Disturbed the icy air;
+No watchman on his midnight round
+   Or traveller was there;
+But over All-Saints', high and bright,
+Pulsed to the music Sirius white,
+   The Wain by Bullstake Square.
+
+She knocked, but found her further stride
+   Checked by a sergeant tall:
+"Gay Granny, whence come you?" he cried;
+   "This is a private ball."
+- "No one has more right here than me!
+Ere you were born, man," answered she,
+   "I knew the regiment all!"
+
+"Take not the lady's visit ill!"
+   Upspoke the steward free;
+"We lack sufficient partners still,
+   So, prithee let her be!"
+They seized and whirled her 'mid the maze,
+And Jenny felt as in the days
+   Of her immodesty.
+
+Hour chased each hour, and night advanced;
+   She sped as shod with wings;
+Each time and every time she danced -
+   Reels, jigs, poussettes, and flings:
+They cheered her as she soared and swooped,
+(She'd learnt ere art in dancing drooped
+   From hops to slothful swings).
+
+The favourite Quick-step "Speed the Plough" -
+   (Cross hands, cast off, and wheel)--
+"The Triumph," "Sylph," "The Row-dow-dow,"
+   Famed "Major Malley's Reel,"
+"The Duke of York's," "The Fairy Dance,"
+"The Bridge of Lodi" (brought from France),
+   She beat out, toe and heel.
+
+The "Fall of Paris" clanged its close,
+   And Peter's chime told four,
+When Jenny, bosom-beating, rose
+   To seek her silent door.
+They tiptoed in escorting her,
+Lest stroke of heel or clink of spur
+   Should break her goodman's snore.
+
+The fire that late had burnt fell slack
+   When lone at last stood she;
+Her nine-and-fifty years came back;
+   She sank upon her knee
+Beside the durn, and like a dart
+A something arrowed through her heart
+   In shoots of agony.
+
+Their footsteps died as she leant there,
+   Lit by the morning star
+Hanging above the moorland, where
+   The aged elm-rows are;
+And, as o'ernight, from Pummery Ridge
+To Maembury Ring and Standfast Bridge
+   No life stirred, near or far.
+
+Though inner mischief worked amain,
+   She reached her husband's side;
+Where, toil-weary, as he had lain
+   Beneath the patchwork pied
+When yestereve she'd forthward crept,
+And as unwitting, still he slept
+   Who did in her confide.
+
+A tear sprang as she turned and viewed
+   His features free from guile;
+She kissed him long, as when, just wooed,
+   She chose his domicile.
+She felt she could have given her life
+To be the single-hearted wife
+   That she had been erstwhile.
+
+Time wore to six.  Her husband rose
+   And struck the steel and stone;
+He glanced at Jenny, whose repose
+   Seemed deeper than his own.
+With dumb dismay, on closer sight,
+He gathered sense that in the night,
+   Or morn, her soul had flown.
+
+When told that some too mighty strain
+   For one so many-yeared
+Had burst her bosom's master-vein,
+   His doubts remained unstirred.
+His Jenny had not left his side
+Betwixt the eve and morning-tide:
+  --The King's said not a word.
+
+Well! times are not as times were then,
+   Nor fair ones half so free;
+And truly they were martial men,
+   The King's-Own Cavalry.
+And when they went from Casterbridge
+And vanished over Mellstock Ridge,
+   'Twas saddest morn to see.
+
+
+
+THE CASTERBRIDGE CAPTAINS
+(KHYBER PASS, 1842)
+A TRADITION OF J. B. L-, T. G. B-, AND J. L-.
+
+
+
+Three captains went to Indian wars,
+   And only one returned:
+Their mate of yore, he singly wore
+   The laurels all had earned.
+
+At home he sought the ancient aisle
+   Wherein, untrumped of fame,
+The three had sat in pupilage,
+   And each had carved his name.
+
+The names, rough-hewn, of equal size,
+   Stood on the panel still;
+Unequal since.--"'Twas theirs to aim,
+   Mine was it to fulfil!"
+
+- "Who saves his life shall lose it, friends!"
+   Outspake the preacher then,
+Unweeting he his listener, who
+   Looked at the names again.
+
+That he had come and they'd been stayed,
+   'Twas but the chance of war:
+Another chance, and they'd sat here,
+   And he had lain afar.
+
+Yet saw he something in the lives
+   Of those who'd ceased to live
+That sphered them with a majesty
+   Which living failed to give.
+
+Transcendent triumph in return
+   No longer lit his brain;
+Transcendence rayed the distant urn
+   Where slept the fallen twain.
+
+
+
+A SIGN-SEEKER
+
+
+
+I mark the months in liveries dank and dry,
+   The noontides many-shaped and hued;
+   I see the nightfall shades subtrude,
+And hear the monotonous hours clang negligently by.
+
+I view the evening bonfires of the sun
+   On hills where morning rains have hissed;
+   The eyeless countenance of the mist
+Pallidly rising when the summer droughts are done.
+
+I have seen the lightning-blade, the leaping star,
+   The cauldrons of the sea in storm,
+   Have felt the earthquake's lifting arm,
+And trodden where abysmal fires and snow-cones are.
+
+I learn to prophesy the hid eclipse,
+   The coming of eccentric orbs;
+   To mete the dust the sky absorbs,
+To weigh the sun, and fix the hour each planet dips.
+
+I witness fellow earth-men surge and strive;
+   Assemblies meet, and throb, and part;
+   Death's soothing finger, sorrow's smart;
+- All the vast various moils that mean a world alive.
+
+But that I fain would wot of shuns my sense -
+   Those sights of which old prophets tell,
+   Those signs the general word so well,
+Vouchsafed to their unheed, denied my long suspense.
+
+In graveyard green, behind his monument
+   To glimpse a phantom parent, friend,
+   Wearing his smile, and "Not the end!"
+Outbreathing softly:  that were blest enlightenment;
+
+Or, if a dead Love's lips, whom dreams reveal
+   When midnight imps of King Decay
+   Delve sly to solve me back to clay,
+Should leave some print to prove her spirit-kisses real;
+
+Or, when Earth's Frail lie bleeding of her Strong,
+   If some Recorder, as in Writ,
+   Near to the weary scene should flit
+And drop one plume as pledge that Heaven inscrolls the wrong.
+
+- There are who, rapt to heights of tranced trust,
+   These tokens claim to feel and see,
+   Read radiant hints of times to be -
+Of heart to heart returning after dust to dust.
+
+Such scope is granted not to lives like mine . . .
+   I have lain in dead men's beds, have walked
+   The tombs of those with whom I'd talked,
+Called many a gone and goodly one to shape a sign,
+
+And panted for response.  But none replies;
+   No warnings loom, nor whisperings
+   To open out my limitings,
+And Nescience mutely muses:  When a man falls he lies.
+
+
+
+MY CICELY
+(17-)
+
+
+
+"Alive?"--And I leapt in my wonder,
+   Was faint of my joyance,
+And grasses and grove shone in garments
+   Of glory to me.
+
+"She lives, in a plenteous well-being,
+   To-day as aforehand;
+The dead bore the name--though a rare one -
+   The name that bore she."
+
+She lived . . . I, afar in the city
+   Of frenzy-led factions,
+Had squandered green years and maturer
+   In bowing the knee
+
+To Baals illusive and specious,
+   Till chance had there voiced me
+That one I loved vainly in nonage
+   Had ceased her to be.
+
+The passion the planets had scowled on,
+   And change had let dwindle,
+Her death-rumour smartly relifted
+   To full apogee.
+
+I mounted a steed in the dawning
+   With acheful remembrance,
+And made for the ancient West Highway
+   To far Exonb'ry.
+
+Passing heaths, and the House of Long Sieging,
+   I neared the thin steeple
+That tops the fair fane of Poore's olden
+   Episcopal see;
+
+And, changing anew my onbearer,
+   I traversed the downland
+Whereon the bleak hill-graves of Chieftains
+   Bulge barren of tree;
+
+And still sadly onward I followed
+   That Highway the Icen,
+Which trails its pale riband down Wessex
+   O'er lynchet and lea.
+
+Along through the Stour-bordered Forum,
+   Where Legions had wayfared,
+And where the slow river upglasses
+   Its green canopy,
+
+And by Weatherbury Castle, and thencefrom
+   Through Casterbridge held I
+Still on, to entomb her my vision
+   Saw stretched pallidly.
+
+No highwayman's trot blew the night-wind
+   To me so life-weary,
+But only the creak of the gibbets
+   Or waggoners' jee.
+
+Triple-ramparted Maidon gloomed grayly
+   Above me from southward,
+And north the hill-fortress of Eggar,
+   And square Pummerie.
+
+The Nine-Pillared Cromlech, the Bride-streams,
+   The Axe, and the Otter
+I passed, to the gate of the city
+   Where Exe scents the sea;
+
+Till, spent, in the graveacre pausing,
+   I learnt 'twas not my Love
+To whom Mother Church had just murmured
+   A last lullaby.
+
+- "Then, where dwells the Canon's kinswoman,
+   My friend of aforetime?"--
+('Twas hard to repress my heart-heavings
+   And new ecstasy.)
+
+"She wedded."--"Ah!"--"Wedded beneath her -
+   She keeps the stage-hostel
+Ten miles hence, beside the great Highway -
+   The famed Lions-Three.
+
+"Her spouse was her lackey--no option
+   'Twixt wedlock and worse things;
+A lapse over-sad for a lady
+   Of her pedigree!"
+
+I shuddered, said nothing, and wandered
+   To shades of green laurel:
+Too ghastly had grown those first tidings
+   So brightsome of blee!
+
+For, on my ride hither, I'd halted
+   Awhile at the Lions,
+And her--her whose name had once opened
+   My heart as a key--
+
+I'd looked on, unknowing, and witnessed
+   Her jests with the tapsters,
+Her liquor-fired face, her thick accents
+   In naming her fee.
+
+"O God, why this seeming derision!"
+   I cried in my anguish:
+"O once Loved, O fair Unforgotten -
+   That Thing--meant it thee!
+
+"Inurned and at peace, lost but sainted,
+   Were grief I could compass;
+Depraved--'tis for Christ's poor dependent
+   A cruel decree!"
+
+I backed on the Highway; but passed not
+   The hostel.  Within there
+Too mocking to Love's re-expression
+   Was Time's repartee!
+
+Uptracking where Legions had wayfared,
+   By cromlechs unstoried,
+And lynchets, and sepultured Chieftains,
+   In self-colloquy,
+
+A feeling stirred in me and strengthened
+   That SHE was not my Love,
+But she of the garth, who lay rapt in
+   Her long reverie.
+
+And thence till to-day I persuade me
+   That this was the true one;
+That Death stole intact her young dearness
+   And innocency.
+
+Frail-witted, illuded they call me;
+   I may be.  'Tis better
+To dream than to own the debasement
+   Of sweet Cicely.
+
+Moreover I rate it unseemly
+   To hold that kind Heaven
+Could work such device--to her ruin
+   And my misery.
+
+So, lest I disturb my choice vision,
+   I shun the West Highway,
+Even now, when the knaps ring with rhythms
+   From blackbird and bee;
+
+And feel that with slumber half-conscious
+   She rests in the church-hay,
+Her spirit unsoiled as in youth-time
+   When lovers were we.
+
+
+
+HER IMMORTALITY
+
+
+
+Upon a noon I pilgrimed through
+   A pasture, mile by mile,
+Unto the place where I last saw
+   My dead Love's living smile.
+
+And sorrowing I lay me down
+   Upon the heated sod:
+It seemed as if my body pressed
+   The very ground she trod.
+
+I lay, and thought; and in a trance
+   She came and stood me by--
+The same, even to the marvellous ray
+   That used to light her eye.
+
+"You draw me, and I come to you,
+   My faithful one," she said,
+In voice that had the moving tone
+   It bore ere breath had fled.
+
+She said:  "'Tis seven years since I died:
+   Few now remember me;
+My husband clasps another bride;
+   My children's love has she.
+
+"My brethren, sisters, and my friends
+   Care not to meet my sprite:
+Who prized me most I did not know
+   Till I passed down from sight."
+
+I said:  "My days are lonely here;
+   I need thy smile alway:
+I'll use this night my ball or blade,
+   And join thee ere the day."
+
+A tremor stirred her tender lips,
+   Which parted to dissuade:
+"That cannot be, O friend," she cried;
+   "Think, I am but a Shade!
+
+"A Shade but in its mindful ones
+   Has immortality;
+By living, me you keep alive,
+   By dying you slay me.
+
+"In you resides my single power
+   Of sweet continuance here;
+On your fidelity I count
+   Through many a coming year."
+
+- I started through me at her plight,
+   So suddenly confessed:
+Dismissing late distaste for life,
+   I craved its bleak unrest.
+
+"I will not die, my One of all! -
+   To lengthen out thy days
+I'll guard me from minutest harms
+   That may invest my ways!"
+
+She smiled and went.  Since then she comes
+   Oft when her birth-moon climbs,
+Or at the seasons' ingresses
+   Or anniversary times;
+
+But grows my grief.  When I surcease,
+   Through whom alone lives she,
+Ceases my Love, her words, her ways,
+   Never again to be!
+
+
+
+THE IVY-WIFE
+
+
+
+I longed to love a full-boughed beech
+   And be as high as he:
+I stretched an arm within his reach,
+   And signalled unity.
+But with his drip he forced a breach,
+   And tried to poison me.
+
+I gave the grasp of partnership
+   To one of other race--
+A plane:  he barked him strip by strip
+   From upper bough to base;
+And me therewith; for gone my grip,
+   My arms could not enlace.
+
+In new affection next I strove
+   To coll an ash I saw,
+And he in trust received my love;
+   Till with my soft green claw
+I cramped and bound him as I wove . . .
+   Such was my love:  ha-ha!
+
+By this I gained his strength and height
+   Without his rivalry.
+But in my triumph I lost sight
+   Of afterhaps.  Soon he,
+Being bark-bound, flagged, snapped, fell outright,
+   And in his fall felled me!
+
+
+
+A MEETING WITH DESPAIR
+
+
+
+As evening shaped I found me on a moor
+   Which sight could scarce sustain:
+The black lean land, of featureless contour,
+   Was like a tract in pain.
+
+"This scene, like my own life," I said, "is one
+   Where many glooms abide;
+Toned by its fortune to a deadly dun -
+   Lightless on every side.
+
+I glanced aloft and halted, pleasure-caught
+   To see the contrast there:
+The ray-lit clouds gleamed glory; and I thought,
+   "There's solace everywhere!"
+
+Then bitter self-reproaches as I stood
+   I dealt me silently
+As one perverse--misrepresenting Good
+   In graceless mutiny.
+
+Against the horizon's dim-discerned wheel
+   A form rose, strange of mould:
+That he was hideous, hopeless, I could feel
+   Rather than could behold.
+
+"'Tis a dead spot, where even the light lies spent
+   To darkness!" croaked the Thing.
+"Not if you look aloft!" said I, intent
+   On my new reasoning.
+
+ "Yea--but await awhile!" he cried.  "Ho-ho! -
+   Look now aloft and see!"
+I looked.  There, too, sat night:  Heaven's radiant show
+   Had gone.  Then chuckled he.
+
+
+
+UNKNOWING
+
+
+
+When, soul in soul reflected,
+We breathed an aethered air,
+   When we neglected
+   All things elsewhere,
+And left the friendly friendless
+To keep our love aglow,
+   We deemed it endless . . .
+  --We did not know!
+
+When, by mad passion goaded,
+We planned to hie away,
+   But, unforeboded,
+   The storm-shafts gray
+So heavily down-pattered
+That none could forthward go,
+   Our lives seemed shattered . . .
+  --We did not know!
+
+When I found you, helpless lying,
+And you waived my deep misprise,
+   And swore me, dying,
+   In phantom-guise
+To wing to me when grieving,
+And touch away my woe,
+   We kissed, believing . . .
+  --We did not know!
+
+But though, your powers outreckoning,
+You hold you dead and dumb,
+   Or scorn my beckoning,
+   And will not come;
+And I say, "'Twere mood ungainly
+To store her memory so:"
+   I say it vainly -
+   I feel and know!
+
+
+
+FRIENDS BEYOND
+
+
+
+William Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,
+   Robert's kin, and John's, and Ned's,
+And the Squire, and Lady Susan, lie in Mellstock churchyard now!
+
+"Gone," I call them, gone for good, that group of local hearts and
+heads;
+   Yet at mothy curfew-tide,
+And at midnight when the noon-heat breathes it back from walls and
+leads,
+
+They've a way of whispering to me--fellow-wight who yet abide -
+   In the muted, measured note
+Of a ripple under archways, or a lone cave's stillicide:
+
+"We have triumphed:  this achievement turns the bane to antidote,
+   Unsuccesses to success,
+- Many thought-worn eves and morrows to a morrow free of thought.
+
+"No more need we corn and clothing, feel of old terrestrial stress;
+   Chill detraction stirs no sigh;
+Fear of death has even bygone us:  death gave all that we possess."
+
+W. D.--"Ye mid burn the wold bass-viol that I set such vallie by."
+   Squire.--"You may hold the manse in fee,
+You may wed my spouse, my children's memory of me may decry."
+
+Lady.--"You may have my rich brocades, my laces; take each household
+key;
+   Ransack coffer, desk, bureau;
+Quiz the few poor treasures hid there, con the letters kept by me."
+
+Far.--"Ye mid zell my favourite heifer, ye mid let the charlock grow,
+   Foul the grinterns, give up thrift."
+Wife.--"If ye break my best blue china, children, I shan't care or
+ho."
+
+All. --"We've no wish to hear the tidings, how the people's fortunes
+shift;
+   What your daily doings are;
+Who are wedded, born, divided; if your lives beat slow or swift.
+
+"Curious not the least are we if our intents you make or mar,
+   If you quire to our old tune,
+If the City stage still passes, if the weirs still roar afar."
+
+- Thus, with very gods' composure, freed those crosses late and soon
+   Which, in life, the Trine allow
+(Why, none witteth), and ignoring all that haps beneath the moon,
+
+William Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,
+   Robert's kin, and John's, and Ned's,
+And the Squire, and Lady Susan, murmur mildly to me now.
+
+
+
+TO OUTER NATURE
+
+
+
+Show thee as I thought thee
+When I early sought thee,
+   Omen-scouting,
+   All undoubting
+Love alone had wrought thee -
+
+Wrought thee for my pleasure,
+Planned thee as a measure
+   For expounding
+   And resounding
+Glad things that men treasure.
+
+O for but a moment
+Of that old endowment -
+   Light to gaily
+   See thy daily
+Irised embowment!
+
+But such re-adorning
+Time forbids with scorning -
+   Makes me see things
+   Cease to be things
+They were in my morning.
+
+Fad'st thou, glow-forsaken,
+Darkness-overtaken!
+   Thy first sweetness,
+   Radiance, meetness,
+None shall re-awaken.
+
+Why not sempiternal
+Thou and I?  Our vernal
+   Brightness keeping,
+   Time outleaping;
+Passed the hodiernal!
+
+
+
+THOUGHTS OF PHENA
+AT NEWS OF HER DEATH
+
+
+
+      Not a line of her writing have I,
+         Not a thread of her hair,
+No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby
+      I may picture her there;
+   And in vain do I urge my unsight
+      To conceive my lost prize
+At her close, whom I knew when her dreams were upbrimming with light,
+      And with laughter her eyes.
+
+      What scenes spread around her last days,
+         Sad, shining, or dim?
+Did her gifts and compassions enray and enarch her sweet ways
+      With an aureate nimb?
+   Or did life-light decline from her years,
+      And mischances control
+Her full day-star; unease, or regret, or forebodings, or fears
+      Disennoble her soul?
+
+      Thus I do but the phantom retain
+         Of the maiden of yore
+As my relic; yet haply the best of her--fined in my brain
+      It maybe the more
+   That no line of her writing have I,
+      Nor a thread of her hair,
+No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby
+      I may picture her there.
+
+March 1890.
+
+
+
+MIDDLE-AGE ENTHUSIASMS
+To M. H.
+
+
+
+   We passed where flag and flower
+   Signalled a jocund throng;
+   We said:  "Go to, the hour
+   Is apt!"--and joined the song;
+And, kindling, laughed at life and care,
+Although we knew no laugh lay there.
+
+   We walked where shy birds stood
+   Watching us, wonder-dumb;
+   Their friendship met our mood;
+   We cried:  "We'll often come:
+We'll come morn, noon, eve, everywhen!"
+- We doubted we should come again.
+
+   We joyed to see strange sheens
+   Leap from quaint leaves in shade;
+   A secret light of greens
+   They'd for their pleasure made.
+We said:  "We'll set such sorts as these!"
+- We knew with night the wish would cease.
+
+   "So sweet the place," we said,
+   "Its tacit tales so dear,
+   Our thoughts, when breath has sped,
+   Will meet and mingle here!" . . .
+"Words!" mused we.  "Passed the mortal door,
+Our thoughts will reach this nook no more."
+
+
+
+IN A WOOD
+See "THE WOODLANDERS"
+
+
+
+Pale beech and pine-tree blue,
+   Set in one clay,
+Bough to bough cannot you
+   Bide out your day?
+When the rains skim and skip,
+Why mar sweet comradeship,
+Blighting with poison-drip
+   Neighbourly spray?
+
+Heart-halt and spirit-lame,
+   City-opprest,
+Unto this wood I came
+   As to a nest;
+Dreaming that sylvan peace
+Offered the harrowed ease--
+Nature a soft release
+   From men's unrest.
+
+But, having entered in,
+   Great growths and small
+Show them to men akin -
+   Combatants all!
+Sycamore shoulders oak,
+Bines the slim sapling yoke,
+Ivy-spun halters choke
+   Elms stout and tall.
+
+Touches from ash, O wych,
+   Sting you like scorn!
+You, too, brave hollies, twitch
+   Sidelong from thorn.
+Even the rank poplars bear
+Illy a rival's air,
+Cankering in black despair
+   If overborne.
+
+Since, then, no grace I find
+   Taught me of trees,
+Turn I back to my kind,
+   Worthy as these.
+There at least smiles abound,
+There discourse trills around,
+There, now and then, are found
+   Life-loyalties.
+
+1887:  1896.
+
+
+
+TO A LADY
+OFFENDED BY A BOOK OF THE WRITER'S
+
+
+
+Now that my page upcloses, doomed, maybe,
+Never to press thy cosy cushions more,
+Or wake thy ready Yeas as heretofore,
+Or stir thy gentle vows of faith in me:
+
+Knowing thy natural receptivity,
+I figure that, as flambeaux banish eve,
+My sombre image, warped by insidious heave
+Of those less forthright, must lose place in thee.
+
+So be it.  I have borne such.  Let thy dreams
+Of me and mine diminish day by day,
+And yield their space to shine of smugger things;
+Till I shape to thee but in fitful gleams,
+And then in far and feeble visitings,
+And then surcease.  Truth will be truth alway.
+
+
+
+TO AN ORPHAN CHILD
+A WHIMSEY
+
+
+
+Ah, child, thou art but half thy darling mother's;
+   Hers couldst thou wholly be,
+My light in thee would outglow all in others;
+   She would relive to me.
+But niggard Nature's trick of birth
+   Bars, lest she overjoy,
+Renewal of the loved on earth
+      Save with alloy.
+
+The Dame has no regard, alas, my maiden,
+   For love and loss like mine -
+No sympathy with mind-sight memory-laden;
+   Only with fickle eyne.
+To her mechanic artistry
+   My dreams are all unknown,
+And why I wish that thou couldst be
+      But One's alone!
+
+
+
+NATURE'S QUESTIONING
+
+
+
+   When I look forth at dawning, pool,
+      Field, flock, and lonely tree,
+      All seem to gaze at me
+Like chastened children sitting silent in a school;
+
+   Their faces dulled, constrained, and worn,
+      As though the master's ways
+      Through the long teaching days
+Their first terrestrial zest had chilled and overborne.
+
+   And on them stirs, in lippings mere
+      (As if once clear in call,
+      But now scarce breathed at all) -
+"We wonder, ever wonder, why we find us here!
+
+   "Has some Vast Imbecility,
+      Mighty to build and blend,
+      But impotent to tend,
+Framed us in jest, and left us now to hazardry?
+
+   "Or come we of an Automaton
+      Unconscious of our pains? . . .
+      Or are we live remains
+Of Godhead dying downwards, brain and eye now gone?
+
+   "Or is it that some high Plan betides,
+      As yet not understood,
+      Of Evil stormed by Good,
+We the Forlorn Hope over which Achievement strides?"
+
+   Thus things around.  No answerer I . . .
+      Meanwhile the winds, and rains,
+      And Earth's old glooms and pains
+Are still the same, and gladdest Life Death neighbours nigh.
+
+
+
+THE IMPERCIPIENT
+(AT A CATHEDRAL SERVICE)
+
+
+
+That from this bright believing band
+   An outcast I should be,
+That faiths by which my comrades stand
+   Seem fantasies to me,
+And mirage-mists their Shining Land,
+   Is a drear destiny.
+
+Why thus my soul should be consigned
+   To infelicity,
+Why always I must feel as blind
+   To sights my brethren see,
+Why joys they've found I cannot find,
+   Abides a mystery.
+
+Since heart of mine knows not that ease
+   Which they know; since it be
+That He who breathes All's Well to these
+   Breathes no All's-Well to me,
+My lack might move their sympathies
+   And Christian charity!
+
+I am like a gazer who should mark
+   An inland company
+Standing upfingered, with, "Hark! hark!
+   The glorious distant sea!"
+And feel, "Alas, 'tis but yon dark
+   And wind-swept pine to me!"
+
+Yet I would bear my shortcomings
+   With meet tranquillity,
+But for the charge that blessed things
+   I'd liefer have unbe.
+O, doth a bird deprived of wings
+   Go earth-bound wilfully!
+
+* * *
+
+Enough.  As yet disquiet clings
+   About us.  Rest shall we.
+
+
+
+AT AN INN
+
+
+
+When we as strangers sought
+   Their catering care,
+Veiled smiles bespoke their thought
+   Of what we were.
+They warmed as they opined
+   Us more than friends -
+That we had all resigned
+   For love's dear ends.
+
+And that swift sympathy
+   With living love
+Which quicks the world--maybe
+   The spheres above,
+Made them our ministers,
+   Moved them to say,
+"Ah, God, that bliss like theirs
+   Would flush our day!"
+
+And we were left alone
+   As Love's own pair;
+Yet never the love-light shone
+   Between us there!
+But that which chilled the breath
+   Of afternoon,
+And palsied unto death
+   The pane-fly's tune.
+
+The kiss their zeal foretold,
+   And now deemed come,
+Came not:  within his hold
+   Love lingered-numb.
+Why cast he on our port
+   A bloom not ours?
+Why shaped us for his sport
+   In after-hours?
+
+As we seemed we were not
+   That day afar,
+And now we seem not what
+   We aching are.
+O severing sea and land,
+   O laws of men,
+Ere death, once let us stand
+   As we stood then!
+
+
+
+THE SLOW NATURE
+(AN INCIDENT OF FROOM VALLEY)
+
+
+
+"Thy husband--poor, poor Heart!--is dead--
+   Dead, out by Moreford Rise;
+A bull escaped the barton-shed,
+   Gored him, and there he lies!"
+
+- "Ha, ha--go away!  'Tis a tale, methink,
+   Thou joker Kit!" laughed she.
+"I've known thee many a year, Kit Twink,
+   And ever hast thou fooled me!"
+
+- "But, Mistress Damon--I can swear
+   Thy goodman John is dead!
+And soon th'lt hear their feet who bear
+   His body to his bed."
+
+So unwontedly sad was the merry man's face -
+   That face which had long deceived -
+That she gazed and gazed; and then could trace
+   The truth there; and she believed.
+
+She laid a hand on the dresser-ledge,
+   And scanned far Egdon-side;
+And stood; and you heard the wind-swept sedge
+   And the rippling Froom; till she cried:
+
+"O my chamber's untidied, unmade my bed
+   Though the day has begun to wear!
+'What a slovenly hussif!' it will be said,
+   When they all go up my stair!"
+
+She disappeared; and the joker stood
+   Depressed by his neighbour's doom,
+And amazed that a wife struck to widowhood
+   Thought first of her unkempt room.
+
+But a fortnight thence she could take no food,
+   And she pined in a slow decay;
+While Kit soon lost his mournful mood
+   And laughed in his ancient way.
+
+1894.
+
+
+
+IN A EWELEAZE NEAR WEATHERBURY
+
+
+
+The years have gathered grayly
+   Since I danced upon this leaze
+With one who kindled gaily
+   Love's fitful ecstasies!
+But despite the term as teacher,
+   I remain what I was then
+In each essential feature
+   Of the fantasies of men.
+
+Yet I note the little chisel
+   Of never-napping Time,
+Defacing ghast and grizzel
+   The blazon of my prime.
+When at night he thinks me sleeping,
+   I feel him boring sly
+Within my bones, and heaping
+   Quaintest pains for by-and-by.
+
+Still, I'd go the world with Beauty,
+   I would laugh with her and sing,
+I would shun divinest duty
+   To resume her worshipping.
+But she'd scorn my brave endeavour,
+   She would not balm the breeze
+By murmuring "Thine for ever!"
+   As she did upon this leaze.
+
+1890.
+
+
+
+THE FIRE AT TRANTER SWEATLEY'S
+
+
+
+They had long met o' Zundays--her true love and she -
+   And at junketings, maypoles, and flings;
+But she bode wi' a thirtover uncle, and he
+Swore by noon and by night that her goodman should be
+Naibour Sweatley--a gaffer oft weak at the knee
+From taking o' sommat more cheerful than tea -
+   Who tranted, and moved people's things.
+
+She cried, "O pray pity me!"  Nought would he hear;
+   Then with wild rainy eyes she obeyed.
+She chid when her Love was for clinking off wi' her.
+The pa'son was told, as the season drew near
+To throw over pu'pit the names of the peair
+   As fitting one flesh to be made.
+
+The wedding-day dawned and the morning drew on;
+   The couple stood bridegroom and bride;
+The evening was passed, and when midnight had gone
+The folks horned out, "God save the King," and anon
+   The two home-along gloomily hied.
+
+The lover Tim Tankens mourned heart-sick and drear
+   To be thus of his darling deprived:
+He roamed in the dark ath'art field, mound, and mere,
+And, a'most without knowing it, found himself near
+The house of the tranter, and now of his Dear,
+   Where the lantern-light showed 'em arrived.
+
+The bride sought her cham'er so calm and so pale
+   That a Northern had thought her resigned;
+But to eyes that had seen her in tide-times of weal,
+Like the white cloud o' smoke, the red battle-field's vail,
+   That look spak' of havoc behind.
+
+The bridegroom yet laitered a beaker to drain,
+   Then reeled to the linhay for more,
+When the candle-snoff kindled some chaff from his grain -
+Flames spread, and red vlankers, wi' might and wi' main,
+   And round beams, thatch, and chimley-tun roar.
+
+Young Tim away yond, rafted up by the light,
+   Through brimble and underwood tears,
+Till he comes to the orchet, when crooping thereright
+In the lewth of a codlin-tree, bivering wi' fright,
+Wi' on'y her night-rail to screen her from sight,
+   His lonesome young Barbree appears.
+
+Her cwold little figure half-naked he views
+   Played about by the frolicsome breeze,
+Her light-tripping totties, her ten little tooes,
+All bare and besprinkled wi' Fall's chilly dews,
+While her great gallied eyes, through her hair hanging loose,
+   Sheened as stars through a tardle o' trees.
+
+She eyed en; and, as when a weir-hatch is drawn,
+   Her tears, penned by terror afore,
+With a rushing of sobs in a shower were strawn,
+Till her power to pour 'em seemed wasted and gone
+   From the heft o' misfortune she bore.
+
+"O Tim, my OWN Tim I must call 'ee--I will!
+   All the world ha' turned round on me so!
+Can you help her who loved 'ee, though acting so ill?
+Can you pity her misery--feel for her still?
+When worse than her body so quivering and chill
+   Is her heart in its winter o' woe!
+
+"I think I mid almost ha' borne it," she said,
+   "Had my griefs one by one come to hand;
+But O, to be slave to thik husbird for bread,
+And then, upon top o' that, driven to wed,
+And then, upon top o' that, burnt out o' bed,
+   Is more than my nater can stand!"
+
+Tim's soul like a lion 'ithin en outsprung -
+(Tim had a great soul when his feelings were wrung)--
+   "Feel for 'ee, dear Barbree?" he cried;
+And his warm working-jacket about her he flung,
+Made a back, horsed her up, till behind him she clung
+Like a chiel on a gipsy, her figure uphung
+   By the sleeves that around her he tied.
+
+Over piggeries, and mixens, and apples, and hay,
+   They lumpered straight into the night;
+And finding bylong where a halter-path lay,
+At dawn reached Tim's house, on'y seen on their way
+By a naibour or two who were up wi' the day;
+   But they gathered no clue to the sight.
+
+Then tender Tim Tankens he searched here and there
+   For some garment to clothe her fair skin;
+But though he had breeches and waistcoats to spare,
+He had nothing quite seemly for Barbree to wear,
+Who, half shrammed to death, stood and cried on a chair
+   At the caddle she found herself in.
+
+There was one thing to do, and that one thing he did,
+   He lent her some clouts of his own,
+And she took 'em perforce; and while in 'em she slid,
+Tim turned to the winder, as modesty bid,
+Thinking, "O that the picter my duty keeps hid
+   To the sight o' my eyes mid be shown!"
+
+In the tallet he stowed her; there huddied she lay,
+   Shortening sleeves, legs, and tails to her limbs;
+But most o' the time in a mortal bad way,
+Well knowing that there'd be the divel to pay
+If 'twere found that, instead o' the elements' prey,
+   She was living in lodgings at Tim's.
+
+"Where's the tranter?" said men and boys; "where can er be?"
+   "Where's the tranter?" said Barbree alone.
+"Where on e'th is the tranter?" said everybod-y:
+They sifted the dust of his perished roof-tree,
+   And all they could find was a bone.
+
+Then the uncle cried, "Lord, pray have mercy on me!"
+   And in terror began to repent.
+But before 'twas complete, and till sure she was free,
+Barbree drew up her loft-ladder, tight turned her key -
+Tim bringing up breakfast and dinner and tea -
+   Till the news of her hiding got vent.
+
+Then followed the custom-kept rout, shout, and flare
+Of a skimmington-ride through the naibourhood, ere
+   Folk had proof o' wold Sweatley's decay.
+Whereupon decent people all stood in a stare,
+Saying Tim and his lodger should risk it, and pair:
+So he took her to church.  An' some laughing lads there
+Cried to Tim, "After Sweatley!"  She said, "I declare
+   I stand as a maiden to-day!"
+
+Written 1866; printed 1875.
+
+
+
+HEIRESS AND ARCHITECT
+FOR A. W. B.
+
+
+
+She sought the Studios, beckoning to her side
+An arch-designer, for she planned to build.
+He was of wise contrivance, deeply skilled
+In every intervolve of high and wide -
+   Well fit to be her guide.
+
+      "Whatever it be,"
+      Responded he,
+With cold, clear voice, and cold, clear view,
+"In true accord with prudent fashionings
+For such vicissitudes as living brings,
+And thwarting not the law of stable things,
+   That will I do."
+
+"Shape me," she said, "high halls with tracery
+And open ogive-work, that scent and hue
+Of buds, and travelling bees, may come in through,
+The note of birds, and singings of the sea,
+   For these are much to me."
+
+   "An idle whim!"
+   Broke forth from him
+Whom nought could warm to gallantries:
+"Cede all these buds and birds, the zephyr's call,
+And scents, and hues, and things that falter all,
+And choose as best the close and surly wall,
+   For winters freeze."
+
+"Then frame," she cried, "wide fronts of crystal glass,
+That I may show my laughter and my light -
+Light like the sun's by day, the stars' by night -
+Till rival heart-queens, envying, wail, 'Alas,
+   Her glory!' as they pass."
+
+   "O maid misled!"
+   He sternly said,
+Whose facile foresight pierced her dire;
+"Where shall abide the soul when, sick of glee,
+It shrinks, and hides, and prays no eye may see?
+Those house them best who house for secrecy,
+   For you will tire."
+
+"A little chamber, then, with swan and dove
+Ranged thickly, and engrailed with rare device
+Of reds and purples, for a Paradise
+Wherein my Love may greet me, I my Love,
+   When he shall know thereof?"
+
+   "This, too, is ill,"
+   He answered still,
+The man who swayed her like a shade.
+"An hour will come when sight of such sweet nook
+Would bring a bitterness too sharp to brook,
+When brighter eyes have won away his look;
+   For you will fade."
+
+Then said she faintly:  "O, contrive some way -
+Some narrow winding turret, quite mine own,
+To reach a loft where I may grieve alone!
+It is a slight thing; hence do not, I pray,
+   This last dear fancy slay!"
+
+   "Such winding ways
+   Fit not your days,"
+Said he, the man of measuring eye;
+"I must even fashion as my rule declares,
+To wit:  Give space (since life ends unawares)
+To hale a coffined corpse adown the stairs;
+   For you will die."
+
+1867.
+
+
+
+THE TWO MEN
+
+
+
+There were two youths of equal age,
+Wit, station, strength, and parentage;
+They studied at the selfsame schools,
+And shaped their thoughts by common rules.
+
+One pondered on the life of man,
+His hopes, his ending, and began
+To rate the Market's sordid war
+As something scarce worth living for.
+
+"I'll brace to higher aims," said he,
+"I'll further Truth and Purity;
+Thereby to mend the mortal lot
+And sweeten sorrow.  Thrive I not,
+
+"Winning their hearts, my kind will give
+Enough that I may lowly live,
+And house my Love in some dim dell,
+For pleasing them and theirs so well."
+
+Idly attired, with features wan,
+In secret swift he laboured on:
+Such press of power had brought much gold
+Applied to things of meaner mould.
+
+Sometimes he wished his aims had been
+To gather gains like other men;
+Then thanked his God he'd traced his track
+Too far for wish to drag him back.
+
+He looked from his loft one day
+To where his slighted garden lay;
+Nettles and hemlock hid each lawn,
+And every flower was starved and gone.
+
+He fainted in his heart, whereon
+He rose, and sought his plighted one,
+Resolved to loose her bond withal,
+Lest she should perish in his fall.
+
+He met her with a careless air,
+As though he'd ceased to find her fair,
+And said:  "True love is dust to me;
+I cannot kiss:  I tire of thee!"
+
+(That she might scorn him was he fain,
+To put her sooner out of pain;
+For incensed love breathes quick and dies,
+When famished love a-lingering lies.)
+
+Once done, his soul was so betossed,
+It found no more the force it lost:
+Hope was his only drink and food,
+And hope extinct, decay ensued.
+
+And, living long so closely penned,
+He had not kept a single friend;
+He dwindled thin as phantoms be,
+And drooped to death in poverty . . .
+
+Meantime his schoolmate had gone out
+To join the fortune-finding rout;
+He liked the winnings of the mart,
+But wearied of the working part.
+
+He turned to seek a privy lair,
+Neglecting note of garb and hair,
+And day by day reclined and thought
+How he might live by doing nought.
+
+"I plan a valued scheme," he said
+To some.  "But lend me of your bread,
+And when the vast result looms nigh,
+In profit you shall stand as I."
+
+Yet they took counsel to restrain
+Their kindness till they saw the gain;
+And, since his substance now had run,
+He rose to do what might be done.
+
+He went unto his Love by night,
+And said:  "My Love, I faint in fight:
+Deserving as thou dost a crown,
+My cares shall never drag thee down."
+
+(He had descried a maid whose line
+Would hand her on much corn and wine,
+And held her far in worth above
+One who could only pray and love.)
+
+But this Fair read him; whence he failed
+To do the deed so blithely hailed;
+He saw his projects wholly marred,
+And gloom and want oppressed him hard;
+
+Till, living to so mean an end,
+Whereby he'd lost his every friend,
+He perished in a pauper sty,
+His mate the dying pauper nigh.
+
+And moralists, reflecting, said,
+As "dust to dust" in burial read
+Was echoed from each coffin-lid,
+"These men were like in all they did."
+
+1866.
+
+
+
+LINES
+
+
+
+Spoken by Miss ADA REHAN at the Lyceum Theatre, July 23, 1890, at a
+performance on behalf of Lady Jeune's Holiday Fund for City Children.
+
+Before we part to alien thoughts and aims,
+Permit the one brief word the occasion claims:
+- When mumming and grave projects are allied,
+Perhaps an Epilogue is justified.
+
+Our under-purpose has, in truth, to-day
+Commanded most our musings; least the play:
+A purpose futile but for your good-will
+Swiftly responsive to the cry of ill:
+A purpose all too limited!--to aid
+Frail human flowerets, sicklied by the shade,
+In winning some short spell of upland breeze,
+Or strengthening sunlight on the level leas.
+
+Who has not marked, where the full cheek should be,
+Incipient lines of lank flaccidity,
+Lymphatic pallor where the pink should glow,
+And where the throb of transport, pulses low? -
+Most tragical of shapes from Pole to Line,
+O wondering child, unwitting Time's design,
+Why should Art add to Nature's quandary,
+And worsen ill by thus immuring thee?
+- That races do despite unto their own,
+That Might supernal do indeed condone
+Wrongs individual for the general ease,
+Instance the proof in victims such as these.
+
+Launched into thoroughfares too thronged before,
+Mothered by those whose protest is "No more!"
+Vitalized without option:  who shall say
+That did Life hang on choosing--Yea or Nay -
+They had not scorned it with such penalty,
+And nothingness implored of Destiny?
+
+And yet behind the horizon smile serene
+The down, the cornland, and the stretching green -
+Space--the child's heaven:  scenes which at least ensure
+Some palliative for ill they cannot cure.
+
+Dear friends--now moved by this poor show of ours
+To make your own long joy in buds and bowers
+For one brief while the joy of infant eyes,
+Changing their urban murk to paradise -
+You have our thanks!--may your reward include
+More than our thanks, far more:  their gratitude.
+
+
+
+"I LOOK INTO MY GLASS"
+
+
+
+I look into my glass,
+And view my wasting skin,
+And say, "Would God it came to pass
+My heart had shrunk as thin!"
+
+For then, I, undistrest
+By hearts grown cold to me,
+Could lonely wait my endless rest
+With equanimity.
+
+But Time, to make me grieve;
+Part steals, lets part abide;
+And shakes this fragile frame at eve
+With throbbings of noontide.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg Etext Wessex Poems and Other Verses, by Hardy
+
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