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+Project Gutenberg's Poems of the Past and the Present, by Hardy
+#19 in our series by Thomas Hardy
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+Title: Poems of the Past and the Present
+
+Author: Thomas Hardy
+
+Release Date: April, 2002  [Etext #3168]
+[Yes, we are about one year ahead of schedule]
+[The actual date this file first posted = 01/30/01]
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+Language: English
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+Project Gutenberg's Poems of the Past and the Present, by Hardy
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+
+POEMS OF THE PAST AND THE PRESENT
+
+By Thomas Hardy
+
+
+
+
+Contents:
+
+V.R.  1819-1901
+WAR POEMS -
+   EMBARCATION
+   DEPARTURE
+   THE COLONEL'S SOLILOQUY
+   THE GOING OF THE BATTERY
+   AT THE WAR OFFICE, LONDON
+   A CHRISTMAS GHOST-STORY
+   THE DEAD DRUMMER
+   A WIFE IN LONDON
+   THE SOULS OF THE SLAIN
+   SONG OF THE SOLDIERS' WIVES
+   THE SICK GOD
+POEMS OF PILGRIMAGE -
+   GENOA AND THE MEDITERRANEAN
+   SHELLEY'S SKYLARK
+   IN THE OLD THEATRE, FIESOLE
+   ROME:  ON THE PALATINE
+   ROME:  BUILDING A NEW STREET IN THE ANCIENT QUARTER
+   ROME:  THE VATICAN--SALA DELLE MUSE
+   ROME:  AT THE PYRAMID OF CESTIUS
+   LAUSANNE:  IN GIBBON'S OLD GARDEN
+   ZERMATT:  TO THE MATTERHORN
+   THE BRIDGE OF LODI
+   ON AN INVITATION TO THE UNITED STATES
+   THE MOTHER MOURNS
+   "I SAID TO LOVE"
+   A COMMONPLACE DAY
+   AT A LUNAR ECLIPSE
+   THE LACKING SENSE
+   TO LIFE
+   DOOM AND SHE
+   THE PROBLEM
+   THE SUBALTERNS
+   THE SLEEP-WORKER
+   THE BULLFINCHES
+   GOD-FORGOTTEN
+   THE BEDRIDDEN PEASANT TO AN UNKNOWING GOD
+   BY THE EARTH'S CORPSE
+   MUTE OPINION
+   TO AN UNBORN PAUPER CHILD
+   TO FLOWERS FROM ITALY IN WINTER
+   ON A FINE MORNING
+   TO LIZBIE BROWNE
+   SONG OF HOPE
+   THE WELL-BELOVED
+   HER REPROACH
+   THE INCONSISTENT
+   A BROKEN APPOINTMENT
+   "BETWEEN US NOW"
+   "HOW GREAT MY GRIEF"
+   "I NEED NOT GO"
+   THE COQUETTE, AND AFTER
+   A SPOT
+   LONG PLIGHTED
+   THE WIDOW
+   AT A HASTY WEDDING
+   THE DREAM-FOLLOWER
+   HIS IMMORTALITY
+   THE TO-BE-FORGOTTEN
+   WIVES IN THE SERE
+   THE SUPERSEDED
+   AN AUGUST MIDNIGHT
+   THE CAGED THRUSH FREED AND HOME AGAIN
+   BIRDS AT WINTER NIGHTFALL
+   THE PUZZLED GAME-BIRDS
+   WINTER IN DURNOVER FIELD
+   THE LAST CHRYSANTHEMUM
+   THE DARKLING THRUSH
+   THE COMET AT YALBURY OR YELL'HAM
+   MAD JUDY
+   A WASTED ILLNESS
+   A MAN
+   THE DAME OF ATHELHALL
+   THE SEASONS OF HER YEAR
+   THE MILKMAID
+   THE LEVELLED CHURCHYARD
+   THE RUINED MAID
+   THE RESPECTABLE BURGHER ON "THE HIGHER CRITICISM"
+   ARCHITECTURAL MASKS
+   THE TENANT-FOR-LIFE
+   THE KING'S EXPERIMENT
+   THE TREE:  AN OLD MAN'S STORY
+   HER LATE HUSBAND
+   THE SELF-UNSEEING
+   DE PROFUNDIS    I.
+   DE PROFUNDIS  II.
+   DE PROFUNDIS III.
+   THE CHURCH-BUILDER
+   THE LOST PYX:  A MEDIAEVAL LEGEND
+   TESS'S LAMENT
+   THE SUPPLANTER:  A TALE
+IMITATIONS, ETC. -
+   SAPPHIC FRAGMENT
+   CATULLUS:  XXXI
+   AFTER SCHILLER
+   SONG:  FROM HEINE
+   FROM VICTOR HUGO
+   CARDINAL BEMBO'S EPITAPH ON RAPHAEL
+RETROSPECT -
+   "I HAVE LIVED WITH SHADES"
+   MEMORY AND I
+   [GREEK TITLE]
+
+
+
+V.R.  1819-1901
+A REVERIE
+
+
+
+Moments the mightiest pass uncalendared,
+      And when the Absolute
+   In backward Time outgave the deedful word
+      Whereby all life is stirred:
+"Let one be born and throned whose mould shall constitute
+The norm of every royal-reckoned attribute,"
+      No mortal knew or heard.
+   But in due days the purposed Life outshone -
+      Serene, sagacious, free;
+  --Her waxing seasons bloomed with deeds well done,
+      And the world's heart was won . . .
+Yet may the deed of hers most bright in eyes to be
+Lie hid from ours--as in the All-One's thought lay she -
+      Till ripening years have run.
+
+SUNDAY NIGHT,
+27th January 1901.
+
+
+
+EMBARCATION
+(Southampton Docks:  October, 1899)
+
+
+
+Here, where Vespasian's legions struck the sands,
+And Cerdic with his Saxons entered in,
+And Henry's army leapt afloat to win
+Convincing triumphs over neighbour lands,
+
+Vaster battalions press for further strands,
+To argue in the self-same bloody mode
+Which this late age of thought, and pact, and code,
+Still fails to mend.--Now deckward tramp the bands,
+Yellow as autumn leaves, alive as spring;
+And as each host draws out upon the sea
+Beyond which lies the tragical To-be,
+None dubious of the cause, none murmuring,
+
+Wives, sisters, parents, wave white hands and smile,
+As if they knew not that they weep the while.
+
+
+
+DEPARTURE
+(Southampton Docks:  October, 1899)
+
+
+
+While the far farewell music thins and fails,
+And the broad bottoms rip the bearing brine -
+All smalling slowly to the gray sea line -
+And each significant red smoke-shaft pales,
+
+Keen sense of severance everywhere prevails,
+Which shapes the late long tramp of mounting men
+To seeming words that ask and ask again:
+"How long, O striving Teutons, Slavs, and Gaels
+
+Must your wroth reasonings trade on lives like these,
+That are as puppets in a playing hand? -
+When shall the saner softer polities
+Whereof we dream, have play in each proud land,
+And patriotism, grown Godlike, scorn to stand
+Bondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas?"
+
+
+
+THE COLONEL'S SOLILOQUY
+(Southampton Docks:  October, 1899)
+
+
+
+"The quay recedes.   Hurrah!  Ahead we go! . . .
+It's true I've been accustomed now to home,
+And joints get rusty, and one's limbs may grow
+   More fit to rest than roam.
+
+"But I can stand as yet fair stress and strain;
+There's not a little steel beneath the rust;
+My years mount somewhat, but here's to't again!
+   And if I fall, I must.
+
+"God knows that for myself I've scanty care;
+Past scrimmages have proved as much to all;
+In Eastern lands and South I've had my share
+   Both of the blade and ball.
+
+"And where those villains ripped me in the flitch
+With their old iron in my early time,
+I'm apt at change of wind to feel a twitch,
+   Or at a change of clime.
+
+"And what my mirror shows me in the morning
+Has more of blotch and wrinkle than of bloom;
+My eyes, too, heretofore all glasses scorning,
+   Have just a touch of rheum . . .
+
+"Now sounds 'The Girl I've left behind me,'--Ah,
+The years, the ardours, wakened by that tune!
+Time was when, with the crowd's farewell 'Hurrah!'
+   'Twould lift me to the moon.
+
+"But now it's late to leave behind me one
+Who if, poor soul, her man goes underground,
+Will not recover as she might have done
+   In days when hopes abound.
+
+"She's waving from the wharfside, palely grieving,
+As down we draw . . . Her tears make little show,
+Yet now she suffers more than at my leaving
+   Some twenty years ago.
+
+"I pray those left at home will care for her!
+I shall come back; I have before; though when
+The Girl you leave behind you is a grandmother,
+   Things may not be as then."
+
+
+
+THE GOING OF THE BATTERY
+WIVES' LAMENT
+(November 2, 1899)
+
+
+
+I
+
+O it was sad enough, weak enough, mad enough -
+Light in their loving as soldiers can be -
+First to risk choosing them, leave alone losing them
+Now, in far battle, beyond the South Sea! . . .
+
+II
+
+- Rain came down drenchingly; but we unblenchingly
+Trudged on beside them through mirk and through mire,
+They stepping steadily--only too readily! -
+Scarce as if stepping brought parting-time nigher.
+
+III
+
+Great guns were gleaming there, living things seeming there,
+Cloaked in their tar-cloths, upmouthed to the night;
+Wheels wet and yellow from axle to felloe,
+Throats blank of sound, but prophetic to sight.
+
+IV
+
+Gas-glimmers drearily, blearily, eerily
+Lit our pale faces outstretched for one kiss,
+While we stood prest to them, with a last quest to them
+Not to court perils that honour could miss.
+
+V
+
+Sharp were those sighs of ours, blinded these eyes of ours,
+When at last moved away under the arch
+All we loved.   Aid for them each woman prayed for them,
+Treading back slowly the track of their march.
+
+VI
+
+Someone said:  "Nevermore will they come:  evermore
+Are they now lost to us."  O it was wrong!
+Though may be hard their ways, some Hand will guard their ways,
+Bear them through safely, in brief time or long.
+
+VII
+
+- Yet, voices haunting us, daunting us, taunting us,
+Hint in the night-time when life beats are low
+Other and graver things . . . Hold we to braver things,
+Wait we, in trust, what Time's fulness shall show.
+
+
+
+AT THE WAR OFFICE, LONDON
+(Affixing the Lists of Killed and Wounded:  December, 1899)
+
+
+
+I
+
+Last year I called this world of gain-givings
+The darkest thinkable, and questioned sadly
+If my own land could heave its pulse less gladly,
+So charged it seemed with circumstance whence springs
+   The tragedy of things.
+
+II
+
+Yet at that censured time no heart was rent
+Or feature blanched of parent, wife, or daughter
+By hourly blazoned sheets of listed slaughter;
+Death waited Nature's wont; Peace smiled unshent
+   From Ind to Occident.
+
+
+
+A CHRISTMAS GHOST-STORY
+
+
+
+
+South of the Line, inland from far Durban,
+A mouldering soldier lies--your countryman.
+Awry and doubled up are his gray bones,
+And on the breeze his puzzled phantom moans
+Nightly to clear Canopus:  "I would know
+By whom and when the All-Earth-gladdening Law
+Of Peace, brought in by that Man Crucified,
+Was ruled to be inept, and set aside?
+
+And what of logic or of truth appears
+In tacking 'Anno Domini' to the years?
+Near twenty-hundred livened thus have hied,
+But tarries yet the Cause for which He died."
+
+Christmas-eve, 1899.
+
+
+
+THE DEAD DRUMMER
+
+
+
+I
+
+They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
+   Uncoffined--just as found:
+His landmark is a kopje-crest
+   That breaks the veldt around;
+And foreign constellations west
+   Each night above his mound.
+
+II
+
+Young Hodge the Drummer never knew -
+   Fresh from his Wessex home -
+The meaning of the broad Karoo,
+   The Bush, the dusty loam,
+And why uprose to nightly view
+   Strange stars amid the gloam.
+
+III
+
+Yet portion of that unknown plain
+   Will Hodge for ever be;
+His homely Northern breast and brain
+   Grow up a Southern tree.
+And strange-eyed constellations reign
+   His stars eternally.
+
+
+
+A WIFE IN LONDON
+(December, 1899)
+
+
+
+I--THE TRAGEDY
+
+She sits in the tawny vapour
+      That the City lanes have uprolled,
+      Behind whose webby fold on fold
+Like a waning taper
+   The street-lamp glimmers cold.
+
+A messenger's knock cracks smartly,
+      Flashed news is in her hand
+      Of meaning it dazes to understand
+Though shaped so shortly:
+   He--has fallen--in the far South Land . . .
+
+II--THE IRONY
+
+'Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker,
+      The postman nears and goes:
+      A letter is brought whose lines disclose
+By the firelight flicker
+   His hand, whom the worm now knows:
+
+Fresh--firm--penned in highest feather -
+      Page-full of his hoped return,
+      And of home-planned jaunts by brake and burn
+In the summer weather,
+   And of new love that they would learn.
+
+
+
+THE SOULS OF THE SLAIN
+
+
+
+I
+
+   The thick lids of Night closed upon me
+      Alone at the Bill
+      Of the Isle by the Race {1} -
+   Many-caverned, bald, wrinkled of face -
+And with darkness and silence the spirit was on me
+      To brood and be still.
+
+II
+
+   No wind fanned the flats of the ocean,
+      Or promontory sides,
+      Or the ooze by the strand,
+   Or the bent-bearded slope of the land,
+Whose base took its rest amid everlong motion
+      Of criss-crossing tides.
+
+III
+
+   Soon from out of the Southward seemed nearing
+      A whirr, as of wings
+      Waved by mighty-vanned flies,
+   Or by night-moths of measureless size,
+And in softness and smoothness well-nigh beyond hearing
+      Of corporal things.
+
+IV
+
+   And they bore to the bluff, and alighted -
+      A dim-discerned train
+      Of sprites without mould,
+   Frameless souls none might touch or might hold -
+On the ledge by the turreted lantern, farsighted
+      By men of the main.
+
+V
+
+   And I heard them say "Home!" and I knew them
+      For souls of the felled
+      On the earth's nether bord
+   Under Capricorn, whither they'd warred,
+And I neared in my awe, and gave heedfulness to them
+      With breathings inheld.
+
+VI
+
+   Then, it seemed, there approached from the northward
+      A senior soul-flame
+      Of the like filmy hue:
+   And he met them and spake:  "Is it you,
+O my men?"  Said they, "Aye!  We bear homeward and hearthward
+      To list to our fame!"
+
+VII
+
+   "I've flown there before you," he said then:
+      "Your households are well;
+      But--your kin linger less
+   On your glory arid war-mightiness
+Than on dearer things."--"Dearer?" cried these from the dead then,
+      "Of what do they tell?"
+
+VIII
+
+   "Some mothers muse sadly, and murmur
+      Your doings as boys -
+      Recall the quaint ways
+   Of your babyhood's innocent days.
+Some pray that, ere dying, your faith had grown firmer,
+      And higher your joys.
+
+IX
+
+   "A father broods:  'Would I had set him
+      To some humble trade,
+      And so slacked his high fire,
+   And his passionate martial desire;
+Had told him no stories to woo him and whet him
+      To this due crusade!"
+
+X
+
+   "And, General, how hold out our sweethearts,
+      Sworn loyal as doves?"
+     --"Many mourn; many think
+   It is not unattractive to prink
+Them in sables for heroes.   Some fickle and fleet hearts
+      Have found them new loves."
+
+XI
+
+   "And our wives?" quoth another resignedly,
+      "Dwell they on our deeds?"
+     --"Deeds of home; that live yet
+   Fresh as new--deeds of fondness or fret;
+Ancient words that were kindly expressed or unkindly,
+      These, these have their heeds."
+
+XII
+
+  --"Alas! then it seems that our glory
+      Weighs less in their thought
+      Than our old homely acts,
+   And the long-ago commonplace facts
+Of our lives--held by us as scarce part of our story,
+      And rated as nought!"
+
+XIII
+
+   Then bitterly some:  "Was it wise now
+      To raise the tomb-door
+      For such knowledge?  Away!"
+   But the rest:  "Fame we prized till to-day;
+Yet that hearts keep us green for old kindness we prize now
+      A thousand times more!"
+
+XIV
+
+   Thus speaking, the trooped apparitions
+      Began to disband
+      And resolve them in two:
+   Those whose record was lovely and true
+Bore to northward for home:  those of bitter traditions
+      Again left the land,
+
+XV
+
+   And, towering to seaward in legions,
+      They paused at a spot
+      Overbending the Race -
+   That engulphing, ghast, sinister place -
+Whither headlong they plunged, to the fathomless regions
+      Of myriads forgot.
+
+XVI
+
+   And the spirits of those who were homing
+      Passed on, rushingly,
+      Like the Pentecost Wind;
+   And the whirr of their wayfaring thinned
+And surceased on the sky, and but left in the gloaming
+      Sea-mutterings and me.
+
+December 1899.
+
+
+
+SONG OF THE SOLDIERS' WIVES
+
+
+
+I
+
+At last!  In sight of home again,
+      Of home again;
+No more to range and roam again
+   As at that bygone time?
+No more to go away from us
+      And stay from us? -
+Dawn, hold not long the day from us,
+   But quicken it to prime!
+
+II
+
+Now all the town shall ring to them,
+      Shall ring to them,
+And we who love them cling to them
+   And clasp them joyfully;
+And cry, "O much we'll do for you
+      Anew for you,
+Dear Loves!--aye, draw and hew for you,
+   Come back from oversea."
+
+III
+
+Some told us we should meet no more,
+      Should meet no more;
+Should wait, and wish, but greet no more
+   Your faces round our fires;
+That, in a while, uncharily
+      And drearily
+Men gave their lives--even wearily,
+   Like those whom living tires.
+
+IV
+
+And now you are nearing home again,
+      Dears, home again;
+No more, may be, to roam again
+   As at that bygone time,
+Which took you far away from us
+      To stay from us;
+Dawn, hold not long the day from us,
+   But quicken it to prime!
+
+
+
+THE SICK GOD
+
+
+
+I
+
+   In days when men had joy of war,
+A God of Battles sped each mortal jar;
+   The peoples pledged him heart and hand,
+   From Israel's land to isles afar.
+
+II
+
+   His crimson form, with clang and chime,
+Flashed on each murk and murderous meeting-time,
+   And kings invoked, for rape and raid,
+   His fearsome aid in rune and rhyme.
+
+III
+
+   On bruise and blood-hole, scar and seam,
+On blade and bolt, he flung his fulgid beam:
+   His haloes rayed the very gore,
+   And corpses wore his glory-gleam.
+
+IV
+
+   Often an early King or Queen,
+And storied hero onward, knew his sheen;
+   'Twas glimpsed by Wolfe, by Ney anon,
+   And Nelson on his blue demesne.
+
+V
+
+   But new light spread.  That god's gold nimb
+And blazon have waned dimmer and more dim;
+   Even his flushed form begins to fade,
+   Till but a shade is left of him.
+
+VI
+
+   That modern meditation broke
+His spell, that penmen's pleadings dealt a stroke,
+   Say some; and some that crimes too dire
+   Did much to mire his crimson cloak.
+
+VII
+
+   Yea, seeds of crescive sympathy
+Were sown by those more excellent than he,
+   Long known, though long contemned till then -
+   The gods of men in amity.
+
+VIII
+
+   Souls have grown seers, and thought out-brings
+The mournful many-sidedness of things
+   With foes as friends, enfeebling ires
+   And fury-fires by gaingivings!
+
+IX
+
+   He scarce impassions champions now;
+They do and dare, but tensely--pale of brow;
+   And would they fain uplift the arm
+   Of that faint form they know not how.
+
+X
+
+   Yet wars arise, though zest grows cold;
+Wherefore, at whiles, as 'twere in ancient mould
+   He looms, bepatched with paint and lath;
+   But never hath he seemed the old!
+
+XI
+
+   Let men rejoice, let men deplore.
+The lurid Deity of heretofore
+   Succumbs to one of saner nod;
+   The Battle-god is god no more.
+
+
+
+GENOA AND THE MEDITERRANEAN
+(March, 1887)
+
+
+
+   O epic-famed, god-haunted Central Sea,
+   Heave careless of the deep wrong done to thee
+When from Torino's track I saw thy face first flash on me.
+
+   And multimarbled Genova the Proud,
+   Gleam all unconscious how, wide-lipped, up-browed,
+I first beheld thee clad--not as the Beauty but the Dowd.
+
+   Out from a deep-delved way my vision lit
+   On housebacks pink, green, ochreous--where a slit
+Shoreward 'twixt row and row revealed the classic blue through it.
+
+   And thereacross waved fishwives' high-hung smocks,
+   Chrome kerchiefs, scarlet hose, darned underfrocks;
+Since when too oft my dreams of thee, O Queen, that frippery mocks:
+
+   Whereat I grieve, Superba! . . . Afterhours
+   Within Palazzo Doria's orange bowers
+Went far to mend these marrings of thy soul-subliming powers.
+
+   But, Queen, such squalid undress none should see,
+   Those dream-endangering eyewounds no more be
+Where lovers first behold thy form in pilgrimage to thee.
+
+
+
+SHELLEY'S SKYLARK
+(The neighbourhood of Leghorn:  March, 1887)
+
+
+
+Somewhere afield here something lies
+In Earth's oblivious eyeless trust
+That moved a poet to prophecies -
+A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust
+
+The dust of the lark that Shelley heard,
+And made immortal through times to be; -
+Though it only lived like another bird,
+And knew not its immortality.
+
+Lived its meek life; then, one day, fell -
+A little ball of feather and bone;
+And how it perished, when piped farewell,
+And where it wastes, are alike unknown.
+
+Maybe it rests in the loam I view,
+Maybe it throbs in a myrtle's green,
+Maybe it sleeps in the coming hue
+Of a grape on the slopes of yon inland scene.
+
+Go find it, faeries, go and find
+That tiny pinch of priceless dust,
+And bring a casket silver-lined,
+And framed of gold that gems encrust;
+
+And we will lay it safe therein,
+And consecrate it to endless time;
+For it inspired a bard to win
+Ecstatic heights in thought and rhyme.
+
+
+
+IN THE OLD THEATRE, FIESOLE
+(April, 1887)
+
+
+I traced the Circus whose gray stones incline
+Where Rome and dim Etruria interjoin,
+Till came a child who showed an ancient coin
+That bore the image of a Constantine.
+
+She lightly passed; nor did she once opine
+How, better than all books, she had raised for me
+In swift perspective Europe's history
+Through the vast years of Caesar's sceptred line.
+
+For in my distant plot of English loam
+'Twas but to delve, and straightway there to find
+Coins of like impress.  As with one half blind
+Whom common simples cure, her act flashed home
+In that mute moment to my opened mind
+The power, the pride, the reach of perished Rome.
+
+
+
+ROME:  ON THE PALATINE
+(April, 1887)
+
+
+
+We walked where Victor Jove was shrined awhile,
+And passed to Livia's rich red mural show,
+Whence, thridding cave and Criptoportico,
+We gained Caligula's dissolving pile.
+
+And each ranked ruin tended to beguile
+The outer sense, and shape itself as though
+It wore its marble hues, its pristine glow
+Of scenic frieze and pompous peristyle.
+
+When lo, swift hands, on strings nigh over-head,
+Began to melodize a waltz by Strauss:
+It stirred me as I stood, in Caesar's house,
+Raised the old routs Imperial lyres had led,
+
+And blended pulsing life with lives long done,
+Till Time seemed fiction, Past and Present one.
+
+
+
+ROME
+BUILDING A NEW STREET IN THE ANCIENT QUARTER
+(April, 1887)
+
+
+
+These numbered cliffs and gnarls of masonry
+Outskeleton Time's central city, Rome;
+Whereof each arch, entablature, and dome
+Lies bare in all its gaunt anatomy.
+
+And cracking frieze and rotten metope
+Express, as though they were an open tome
+Top-lined with caustic monitory gnome;
+"Dunces, Learn here to spell Humanity!"
+
+And yet within these ruins' very shade
+The singing workmen shape and set and join
+Their frail new mansion's stuccoed cove and quoin
+With no apparent sense that years abrade,
+Though each rent wall their feeble works invade
+Once shamed all such in power of pier and groin.
+
+
+
+ROME
+THE VATICAN--SALA DELLE MUSE
+(1887)
+
+
+
+I sat in the Muses' Hall at the mid of the day,
+And it seemed to grow still, and the people to pass away,
+And the chiselled shapes to combine in a haze of sun,
+Till beside a Carrara column there gleamed forth One.
+
+She was nor this nor that of those beings divine,
+But each and the whole--an essence of all the Nine;
+With tentative foot she neared to my halting-place,
+A pensive smile on her sweet, small, marvellous face.
+
+"Regarded so long, we render thee sad?" said she.
+"Not you," sighed I, "but my own inconstancy!
+I worship each and each; in the morning one,
+And then, alas! another at sink of sun.
+
+"To-day my soul clasps Form; but where is my troth
+Of yesternight with Tune:  can one cleave to both?"
+- "Be not perturbed," said she.  "Though apart in fame,
+As I and my sisters are one, those, too, are the same.
+
+- "But my loves go further--to Story, and Dance, and Hymn,
+The lover of all in a sun-sweep is fool to whim -
+Is swayed like a river-weed as the ripples run!"
+- "Nay, wight, thou sway'st not.  These are but phases of one;
+
+"And that one is I; and I am projected from thee,
+One that out of thy brain and heart thou causest to be -
+Extern to thee nothing.  Grieve not, nor thyself becall,
+Woo where thou wilt; and rejoice thou canst love at all!
+
+
+
+ROME
+AT THE PYRAMID OF CESTIUS
+NEAR THE GRAVES OF SHELLEY AND KEATS
+(1887)
+
+
+
+      Who, then, was Cestius,
+      And what is he to me? -
+Amid thick thoughts and memories multitudinous
+      One thought alone brings he.
+
+      I can recall no word
+      Of anything he did;
+For me he is a man who died and was interred
+      To leave a pyramid
+
+      Whose purpose was exprest
+      Not with its first design,
+Nor till, far down in Time, beside it found their rest
+      Two countrymen of mine.
+
+      Cestius in life, maybe,
+      Slew, breathed out threatening;
+I know not.  This I know:  in death all silently
+      He does a kindlier thing,
+
+      In beckoning pilgrim feet
+      With marble finger high
+To where, by shadowy wall and history-haunted street,
+      Those matchless singers lie . . .
+
+     --Say, then, he lived and died
+      That stones which bear his name
+Should mark, through Time, where two immortal Shades abide;
+      It is an ample fame.
+
+
+
+LAUSANNE
+IN GIBBON'S OLD GARDEN:  11-12 P.M.
+June 27, 1897
+(The 110th anniversary of the completion of the "Decline and Fall" at
+the same hour and place)
+
+
+
+      A spirit seems to pass,
+   Formal in pose, but grave and grand withal:
+   He contemplates a volume stout and tall,
+And far lamps fleck him through the thin acacias.
+
+      Anon the book is closed,
+   With "It is finished!"  And at the alley's end
+   He turns, and soon on me his glances bend;
+And, as from earth, comes speech--small, muted, yet composed.
+
+      "How fares the Truth now?--Ill?
+  --Do pens but slily further her advance?
+   May one not speed her but in phrase askance?
+Do scribes aver the Comic to be Reverend still?
+
+      "Still rule those minds on earth
+   At whom sage Milton's wormwood words were hurled:
+   'Truth like a bastard comes into the world
+Never without ill-fame to him who gives her birth'?"
+
+
+
+ZERMATT
+TO THE MATTERHORN
+(June-July, 1897)
+
+
+
+Thirty-two years since, up against the sun,
+Seven shapes, thin atomies to lower sight,
+Labouringly leapt and gained thy gabled height,
+And four lives paid for what the seven had won.
+
+They were the first by whom the deed was done,
+And when I look at thee, my mind takes flight
+To that day's tragic feat of manly might,
+As though, till then, of history thou hadst none.
+
+Yet ages ere men topped thee, late and soon
+Thou watch'dst each night the planets lift and lower;
+Thou gleam'dst to Joshua's pausing sun and moon,
+And brav'dst the tokening sky when Caesar's power
+Approached its bloody end:  yea, saw'st that Noon
+When darkness filled the earth till the ninth hour.
+
+
+
+THE BRIDGE OF LODI {2}
+(Spring, 1887)
+
+
+
+I
+
+When of tender mind and body
+   I was moved by minstrelsy,
+And that strain "The Bridge of Lodi"
+   Brought a strange delight to me.
+
+II
+
+In the battle-breathing jingle
+   Of its forward-footing tune
+I could see the armies mingle,
+   And the columns cleft and hewn
+
+III
+
+On that far-famed spot by Lodi
+   Where Napoleon clove his way
+To his fame, when like a god he
+   Bent the nations to his sway.
+
+IV
+
+Hence the tune came capering to me
+   While I traced the Rhone and Po;
+Nor could Milan's Marvel woo me
+   From the spot englamoured so.
+
+V
+
+And to-day, sunlit and smiling,
+   Here I stand upon the scene,
+With its saffron walls, dun tiling,
+   And its meads of maiden green,
+
+VI
+
+Even as when the trackway thundered
+   With the charge of grenadiers,
+And the blood of forty hundred
+   Splashed its parapets and piers . . .
+
+VII
+
+Any ancient crone I'd toady
+   Like a lass in young-eyed prime,
+Could she tell some tale of Lodi
+   At that moving mighty time.
+
+VIII
+
+So, I ask the wives of Lodi
+   For traditions of that day;
+But alas! not anybody
+   Seems to know of such a fray.
+
+IX
+
+And they heed but transitory
+   Marketings in cheese and meat,
+Till I judge that Lodi's story
+   Is extinct in Lodi's street.
+
+X
+
+Yet while here and there they thrid them
+   In their zest to sell and buy,
+Let me sit me down amid them
+   And behold those thousands die . . .
+
+XI
+
+- Not a creature cares in Lodi
+   How Napoleon swept each arch,
+Or where up and downward trod he,
+   Or for his memorial March!
+
+XII
+
+So that wherefore should I be here,
+   Watching Adda lip the lea,
+When the whole romance to see here
+   Is the dream I bring with me?
+
+XIII
+
+And why sing "The Bridge of Lodi"
+   As I sit thereon and swing,
+When none shows by smile or nod he
+   Guesses why or what I sing? . . .
+
+XIV
+
+Since all Lodi, low and head ones,
+   Seem to pass that story by,
+It may be the Lodi-bred ones
+   Rate it truly, and not I.
+
+XV
+
+Once engrossing Bridge of Lodi,
+   Is thy claim to glory gone?
+Must I pipe a palinody,
+   Or be silent thereupon?
+
+XVI
+
+And if here, from strand to steeple,
+   Be no stone to fame the fight,
+Must I say the Lodi people
+   Are but viewing crime aright?
+
+XVII
+
+Nay; I'll sing "The Bridge of Lodi" -
+   That long-loved, romantic thing,
+Though none show by smile or nod he
+   Guesses why and what I sing!
+
+
+
+ON AN INVITATION TO THE UNITED STATES
+
+
+
+I
+
+My ardours for emprize nigh lost
+Since Life has bared its bones to me,
+I shrink to seek a modern coast
+Whose riper times have yet to be;
+Where the new regions claim them free
+From that long drip of human tears
+Which peoples old in tragedy
+Have left upon the centuried years.
+
+II
+
+For, wonning in these ancient lands,
+Enchased and lettered as a tomb,
+And scored with prints of perished hands,
+And chronicled with dates of doom,
+Though my own Being bear no bloom
+I trace the lives such scenes enshrine,
+Give past exemplars present room,
+And their experience count as mine.
+
+
+
+THE MOTHER MOURNS
+
+
+
+When mid-autumn's moan shook the night-time,
+   And sedges were horny,
+And summer's green wonderwork faltered
+   On leaze and in lane,
+
+I fared Yell'ham-Firs way, where dimly
+   Came wheeling around me
+Those phantoms obscure and insistent
+   That shadows unchain.
+
+Till airs from the needle-thicks brought me
+   A low lamentation,
+As 'twere of a tree-god disheartened,
+   Perplexed, or in pain.
+
+And, heeding, it awed me to gather
+   That Nature herself there
+Was breathing in aerie accents,
+   With dirgeful refrain,
+
+Weary plaint that Mankind, in these late days,
+   Had grieved her by holding
+Her ancient high fame of perfection
+   In doubt and disdain . . .
+
+- "I had not proposed me a Creature
+   (She soughed) so excelling
+All else of my kingdom in compass
+   And brightness of brain
+
+"As to read my defects with a god-glance,
+   Uncover each vestige
+Of old inadvertence, annunciate
+   Each flaw and each stain!
+
+"My purpose went not to develop
+   Such insight in Earthland;
+Such potent appraisements affront me,
+   And sadden my reign!
+
+"Why loosened I olden control here
+   To mechanize skywards,
+Undeeming great scope could outshape in
+   A globe of such grain?
+
+"Man's mountings of mind-sight I checked not,
+   Till range of his vision
+Has topped my intent, and found blemish
+   Throughout my domain.
+
+"He holds as inept his own soul-shell -
+   My deftest achievement -
+Contemns me for fitful inventions
+   Ill-timed and inane:
+
+"No more sees my sun as a Sanct-shape,
+   My moon as the Night-queen,
+My stars as august and sublime ones
+   That influences rain:
+
+"Reckons gross and ignoble my teaching,
+   Immoral my story,
+My love-lights a lure, that my species
+   May gather and gain.
+
+"'Give me,' he has said, 'but the matter
+   And means the gods lot her,
+My brain could evolve a creation
+   More seemly, more sane.'
+
+- "If ever a naughtiness seized me
+   To woo adulation
+From creatures more keen than those crude ones
+   That first formed my train -
+
+"If inly a moment I murmured,
+   'The simple praise sweetly,
+But sweetlier the sage'--and did rashly
+   Man's vision unrein,
+
+"I rue it! . . . His guileless forerunners,
+   Whose brains I could blandish,
+To measure the deeps of my mysteries
+   Applied them in vain.
+
+"From them my waste aimings and futile
+   I subtly could cover;
+'Every best thing,' said they, 'to best purpose
+   Her powers preordain.' -
+
+"No more such! . . . My species are dwindling,
+   My forests grow barren,
+My popinjays fail from their tappings,
+   My larks from their strain.
+
+"My leopardine beauties are rarer,
+   My tusky ones vanish,
+My children have aped mine own slaughters
+   To quicken my wane.
+
+"Let me grow, then, but mildews and mandrakes,
+   And slimy distortions,
+Let nevermore things good and lovely
+   To me appertain;
+
+"For Reason is rank in my temples,
+   And Vision unruly,
+And chivalrous laud of my cunning
+   Is heard not again!"
+
+
+
+"I SAID TO LOVE"
+
+
+
+      I said to Love,
+"It is not now as in old days
+When men adored thee and thy ways
+      All else above;
+Named thee the Boy, the Bright, the One
+Who spread a heaven beneath the sun,"
+      I said to Love.
+
+      I said to him,
+"We now know more of thee than then;
+We were but weak in judgment when,
+      With hearts abrim,
+We clamoured thee that thou would'st please
+Inflict on us thine agonies,"
+      I said to him.
+
+      I said to Love,
+"Thou art not young, thou art not fair,
+No faery darts, no cherub air,
+      Nor swan, nor dove
+Are thine; but features pitiless,
+And iron daggers of distress,"
+      I said to Love.
+
+      "Depart then, Love! . . .
+- Man's race shall end, dost threaten thou?
+The age to come the man of now
+      Know nothing of? -
+We fear not such a threat from thee;
+We are too old in apathy!
+Mankind shall cease.--So let it be,"
+      I said to Love.
+
+
+
+A COMMONPLACE DAY
+
+
+
+   The day is turning ghost,
+And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively,
+   To join the anonymous host
+Of those that throng oblivion; ceding his place, maybe,
+   To one of like degree.
+
+   I part the fire-gnawed logs,
+Rake forth the embers, spoil the busy flames, and lay the ends
+   Upon the shining dogs;
+Further and further from the nooks the twilight's stride extends,
+   And beamless black impends.
+
+   Nothing of tiniest worth
+Have I wrought, pondered, planned; no one thing asking blame or
+praise,
+   Since the pale corpse-like birth
+Of this diurnal unit, bearing blanks in all its rays -
+   Dullest of dull-hued Days!
+
+   Wanly upon the panes
+The rain slides as have slid since morn my colourless thoughts; and
+yet
+   Here, while Day's presence wanes,
+And over him the sepulchre-lid is slowly lowered and set,
+   He wakens my regret.
+
+   Regret--though nothing dear
+That I wot of, was toward in the wide world at his prime,
+   Or bloomed elsewhere than here,
+To die with his decease, and leave a memory sweet, sublime,
+   Or mark him out in Time . . .
+
+  --Yet, maybe, in some soul,
+In some spot undiscerned on sea or land, some impulse rose,
+   Or some intent upstole
+Of that enkindling ardency from whose maturer glows
+   The world's amendment flows;
+
+   But which, benumbed at birth
+By momentary chance or wile, has missed its hope to be
+   Embodied on the earth;
+And undervoicings of this loss to man's futurity
+   May wake regret in me.
+
+
+
+AT A LUNAR ECLIPSE
+
+
+
+Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea,
+Now steals along upon the Moon's meek shine
+In even monochrome and curving line
+Of imperturbable serenity.
+
+How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry
+With the torn troubled form I know as thine,
+That profile, placid as a brow divine,
+With continents of moil and misery?
+
+And can immense Mortality but throw
+So small a shade, and Heaven's high human scheme
+Be hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies?
+
+Is such the stellar gauge of earthly show,
+Nation at war with nation, brains that teem,
+Heroes, and women fairer than the skies?
+
+
+
+THE LACKING SENSE
+SCENE.--A sad-coloured landscape, Waddon Vale
+
+
+
+I
+
+"O Time, whence comes the Mother's moody look amid her labours,
+   As of one who all unwittingly has wounded where she loves?
+   Why weaves she not her world-webs to according lutes and tabors,
+With nevermore this too remorseful air upon her face,
+      As of angel fallen from grace?"
+
+II
+
+- "Her look is but her story:  construe not its symbols keenly:
+   In her wonderworks yea surely has she wounded where she loves.
+   The sense of ills misdealt for blisses blanks the mien most
+queenly,
+Self-smitings kill self-joys; and everywhere beneath the sun
+      Such deeds her hands have done."
+
+III
+
+- "And how explains thy Ancient Mind her crimes upon her creatures,
+   These fallings from her fair beginnings, woundings where she
+loves,
+   Into her would-be perfect motions, modes, effects, and features
+Admitting cramps, black humours, wan decay, and baleful blights,
+      Distress into delights?"
+
+IV
+
+- "Ah! know'st thou not her secret yet, her vainly veiled deficience,
+   Whence it comes that all unwittingly she wounds the lives she
+loves?
+   That sightless are those orbs of hers?--which bar to her
+omniscience
+Brings those fearful unfulfilments, that red ravage through her zones
+      Whereat all creation groans.
+
+V
+
+"She whispers it in each pathetic strenuous slow endeavour,
+   When in mothering she unwittingly sets wounds on what she loves;
+   Yet her primal doom pursues her, faultful, fatal is she ever;
+Though so deft and nigh to vision is her facile finger-touch
+      That the seers marvel much.
+
+VI
+
+"Deal, then, her groping skill no scorn, no note of malediction;
+   Not long on thee will press the hand that hurts the lives it
+loves;
+   And while she dares dead-reckoning on, in darkness of affliction,
+Assist her where thy creaturely dependence can or may,
+      For thou art of her clay."
+
+
+
+TO LIFE
+
+
+
+   O life with the sad seared face,
+      I weary of seeing thee,
+And thy draggled cloak, and thy hobbling pace,
+      And thy too-forced pleasantry!
+
+   I know what thou would'st tell
+      Of Death, Time, Destiny -
+I have known it long, and know, too, well
+      What it all means for me.
+
+   But canst thou not array
+      Thyself in rare disguise,
+And feign like truth, for one mad day,
+      That Earth is Paradise?
+
+   I'll tune me to the mood,
+      And mumm with thee till eve;
+And maybe what as interlude
+      I feign, I shall believe!
+
+
+
+DOOM AND SHE
+
+
+
+I
+
+   There dwells a mighty pair -
+   Slow, statuesque, intense -
+   Amid the vague Immense:
+None can their chronicle declare,
+   Nor why they be, nor whence.
+
+II
+
+   Mother of all things made,
+   Matchless in artistry,
+   Unlit with sight is she. -
+And though her ever well-obeyed
+   Vacant of feeling he.
+
+III
+
+   The Matron mildly asks -
+   A throb in every word -
+   "Our clay-made creatures, lord,
+How fare they in their mortal tasks
+   Upon Earth's bounded bord?
+
+IV
+
+   "The fate of those I bear,
+   Dear lord, pray turn and view,
+   And notify me true;
+Shapings that eyelessly I dare
+   Maybe I would undo.
+
+V
+
+   "Sometimes from lairs of life
+   Methinks I catch a groan,
+   Or multitudinous moan,
+As though I had schemed a world of strife,
+   Working by touch alone."
+
+VI
+
+   "World-weaver!" he replies,
+   "I scan all thy domain;
+   But since nor joy nor pain
+Doth my clear substance recognize,
+   I read thy realms in vain.
+
+VII
+
+   "World-weaver! what IS Grief?
+   And what are Right, and Wrong,
+   And Feeling, that belong
+To creatures all who owe thee fief?
+   What worse is Weak than Strong?" . . .
+
+VIII
+
+  --Unlightened, curious, meek,
+   She broods in sad surmise . . .
+  --Some say they have heard her sighs
+On Alpine height or Polar peak
+   When the night tempests rise.
+
+
+
+THE PROBLEM
+
+
+
+   Shall we conceal the Case, or tell it -
+      We who believe the evidence?
+   Here and there the watch-towers knell it
+      With a sullen significance,
+Heard of the few who hearken intently and carry an eagerly upstrained
+sense.
+
+   Hearts that are happiest hold not by it;
+      Better we let, then, the old view reign;
+   Since there is peace in it, why decry it?
+      Since there is comfort, why disdain?
+Note not the pigment the while that the painting determines
+humanity's joy and pain!
+
+
+
+THE SUBALTERNS
+
+
+
+I
+
+"Poor wanderer," said the leaden sky,
+   "I fain would lighten thee,
+But there be laws in force on high
+   Which say it must not be."
+
+II
+
+- "I would not freeze thee, shorn one," cried
+   The North, "knew I but how
+To warm my breath, to slack my stride;
+   But I am ruled as thou."
+
+III
+
+- "To-morrow I attack thee, wight,"
+   Said Sickness.  "Yet I swear
+I bear thy little ark no spite,
+   But am bid enter there."
+
+IV
+
+- "Come hither, Son," I heard Death say;
+   "I did not will a grave
+Should end thy pilgrimage to-day,
+   But I, too, am a slave!"
+
+V
+
+We smiled upon each other then,
+   And life to me wore less
+That fell contour it wore ere when
+   They owned their passiveness.
+
+
+
+THE SLEEP-WORKER
+
+
+
+When wilt thou wake, O Mother, wake and see -
+As one who, held in trance, has laboured long
+By vacant rote and prepossession strong -
+The coils that thou hast wrought unwittingly;
+
+Wherein have place, unrealized by thee,
+Fair growths, foul cankers, right enmeshed with wrong,
+Strange orchestras of victim-shriek and song,
+And curious blends of ache and ecstasy? -
+
+Should that morn come, and show thy opened eyes
+All that Life's palpitating tissues feel,
+How wilt thou bear thyself in thy surprise? -
+
+Wilt thou destroy, in one wild shock of shame,
+Thy whole high heaving firmamental frame,
+Or patiently adjust, amend, and heal?
+
+
+
+THE BULLFINCHES
+
+
+
+   Bother Bulleys, let us sing
+   From the dawn till evening! -
+For we know not that we go not
+   When the day's pale pinions fold
+   Unto those who sang of old.
+
+   When I flew to Blackmoor Vale,
+   Whence the green-gowned faeries hail,
+Roosting near them I could hear them
+   Speak of queenly Nature's ways,
+   Means, and moods,--well known to fays.
+
+   All we creatures, nigh and far
+   (Said they there), the Mother's are:
+Yet she never shows endeavour
+   To protect from warrings wild
+   Bird or beast she calls her child.
+
+   Busy in her handsome house
+   Known as Space, she falls a-drowse;
+Yet, in seeming, works on dreaming,
+   While beneath her groping hands
+   Fiends make havoc in her bands.
+
+   How her hussif'ry succeeds
+   She unknows or she unheeds,
+All things making for Death's taking!
+  --So the green-gowned faeries say
+   Living over Blackmoor way.
+
+   Come then, brethren, let us sing,
+   From the dawn till evening! -
+For we know not that we go not
+   When the day's pale pinions fold
+   Unto those who sang of old.
+
+
+
+GOD-FORGOTTEN
+
+
+
+   I towered far, and lo!  I stood within
+   The presence of the Lord Most High,
+Sent thither by the sons of earth, to win
+      Some answer to their cry.
+
+  --"The Earth, say'st thou?  The Human race?
+   By Me created?  Sad its lot?
+Nay:  I have no remembrance of such place:
+      Such world I fashioned not." -
+
+  --"O Lord, forgive me when I say
+   Thou spak'st the word, and mad'st it all." -
+"The Earth of men--let me bethink me . . . Yea!
+      I dimly do recall
+
+   "Some tiny sphere I built long back
+   (Mid millions of such shapes of mine)
+So named . . . It perished, surely--not a wrack
+      Remaining, or a sign?
+
+   "It lost my interest from the first,
+   My aims therefor succeeding ill;
+Haply it died of doing as it durst?" -
+      "Lord, it existeth still." -
+
+   "Dark, then, its life!  For not a cry
+   Of aught it bears do I now hear;
+Of its own act the threads were snapt whereby
+      Its plaints had reached mine ear.
+
+   "It used to ask for gifts of good,
+   Till came its severance self-entailed,
+When sudden silence on that side ensued,
+      And has till now prevailed.
+
+   "All other orbs have kept in touch;
+   Their voicings reach me speedily:
+Thy people took upon them overmuch
+      In sundering them from me!
+
+   "And it is strange--though sad enough -
+   Earth's race should think that one whose call
+Frames, daily, shining spheres of flawless stuff
+      Must heed their tainted ball! . . .
+
+   "But say'st thou 'tis by pangs distraught,
+   And strife, and silent suffering? -
+Deep grieved am I that injury should be wrought
+      Even on so poor a thing!
+
+   "Thou should'st have learnt that Not to Mend
+   For Me could mean but Not to Know:
+Hence, Messengers! and straightway put an end
+      To what men undergo." . . .
+
+   Homing at dawn, I thought to see
+   One of the Messengers standing by.
+- Oh, childish thought! . . . Yet oft it comes to me
+      When trouble hovers nigh.
+
+
+
+THE BEDRIDDEN PEASANT
+TO AN UNKNOWING GOD
+
+
+
+Much wonder I--here long low-laid -
+   That this dead wall should be
+Betwixt the Maker and the made,
+   Between Thyself and me!
+
+For, say one puts a child to nurse,
+   He eyes it now and then
+To know if better 'tis, or worse,
+   And if it mourn, and when.
+
+But Thou, Lord, giv'st us men our clay
+   In helpless bondage thus
+To Time and Chance, and seem'st straightway
+   To think no more of us!
+
+That some disaster cleft Thy scheme
+   And tore us wide apart,
+So that no cry can cross, I deem;
+   For Thou art mild of heart,
+
+And would'st not shape and shut us in
+   Where voice can not he heard:
+'Tis plain Thou meant'st that we should win
+   Thy succour by a word.
+
+Might but Thy sense flash down the skies
+   Like man's from clime to clime,
+Thou would'st not let me agonize
+   Through my remaining time;
+
+But, seeing how much Thy creatures bear -
+   Lame, starved, or maimed, or blind -
+Thou'dst heal the ills with quickest care
+   Of me and all my kind.
+
+Then, since Thou mak'st not these things be,
+   But these things dost not know,
+I'll praise Thee as were shown to me
+   The mercies Thou would'st show!
+
+
+
+BY THE EARTH'S CORPSE
+
+
+
+I
+
+   "O Lord, why grievest Thou? -
+   Since Life has ceased to be
+   Upon this globe, now cold
+   As lunar land and sea,
+And humankind, and fowl, and fur
+   Are gone eternally,
+All is the same to Thee as ere
+   They knew mortality."
+
+II
+
+"O Time," replied the Lord,
+   "Thou read'st me ill, I ween;
+Were all THE SAME, I should not grieve
+   At that late earthly scene,
+Now blestly past--though planned by me
+   With interest close and keen! -
+Nay, nay:  things now are NOT the same
+   As they have earlier been.
+
+III
+
+   "Written indelibly
+   On my eternal mind
+   Are all the wrongs endured
+   By Earth's poor patient kind,
+Which my too oft unconscious hand
+   Let enter undesigned.
+No god can cancel deeds foredone,
+   Or thy old coils unwind!
+
+IV
+
+   "As when, in Noe's days,
+   I whelmed the plains with sea,
+   So at this last, when flesh
+   And herb but fossils be,
+And, all extinct, their piteous dust
+   Revolves obliviously,
+That I made Earth, and life, and man,
+   It still repenteth me!"
+
+
+
+MUTE OPINION
+
+
+
+I
+
+I traversed a dominion
+Whose spokesmen spake out strong
+Their purpose and opinion
+Through pulpit, press, and song.
+I scarce had means to note there
+A large-eyed few, and dumb,
+Who thought not as those thought there
+That stirred the heat and hum.
+
+II
+
+When, grown a Shade, beholding
+That land in lifetime trode,
+To learn if its unfolding
+Fulfilled its clamoured code,
+I saw, in web unbroken,
+Its history outwrought
+Not as the loud had spoken,
+But as the mute had thought.
+
+
+
+TO AN UNBORN PAUPER CHILD
+
+
+
+I
+
+   Breathe not, hid Heart:  cease silently,
+   And though thy birth-hour beckons thee,
+      Sleep the long sleep:
+      The Doomsters heap
+   Travails and teens around us here,
+And Time-wraiths turn our songsingings to fear.
+
+II
+
+   Hark, how the peoples surge and sigh,
+   And laughters fail, and greetings die:
+      Hopes dwindle; yea,
+      Faiths waste away,
+   Affections and enthusiasms numb;
+Thou canst not mend these things if thou dost come.
+
+III
+
+   Had I the ear of wombed souls
+   Ere their terrestrial chart unrolls,
+      And thou wert free
+      To cease, or be,
+   Then would I tell thee all I know,
+And put it to thee:  Wilt thou take Life so?
+
+IV
+
+   Vain vow!  No hint of mine may hence
+   To theeward fly:  to thy locked sense
+      Explain none can
+      Life's pending plan:
+   Thou wilt thy ignorant entry make
+Though skies spout fire and blood and nations quake.
+
+V
+
+   Fain would I, dear, find some shut plot
+   Of earth's wide wold for thee, where not
+      One tear, one qualm,
+      Should break the calm.
+   But I am weak as thou and bare;
+No man can change the common lot to rare.
+
+VI
+
+   Must come and bide.  And such are we -
+   Unreasoning, sanguine, visionary -
+      That I can hope
+      Health, love, friends, scope
+   In full for thee; can dream thou'lt find
+Joys seldom yet attained by humankind!
+
+
+
+TO FLOWERS FROM ITALY IN WINTER
+
+
+
+Sunned in the South, and here to-day;
+  --If all organic things
+Be sentient, Flowers, as some men say,
+   What are your ponderings?
+
+How can you stay, nor vanish quite
+   From this bleak spot of thorn,
+And birch, and fir, and frozen white
+   Expanse of the forlorn?
+
+Frail luckless exiles hither brought!
+   Your dust will not regain
+Old sunny haunts of Classic thought
+   When you shall waste and wane;
+
+But mix with alien earth, be lit
+   With frigid Boreal flame,
+And not a sign remain in it
+   To tell men whence you came.
+
+
+
+ON A FINE MORNING
+
+
+
+Whence comes Solace?--Not from seeing
+What is doing, suffering, being,
+Not from noting Life's conditions,
+Nor from heeding Time's monitions;
+   But in cleaving to the Dream,
+   And in gazing at the gleam
+   Whereby gray things golden seem.
+
+II
+
+Thus do I this heyday, holding
+Shadows but as lights unfolding,
+As no specious show this moment
+With its irised embowment;
+   But as nothing other than
+   Part of a benignant plan;
+   Proof that earth was made for man.
+
+February 1899.
+
+
+
+TO LIZBIE BROWNE
+
+
+
+I
+
+Dear Lizbie Browne,
+Where are you now?
+In sun, in rain? -
+Or is your brow
+Past joy, past pain,
+Dear Lizbie Browne?
+
+II
+
+Sweet Lizbie Browne
+How you could smile,
+How you could sing! -
+How archly wile
+In glance-giving,
+Sweet Lizbie Browne!
+
+III
+
+And, Lizbie Browne,
+Who else had hair
+Bay-red as yours,
+Or flesh so fair
+Bred out of doors,
+Sweet Lizbie Browne?
+
+IV
+
+When, Lizbie Browne,
+You had just begun
+To be endeared
+By stealth to one,
+You disappeared
+My Lizbie Browne!
+
+V
+
+Ay, Lizbie Browne,
+So swift your life,
+And mine so slow,
+You were a wife
+Ere I could show
+Love, Lizbie Browne.
+
+VI
+
+Still, Lizbie Browne,
+You won, they said,
+The best of men
+When you were wed . . .
+Where went you then,
+O Lizbie Browne?
+
+VII
+
+Dear Lizbie Browne,
+I should have thought,
+"Girls ripen fast,"
+And coaxed and caught
+You ere you passed,
+Dear Lizbie Browne!
+
+VIII
+
+But, Lizbie Browne,
+I let you slip;
+Shaped not a sign;
+Touched never your lip
+With lip of mine,
+Lost Lizbie Browne!
+
+IX
+
+So, Lizbie Browne,
+When on a day
+Men speak of me
+As not, you'll say,
+"And who was he?" -
+Yes, Lizbie Browne!
+
+
+
+SONG OF HOPE
+
+
+
+O sweet To-morrow! -
+   After to-day
+   There will away
+This sense of sorrow.
+Then let us borrow
+Hope, for a gleaming
+Soon will be streaming,
+   Dimmed by no gray -
+      No gray!
+
+While the winds wing us
+   Sighs from The Gone,
+   Nearer to dawn
+Minute-beats bring us;
+When there will sing us
+Larks of a glory
+Waiting our story
+   Further anon -
+      Anon!
+
+Doff the black token,
+   Don the red shoon,
+   Right and retune
+Viol-strings broken;
+Null the words spoken
+In speeches of rueing,
+The night cloud is hueing,
+   To-morrow shines soon -
+      Shines soon!
+
+
+
+THE WELL-BELOVED
+
+
+
+I wayed by star and planet shine
+   Towards the dear one's home
+At Kingsbere, there to make her mine
+   When the next sun upclomb.
+
+I edged the ancient hill and wood
+   Beside the Ikling Way,
+Nigh where the Pagan temple stood
+   In the world's earlier day.
+
+And as I quick and quicker walked
+   On gravel and on green,
+I sang to sky, and tree, or talked
+   Of her I called my queen.
+
+- "O faultless is her dainty form,
+   And luminous her mind;
+She is the God-created norm
+   Of perfect womankind!"
+
+A shape whereon one star-blink gleamed
+   Glode softly by my side,
+A woman's; and her motion seemed
+   The motion of my bride.
+
+And yet methought she'd drawn erstwhile
+   Adown the ancient leaze,
+Where once were pile and peristyle
+   For men's idolatries.
+
+- "O maiden lithe and lone, what may
+   Thy name and lineage be,
+Who so resemblest by this ray
+   My darling?--Art thou she?"
+
+The Shape:  "Thy bride remains within
+   Her father's grange and grove."
+- "Thou speakest rightly," I broke in,
+   "Thou art not she I love."
+
+- "Nay:  though thy bride remains inside
+   Her father's walls," said she,
+"The one most dear is with thee here,
+   For thou dost love but me."
+
+Then I:  "But she, my only choice,
+   Is now at Kingsbere Grove?"
+Again her soft mysterious voice:
+   "I am thy only Love."
+
+Thus still she vouched, and still I said,
+   "O sprite, that cannot be!" . . .
+It was as if my bosom bled,
+   So much she troubled me.
+
+The sprite resumed:  "Thou hast transferred
+   To her dull form awhile
+My beauty, fame, and deed, and word,
+   My gestures and my smile.
+
+"O fatuous man, this truth infer,
+   Brides are not what they seem;
+Thou lovest what thou dreamest her;
+   I am thy very dream!"
+
+- "O then," I answered miserably,
+   Speaking as scarce I knew,
+"My loved one, I must wed with thee
+   If what thou say'st be true!"
+
+She, proudly, thinning in the gloom:
+   "Though, since troth-plight began,
+I've ever stood as bride to groom,
+   I wed no mortal man!"
+
+Thereat she vanished by the Cross
+   That, entering Kingsbere town,
+The two long lanes form, near the fosse
+   Below the faneless Down.
+
+- When I arrived and met my bride,
+   Her look was pinched and thin,
+As if her soul had shrunk and died,
+   And left a waste within.
+
+
+
+HER REPROACH
+
+
+
+Con the dead page as 'twere live love:  press on!
+Cold wisdom's words will ease thy track for thee;
+Aye, go; cast off sweet ways, and leave me wan
+To biting blasts that are intent on me.
+
+But if thy object Fame's far summits be,
+Whose inclines many a skeleton o'erlies
+That missed both dream and substance, stop and see
+How absence wears these cheeks and dims these eyes!
+
+It surely is far sweeter and more wise
+To water love, than toil to leave anon
+A name whose glory-gleam will but advise
+Invidious minds to quench it with their own,
+
+And over which the kindliest will but stay
+A moment, musing, "He, too, had his day!"
+
+WESTBOURNE PARK VILLAS,
+1867.
+
+
+
+THE INCONSISTENT
+
+
+
+I say, "She was as good as fair,"
+   When standing by her mound;
+"Such passing sweetness," I declare,
+   "No longer treads the ground."
+I say, "What living Love can catch
+   Her bloom and bonhomie,
+And what in newer maidens match
+   Her olden warmth to me!"
+
+- There stands within yon vestry-nook
+   Where bonded lovers sign,
+Her name upon a faded book
+   With one that is not mine.
+To him she breathed the tender vow
+   She once had breathed to me,
+But yet I say, "O love, even now
+   Would I had died for thee!"
+
+
+
+A BROKEN APPOINTMENT
+
+
+
+      You did not come,
+And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb. -
+Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
+Than that I thus found lacking in your make
+That high compassion which can overbear
+Reluctance for pure lovingkindness' sake
+Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
+      You did not come.
+
+      You love not me,
+And love alone can lend you loyalty;
+- I know and knew it.  But, unto the store
+Of human deeds divine in all but name,
+Was it not worth a little hour or more
+To add yet this:  Once, you, a woman, came
+To soothe a time-torn man; even though it be
+      You love not me?
+
+
+
+"BETWEEN US NOW"
+
+
+
+Between us now and here -
+   Two thrown together
+Who are not wont to wear
+   Life's flushest feather -
+Who see the scenes slide past,
+The daytimes dimming fast,
+Let there be truth at last,
+   Even if despair.
+
+So thoroughly and long
+   Have you now known me,
+So real in faith and strong
+   Have I now shown me,
+That nothing needs disguise
+Further in any wise,
+Or asks or justifies
+   A guarded tongue.
+
+Face unto face, then, say,
+   Eyes mine own meeting,
+Is your heart far away,
+   Or with mine beating?
+When false things are brought low,
+And swift things have grown slow,
+Feigning like froth shall go,
+   Faith be for aye.
+
+
+
+"HOW GREAT MY GRIEF"
+(TRIOLET)
+
+
+How great my grief, my joys how few,
+Since first it was my fate to know thee!
+- Have the slow years not brought to view
+How great my grief, my joys how few,
+Nor memory shaped old times anew,
+   Nor loving-kindness helped to show thee
+How great my grief, my joys how few,
+   Since first it was my fate to know thee?
+
+
+
+"I NEED NOT GO"
+
+
+
+I need not go
+Through sleet and snow
+To where I know
+She waits for me;
+She will wait me there
+Till I find it fair,
+And have time to spare
+From company.
+
+When I've overgot
+The world somewhat,
+When things cost not
+Such stress and strain,
+Is soon enough
+By cypress sough
+To tell my Love
+I am come again.
+
+And if some day,
+When none cries nay,
+I still delay
+To seek her side,
+(Though ample measure
+Of fitting leisure
+Await my pleasure)
+She will riot chide.
+
+What--not upbraid me
+That I delayed me,
+Nor ask what stayed me
+So long?  Ah, no! -
+New cares may claim me,
+New loves inflame me,
+She will not blame me,
+But suffer it so.
+
+
+
+THE COQUETTE, AND AFTER
+(TRIOLETS)
+
+
+
+I
+
+For long the cruel wish I knew
+That your free heart should ache for me
+While mine should bear no ache for you;
+For, long--the cruel wish!--I knew
+How men can feel, and craved to view
+My triumph--fated not to be
+For long! . . . The cruel wish I knew
+That your free heart should ache for me!
+
+II
+
+At last one pays the penalty -
+The woman--women always do.
+My farce, I found, was tragedy
+At last!--One pays the penalty
+With interest when one, fancy-free,
+Learns love, learns shame . . . Of sinners two
+At last ONE pays the penalty -
+The woman--women always do!
+
+
+
+A SPOT
+
+
+
+   In years defaced and lost,
+   Two sat here, transport-tossed,
+   Lit by a living love
+The wilted world knew nothing of:
+      Scared momently
+      By gaingivings,
+      Then hoping things
+      That could not be.
+
+   Of love and us no trace
+   Abides upon the place;
+   The sun and shadows wheel,
+Season and season sereward steal;
+      Foul days and fair
+      Here, too, prevail,
+      And gust and gale
+      As everywhere.
+
+   But lonely shepherd souls
+   Who bask amid these knolls
+   May catch a faery sound
+On sleepy noontides from the ground:
+      "O not again
+      Till Earth outwears
+      Shall love like theirs
+      Suffuse this glen!"
+
+
+
+LONG PLIGHTED
+
+
+
+      Is it worth while, dear, now,
+To call for bells, and sally forth arrayed
+For marriage-rites -- discussed, decried, delayed
+         So many years?
+
+      Is it worth while, dear, now,
+To stir desire for old fond purposings,
+By feints that Time still serves for dallyings,
+         Though quittance nears?
+
+      Is it worth while, dear, when
+The day being so far spent, so low the sun,
+The undone thing will soon be as the done,
+      And smiles as tears?
+
+      Is it worth while, dear, when
+Our cheeks are worn, our early brown is gray;
+When, meet or part we, none says yea or nay,
+      Or heeds, or cares?
+
+      Is it worth while, dear, since
+We still can climb old Yell'ham's wooded mounds
+Together, as each season steals its rounds
+      And disappears?
+
+      Is it worth while, dear, since
+As mates in Mellstock churchyard we can lie,
+Till the last crash of all things low and high
+      Shall end the spheres?
+
+
+
+THE WIDOW
+
+
+
+By Mellstock Lodge and Avenue
+   Towards her door I went,
+And sunset on her window-panes
+   Reflected our intent.
+
+The creeper on the gable nigh
+   Was fired to more than red
+And when I came to halt thereby
+   "Bright as my joy!" I said.
+
+Of late days it had been her aim
+   To meet me in the hall;
+Now at my footsteps no one came;
+   And no one to my call.
+
+Again I knocked; and tardily
+   An inner step was heard,
+And I was shown her presence then
+   With scarce an answering word.
+
+She met me, and but barely took
+   My proffered warm embrace;
+Preoccupation weighed her look,
+   And hardened her sweet face.
+
+"To-morrow--could you--would you call?
+   Make brief your present stay?
+My child is ill--my one, my all! -
+   And can't be left to-day."
+
+And then she turns, and gives commands
+   As I were out of sound,
+Or were no more to her and hers
+   Than any neighbour round . . .
+
+- As maid I wooed her; but one came
+   And coaxed her heart away,
+And when in time he wedded her
+   I deemed her gone for aye.
+
+He won, I lost her; and my loss
+   I bore I know not how;
+But I do think I suffered then
+   Less wretchedness than now.
+
+For Time, in taking him, had oped
+   An unexpected door
+Of bliss for me, which grew to seem
+   Far surer than before . . .
+
+Her word is steadfast, and I know
+   That plighted firm are we:
+But she has caught new love-calls since
+   She smiled as maid on me!
+
+
+
+AT A HASTY WEDDING
+(TRIOLET)
+
+
+
+If hours be years the twain are blest,
+For now they solace swift desire
+By bonds of every bond the best,
+If hours be years.  The twain are blest
+Do eastern stars slope never west,
+Nor pallid ashes follow fire:
+If hours be years the twain are blest,
+For now they solace swift desire.
+
+
+
+THE DREAM-FOLLOWER
+
+
+
+A dream of mine flew over the mead
+   To the halls where my old Love reigns;
+And it drew me on to follow its lead:
+   And I stood at her window-panes;
+
+And I saw but a thing of flesh and bone
+   Speeding on to its cleft in the clay;
+And my dream was scared, and expired on a moan,
+   And I whitely hastened away.
+
+
+
+HIS IMMORTALITY
+
+
+
+I
+
+   I saw a dead man's finer part
+Shining within each faithful heart
+Of those bereft.  Then said I:  "This must be
+      His immortality."
+
+II
+
+   I looked there as the seasons wore,
+And still his soul continuously upbore
+Its life in theirs.  But less its shine excelled
+      Than when I first beheld.
+
+III
+
+   His fellow-yearsmen passed, and then
+In later hearts I looked for him again;
+And found him--shrunk, alas! into a thin
+      And spectral mannikin.
+
+IV
+
+   Lastly I ask--now old and chill -
+If aught of him remain unperished still;
+And find, in me alone, a feeble spark,
+      Dying amid the dark.
+
+February 1899.
+
+
+
+THE TO-BE-FORGOTTEN
+
+
+
+I
+
+   I heard a small sad sound,
+And stood awhile amid the tombs around:
+"Wherefore, old friends," said I, "are ye distrest,
+   Now, screened from life's unrest?"
+
+II
+
+  --"O not at being here;
+But that our future second death is drear;
+When, with the living, memory of us numbs,
+   And blank oblivion comes!
+
+III
+
+   "Those who our grandsires be
+Lie here embraced by deeper death than we;
+Nor shape nor thought of theirs canst thou descry
+   With keenest backward eye.
+
+IV
+
+   "They bide as quite forgot;
+They are as men who have existed not;
+Theirs is a loss past loss of fitful breath;
+   It is the second death.
+
+V
+
+   "We here, as yet, each day
+Are blest with dear recall; as yet, alway
+In some soul hold a loved continuance
+   Of shape and voice and glance.
+
+VI
+
+   "But what has been will be -
+First memory, then oblivion's turbid sea;
+Like men foregone, shall we merge into those
+   Whose story no one knows.
+
+VII
+
+   "For which of us could hope
+To show in life that world-awakening scope
+Granted the few whose memory none lets die,
+   But all men magnify?
+
+VIII
+
+   "We were but Fortune's sport;
+Things true, things lovely, things of good report
+We neither shunned nor sought . . . We see our bourne,
+   And seeing it we mourn."
+
+
+
+WIVES IN THE SERE
+
+
+
+I
+
+Never a careworn wife but shows,
+   If a joy suffuse her,
+Something beautiful to those
+   Patient to peruse her,
+Some one charm the world unknows
+   Precious to a muser,
+Haply what, ere years were foes,
+   Moved her mate to choose her.
+
+II
+
+But, be it a hint of rose
+   That an instant hues her,
+Or some early light or pose
+   Wherewith thought renews her -
+Seen by him at full, ere woes
+   Practised to abuse her -
+Sparely comes it, swiftly goes,
+   Time again subdues her.
+
+
+
+THE SUPERSEDED
+
+
+
+I
+
+As newer comers crowd the fore,
+   We drop behind.
+- We who have laboured long and sore
+   Times out of mind,
+And keen are yet, must not regret
+   To drop behind.
+
+II
+
+Yet there are of us some who grieve
+   To go behind;
+Staunch, strenuous souls who scarce believe
+   Their fires declined,
+And know none cares, remembers, spares
+   Who go behind.
+
+III
+
+'Tis not that we have unforetold
+   The drop behind;
+We feel the new must oust the old
+   In every kind;
+But yet we think, must we, must WE,
+   Too, drop behind?
+
+
+
+AN AUGUST MIDNIGHT
+
+
+
+I
+
+A shaded lamp and a waving blind,
+And the beat of a clock from a distant floor:
+On this scene enter--winged, horned, and spined -
+A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore;
+While 'mid my page there idly stands
+A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands . . .
+
+II
+
+Thus meet we five, in this still place,
+At this point of time, at this point in space.
+- My guests parade my new-penned ink,
+Or bang at the lamp-glass, whirl, and sink.
+"God's humblest, they!" I muse.  Yet why?
+They know Earth-secrets that know not I.
+
+MAX GATE, 1899.
+
+
+
+THE CAGED THRUSH FREED AND HOME AGAIN
+(VILLANELLE)
+
+
+"Men know but little more than we,
+Who count us least of things terrene,
+How happy days are made to be!
+
+"Of such strange tidings what think ye,
+O birds in brown that peck and preen?
+Men know but little more than we!
+
+"When I was borne from yonder tree
+In bonds to them, I hoped to glean
+How happy days are made to be,
+
+"And want and wailing turned to glee;
+Alas, despite their mighty mien
+Men know but little more than we!
+
+"They cannot change the Frost's decree,
+They cannot keep the skies serene;
+How happy days are made to be
+
+"Eludes great Man's sagacity
+No less than ours, O tribes in treen!
+Men know but little more than we
+How happy days are made to be."
+
+
+
+BIRDS AT WINTER NIGHTFALL
+(TRIOLET)
+
+
+
+Around the house the flakes fly faster,
+And all the berries now are gone
+From holly and cotoneaster
+Around the house.  The flakes fly!--faster
+Shutting indoors that crumb-outcaster
+We used to see upon the lawn
+Around the house.  The flakes fly faster,
+And all the berries now are gone!
+
+MAX GATE.
+
+
+
+
+THE PUZZLED GAME-BIRDS
+(TRIOLET)
+
+
+
+They are not those who used to feed us
+When we were young--they cannot be -
+These shapes that now bereave and bleed us?
+They are not those who used to feed us, -
+For would they not fair terms concede us?
+- If hearts can house such treachery
+They are not those who used to feed us
+When we were young--they cannot be!
+
+
+
+WINTER IN DURNOVER FIELD
+
+
+
+SCENE.--A wide stretch of fallow ground recently sown with wheat, and
+frozen to iron hardness.  Three large birds walking about thereon,
+and wistfully eyeing the surface.  Wind keen from north-east:  sky a
+dull grey.
+
+(TRIOLET)
+
+Rook.--Throughout the field I find no grain;
+   The cruel frost encrusts the cornland!
+Starling.--Aye:  patient pecking now is vain
+   Throughout the field, I find . . .
+Rook.--No grain!
+Pigeon.--Nor will be, comrade, till it rain,
+   Or genial thawings loose the lorn land
+   Throughout the field.
+Rook.--I find no grain:
+   The cruel frost encrusts the cornland!
+
+
+
+THE LAST CHRYSANTHEMUM
+
+
+
+Why should this flower delay so long
+   To show its tremulous plumes?
+Now is the time of plaintive robin-song,
+   When flowers are in their tombs.
+
+Through the slow summer, when the sun
+   Called to each frond and whorl
+That all he could for flowers was being done,
+   Why did it not uncurl?
+
+It must have felt that fervid call
+   Although it took no heed,
+Waking but now, when leaves like corpses fall,
+   And saps all retrocede.
+
+Too late its beauty, lonely thing,
+   The season's shine is spent,
+Nothing remains for it but shivering
+   In tempests turbulent.
+
+Had it a reason for delay,
+   Dreaming in witlessness
+That for a bloom so delicately gay
+   Winter would stay its stress?
+
+- I talk as if the thing were born
+   With sense to work its mind;
+Yet it is but one mask of many worn
+   By the Great Face behind.
+
+
+
+THE DARKLING THRUSH
+
+
+
+I leant upon a coppice gate
+   When Frost was spectre-gray,
+And Winter's dregs made desolate
+   The weakening eye of day.
+The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
+   Like strings from broken lyres,
+And all mankind that haunted nigh
+   Had sought their household fires.
+
+The land's sharp features seemed to be
+   The Century's corpse outleant,
+His crypt the cloudy canopy,
+   The wind his death-lament.
+The ancient pulse of germ and birth
+   Was shrunken hard and dry,
+And every spirit upon earth
+   Seemed fervourless as I.
+
+At once a voice outburst among
+   The bleak twigs overhead
+In a full-hearted evensong
+   Of joy illimited;
+An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
+   In blast-beruffled plume,
+Had chosen thus to fling his soul
+   Upon the growing gloom.
+
+So little cause for carollings
+   Of such ecstatic sound
+Was written on terrestrial things
+   Afar or nigh around,
+That I could think there trembled through
+   His happy good-night air
+Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
+   And I was unaware.
+
+December 1900.
+
+
+
+THE COMET AT YALBURY OR YELL'HAM
+
+
+
+I
+
+It bends far over Yell'ham Plain,
+   And we, from Yell'ham Height,
+Stand and regard its fiery train,
+   So soon to swim from sight.
+
+II
+
+It will return long years hence, when
+   As now its strange swift shine
+Will fall on Yell'ham; but not then
+   On that sweet form of thine.
+
+
+
+MAD JUDY
+
+
+
+When the hamlet hailed a birth
+   Judy used to cry:
+When she heard our christening mirth
+   She would kneel and sigh.
+She was crazed, we knew, and we
+Humoured her infirmity.
+
+When the daughters and the sons
+   Gathered them to wed,
+And we like-intending ones
+   Danced till dawn was red,
+She would rock and mutter, "More
+Comers to this stony shore!"
+
+When old Headsman Death laid hands
+   On a babe or twain,
+She would feast, and by her brands
+   Sing her songs again.
+What she liked we let her do,
+Judy was insane, we knew.
+
+
+
+A WASTED ILLNESS
+
+
+
+      Through vaults of pain,
+Enribbed and wrought with groins of ghastliness,
+I passed, and garish spectres moved my brain
+      To dire distress.
+
+      And hammerings,
+And quakes, and shoots, and stifling hotness, blent
+With webby waxing things and waning things
+      As on I went.
+
+       "Where lies the end
+To this foul way?" I asked with weakening breath.
+Thereon ahead I saw a door extend -
+      The door to death.
+
+      It loomed more clear:
+"At last!" I cried.  "The all-delivering door!"
+And then, I knew not how, it grew less near
+      Than theretofore.
+
+      And back slid I
+Along the galleries by which I came,
+And tediously the day returned, and sky,
+      And life--the same.
+
+      And all was well:
+Old circumstance resumed its former show,
+And on my head the dews of comfort fell
+      As ere my woe.
+
+      I roam anew,
+Scarce conscious of my late distress . . .  And yet
+Those backward steps through pain I cannot view
+      Without regret.
+
+      For that dire train
+Of waxing shapes and waning, passed before,
+And those grim aisles, must be traversed again
+      To reach that door.
+
+
+
+A MAN
+(IN MEMORY OF H. OF M.)
+
+
+
+I
+
+In Casterbridge there stood a noble pile,
+Wrought with pilaster, bay, and balustrade
+In tactful times when shrewd Eliza swayed. -
+      On burgher, squire, and clown
+It smiled the long street down for near a mile
+
+II
+
+But evil days beset that domicile;
+The stately beauties of its roof and wall
+Passed into sordid hands.  Condemned to fall
+      Were cornice, quoin, and cove,
+And all that art had wove in antique style.
+
+III
+
+Among the hired dismantlers entered there
+One till the moment of his task untold.
+When charged therewith he gazed, and answered bold:
+      "Be needy I or no,
+I will not help lay low a house so fair!
+
+IV
+
+"Hunger is hard.  But since the terms be such -
+No wage, or labour stained with the disgrace
+Of wrecking what our age cannot replace
+      To save its tasteless soul -
+I'll do without your dole.  Life is not much!
+
+V
+
+Dismissed with sneers he backed his tools and went,
+And wandered workless; for it seemed unwise
+To close with one who dared to criticize
+      And carp on points of taste:
+To work where they were placed rude men were meant.
+
+VI
+
+Years whiled.  He aged, sank, sickened, and was not:
+And it was said, "A man intractable
+And curst is gone."  None sighed to hear his knell,
+      None sought his churchyard-place;
+His name, his rugged face, were soon forgot.
+
+VII
+
+The stones of that fair hall lie far and wide,
+And but a few recall its ancient mould;
+Yet when I pass the spot I long to hold
+      As truth what fancy saith:
+"His protest lives where deathless things abide!"
+
+
+
+THE DAME OF ATHELHALL
+
+
+
+I
+
+"Soul!  Shall I see thy face," she said,
+   "In one brief hour?
+And away with thee from a loveless bed
+To a far-off sun, to a vine-wrapt bower,
+And be thine own unseparated,
+   And challenge the world's white glower?
+
+II
+
+She quickened her feet, and met him where
+   They had predesigned:
+And they clasped, and mounted, and cleft the air
+Upon whirling wheels; till the will to bind
+Her life with his made the moments there
+   Efface the years behind.
+
+III
+
+Miles slid, and the sight of the port upgrew
+   As they sped on;
+When slipping its bond the bracelet flew
+From her fondled arm.  Replaced anon,
+Its cameo of the abjured one drew
+   Her musings thereupon.
+
+IV
+
+The gaud with his image once had been
+   A gift from him:
+And so it was that its carving keen
+Refurbished memories wearing dim,
+Which set in her soul a throe of teen,
+   And a tear on her lashes' brim.
+
+V
+
+"I may not go!" she at length upspake,
+   "Thoughts call me back -
+I would still lose all for your dear, dear sake;
+My heart is thine, friend!  But my track
+I home to Athelhall must take
+   To hinder household wrack!"
+
+VI
+
+He appealed.  But they parted, weak and wan:
+   And he left the shore;
+His ship diminished, was low, was gone;
+And she heard in the waves as the daytide wore,
+And read in the leer of the sun that shone,
+   That they parted for evermore.
+
+VII
+
+She homed as she came, at the dip of eve
+   On Athel Coomb
+Regaining the Hall she had sworn to leave . . .
+The house was soundless as a tomb,
+And she entered her chamber, there to grieve
+   Lone, kneeling, in the gloom.
+
+VIII
+
+From the lawn without rose her husband's voice
+   To one his friend:
+"Another her Love, another my choice,
+Her going is good.  Our conditions mend;
+In a change of mates we shall both rejoice;
+   I hoped that it thus might end!
+
+IX
+
+"A quick divorce; she will make him hers,
+   And I wed mine.
+So Time rights all things in long, long years -
+Or rather she, by her bold design!
+I admire a woman no balk deters:
+   She has blessed my life, in fine.
+
+X
+
+"I shall build new rooms for my new true bride,
+   Let the bygone be:
+By now, no doubt, she has crossed the tide
+With the man to her mind.  Far happier she
+In some warm vineland by his side
+   Than ever she was with me."
+
+
+
+THE SEASONS OF HER YEAR
+
+
+
+I
+
+Winter is white on turf and tree,
+   And birds are fled;
+But summer songsters pipe to me,
+   And petals spread,
+For what I dreamt of secretly
+   His lips have said!
+
+II
+
+O 'tis a fine May morn, they say,
+   And blooms have blown;
+But wild and wintry is my day,
+   My birds make moan;
+For he who vowed leaves me to pay
+   Alone--alone!
+
+
+
+THE MILKMAID
+
+
+
+   Under a daisied bank
+There stands a rich red ruminating cow,
+   And hard against her flank
+A cotton-hooded milkmaid bends her brow.
+
+   The flowery river-ooze
+Upheaves and falls; the milk purrs in the pail;
+   Few pilgrims but would choose
+The peace of such a life in such a vale.
+
+   The maid breathes words--to vent,
+It seems, her sense of Nature's scenery,
+   Of whose life, sentiment,
+And essence, very part itself is she.
+
+   She bends a glance of pain,
+And, at a moment, lets escape a tear;
+   Is it that passing train,
+Whose alien whirr offends her country ear? -
+
+   Nay!  Phyllis does not dwell
+On visual and familiar things like these;
+   What moves her is the spell
+Of inner themes and inner poetries:
+
+   Could but by Sunday morn
+Her gay new gown come, meads might dry to dun,
+   Trains shriek till ears were torn,
+If Fred would not prefer that Other One.
+
+
+
+THE LEVELLED CHURCHYARD
+
+
+
+"O passenger, pray list and catch
+   Our sighs and piteous groans,
+Half stifled in this jumbled patch
+   Of wrenched memorial stones!
+
+"We late-lamented, resting here,
+   Are mixed to human jam,
+And each to each exclaims in fear,
+   'I know not which I am!'
+
+"The wicked people have annexed
+   The verses on the good;
+A roaring drunkard sports the text
+   Teetotal Tommy should!
+
+"Where we are huddled none can trace,
+   And if our names remain,
+They pave some path or p-ing place
+   Where we have never lain!
+
+"There's not a modest maiden elf
+   But dreads the final Trumpet,
+Lest half of her should rise herself,
+   And half some local strumpet!
+
+"From restorations of Thy fane,
+   From smoothings of Thy sward,
+From zealous Churchmen's pick and plane
+   Deliver us O Lord!  Amen!"
+
+1882.
+
+
+
+THE RUINED MAID
+
+
+
+"O 'Melia, my dear, this does everything crown!
+Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town?
+And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?" -
+"O didn't you know I'd been ruined?" said she.
+
+- "You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks,
+Tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks;
+And now you've gay bracelets and bright feathers three!" -
+"Yes:  that's how we dress when we're ruined," said she.
+
+- "At home in the barton you said 'thee' and 'thou,'
+And 'thik oon,' and 'theas oon,' and 't'other'; but now
+Your talking quite fits 'ee for high compa-ny!" -
+"Some polish is gained with one's ruin," said she.
+
+- "Your hands were like paws then, your face blue and bleak,
+But now I'm bewitched by your delicate cheek,
+And your little gloves fit as on any la-dy!" -
+"We never do work when we're ruined," said she.
+
+- "You used to call home-life a hag-ridden dream,
+And you'd sigh, and you'd sock; but at present you seem
+To know not of megrims or melancho-ly!" -
+"True.  There's an advantage in ruin," said she.
+
+- "I wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown,
+And a delicate face, and could strut about Town!" -
+"My dear--a raw country girl, such as you be,
+Isn't equal to that.  You ain't ruined," said she.
+
+WESTBOURNE PARK VILLAS, 1866,
+
+
+
+THE RESPECTABLE BURGHER ON "THE HIGHER CRITICISM"
+
+
+
+Since Reverend Doctors now declare
+That clerks and people must prepare
+To doubt if Adam ever were;
+To hold the flood a local scare;
+To argue, though the stolid stare,
+That everything had happened ere
+The prophets to its happening sware;
+That David was no giant-slayer,
+Nor one to call a God-obeyer
+In certain details we could spare,
+But rather was a debonair
+Shrewd bandit, skilled as banjo-player:
+That Solomon sang the fleshly Fair,
+And gave the Church no thought whate'er;
+That Esther with her royal wear,
+And Mordecai, the son of Jair,
+And Joshua's triumphs, Job's despair,
+And Balaam's ass's bitter blare;
+Nebuchadnezzar's furnace-flare,
+And Daniel and the den affair,
+And other stories rich and rare,
+Were writ to make old doctrine wear
+Something of a romantic air:
+That the Nain widow's only heir,
+And Lazarus with cadaverous glare
+(As done in oils by Piombo's care)
+Did not return from Sheol's lair:
+That Jael set a fiendish snare,
+That Pontius Pilate acted square,
+That never a sword cut Malchus' ear
+And (but for shame I must forbear)
+That -- -- did not reappear! . . .
+- Since thus they hint, nor turn a hair,
+All churchgoing will I forswear,
+And sit on Sundays in my chair,
+And read that moderate man Voltaire.
+
+
+
+ARCHITECTURAL MASKS
+
+
+
+I
+
+There is a house with ivied walls,
+And mullioned windows worn and old,
+And the long dwellers in those halls
+Have souls that know but sordid calls,
+   And daily dote on gold.
+
+II
+
+In blazing brick and plated show
+Not far away a "villa" gleams,
+And here a family few may know,
+With book and pencil, viol and bow,
+   Lead inner lives of dreams.
+
+III
+
+The philosophic passers say,
+"See that old mansion mossed and fair,
+Poetic souls therein are they:
+And O that gaudy box!  Away,
+   You vulgar people there."
+
+
+
+THE TENANT-FOR-LIFE
+
+
+
+The sun said, watching my watering-pot
+   "Some morn you'll pass away;
+These flowers and plants I parch up hot -
+   Who'll water them that day?
+
+"Those banks and beds whose shape your eye
+   Has planned in line so true,
+New hands will change, unreasoning why
+   Such shape seemed best to you.
+
+"Within your house will strangers sit,
+   And wonder how first it came;
+They'll talk of their schemes for improving it,
+   And will not mention your name.
+
+"They'll care not how, or when, or at what
+   You sighed, laughed, suffered here,
+Though you feel more in an hour of the spot
+   Than they will feel in a year
+
+"As I look on at you here, now,
+   Shall I look on at these;
+But as to our old times, avow
+   No knowledge--hold my peace! . . .
+
+"O friend, it matters not, I say;
+   Bethink ye, I have shined
+On nobler ones than you, and they
+   Are dead men out of mind!"
+
+
+
+THE KING'S EXPERIMENT
+
+
+
+   It was a wet wan hour in spring,
+And Nature met King Doom beside a lane,
+Wherein Hodge trudged, all blithely ballading
+      The Mother's smiling reign.
+
+   "Why warbles he that skies are fair
+And coombs alight," she cried, "and fallows gay,
+When I have placed no sunshine in the air
+      Or glow on earth to-day?"
+
+   "'Tis in the comedy of things
+That such should be," returned the one of Doom;
+"Charge now the scene with brightest blazonings,
+      And he shall call them gloom."
+
+   She gave the word:  the sun outbroke,
+All Froomside shone, the hedgebirds raised a song;
+And later Hodge, upon the midday stroke,
+      Returned the lane along,
+
+   Low murmuring:  "O this bitter scene,
+And thrice accurst horizon hung with gloom!
+How deadly like this sky, these fields, these treen,
+      To trappings of the tomb!"
+
+   The Beldame then:  "The fool and blind!
+Such mad perverseness who may apprehend?" -
+"Nay; there's no madness in it; thou shalt find
+      Thy law there," said her friend.
+
+   "When Hodge went forth 'twas to his Love,
+To make her, ere this eve, his wedded prize,
+And Earth, despite the heaviness above,
+      Was bright as Paradise.
+
+   "But I sent on my messenger,
+With cunning arrows poisonous and keen,
+To take forthwith her laughing life from her,
+      And dull her little een,
+
+   "And white her cheek, and still her breath,
+Ere her too buoyant Hodge had reached her side;
+So, when he came, he clasped her but in death,
+      And never as his bride.
+
+   "And there's the humour, as I said;
+Thy dreary dawn he saw as gleaming gold,
+And in thy glistening green and radiant red
+      Funereal gloom and cold."
+
+
+
+THE TREE
+AN OLD MAN'S STORY
+
+
+
+I
+
+Its roots are bristling in the air
+Like some mad Earth-god's spiny hair;
+The loud south-wester's swell and yell
+Smote it at midnight, and it fell.
+   Thus ends the tree
+   Where Some One sat with me.
+
+II
+
+Its boughs, which none but darers trod,
+A child may step on from the sod,
+And twigs that earliest met the dawn
+Are lit the last upon the lawn.
+   Cart off the tree
+   Beneath whose trunk sat we!
+
+III
+
+Yes, there we sat:  she cooed content,
+And bats ringed round, and daylight went;
+The gnarl, our seat, is wrenched and sunk,
+Prone that queer pocket in the trunk
+   Where lay the key
+   To her pale mystery.
+
+IV
+
+"Years back, within this pocket-hole
+I found, my Love, a hurried scrawl
+Meant not for me," at length said I;
+"I glanced thereat, and let it lie:
+   The words were three -
+   'Beloved, I agree.'
+
+V
+
+"Who placed it here; to what request
+It gave assent, I never guessed.
+Some prayer of some hot heart, no doubt,
+To some coy maiden hereabout,
+   Just as, maybe,
+   With you, Sweet Heart, and me."
+
+VI
+
+She waited, till with quickened breath
+She spoke, as one who banisheth
+Reserves that lovecraft heeds so well,
+To ease some mighty wish to tell:
+   "'Twas I," said she,
+   "Who wrote thus clinchingly.
+
+VII
+
+"My lover's wife--aye, wife!--knew nought
+Of what we felt, and bore, and thought . . .
+He'd said:  'I wed with thee or die:
+She stands between, 'tis true.  But why?
+   Do thou agree,
+   And--she shalt cease to be.'
+
+VIII
+
+"How I held back, how love supreme
+Involved me madly in his scheme
+Why should I say? . . . I wrote assent
+(You found it hid) to his intent . . .
+   She--DIED . . . But he
+   Came not to wed with me.
+
+IX
+
+"O shrink not, Love!--Had these eyes seen
+But once thine own, such had not been!
+But we were strangers . . . Thus the plot
+Cleared passion's path.--Why came he not
+   To wed with me? . . .
+   He wived the gibbet-tree."
+
+X
+
+- Under that oak of heretofore
+Sat Sweetheart mine with me no more:
+By many a Fiord, and Strom, and Fleuve
+Have I since wandered . . . Soon, for love,
+   Distraught went she -
+   'Twas said for love of me.
+
+
+
+HER LATE HUSBAND
+(KING'S-HINTOCK, 182-.)
+
+
+
+"No--not where I shall make my own;
+   But dig his grave just by
+The woman's with the initialed stone -
+   As near as he can lie -
+After whose death he seemed to ail,
+   Though none considered why.
+
+"And when I also claim a nook,
+   And your feet tread me in,
+Bestow me, under my old name,
+   Among my kith and kin,
+That strangers gazing may not dream
+   I did a husband win."
+
+"Widow, your wish shall be obeyed;
+   Though, thought I, certainly
+You'd lay him where your folk are laid,
+   And your grave, too, will be,
+As custom hath it; you to right,
+   And on the left hand he."
+
+"Aye, sexton; such the Hintock rule,
+   And none has said it nay;
+But now it haps a native here
+   Eschews that ancient way . . .
+And it may be, some Christmas night,
+   When angels walk, they'll say:
+
+"'O strange interment!  Civilized lands
+   Afford few types thereof;
+Here is a man who takes his rest
+   Beside his very Love,
+Beside the one who was his wife
+   In our sight up above!'"
+
+
+
+THE SELF-UNSEEING
+
+
+
+Here is the ancient floor,
+Footworn and hollowed and thin,
+Here was the former door
+Where the dead feet walked in.
+
+She sat here in her chair,
+Smiling into the fire;
+He who played stood there,
+Bowing it higher and higher.
+
+Childlike, I danced in a dream;
+Blessings emblazoned that day
+Everything glowed with a gleam;
+Yet we were looking away!
+
+
+
+DE PROFUNDIS
+
+
+
+I
+
+"Percussus sum sicut foenum, et aruit cor meum."
+- Ps. ci
+
+   Wintertime nighs;
+But my bereavement-pain
+It cannot bring again:
+   Twice no one dies.
+
+   Flower-petals flee;
+But, since it once hath been,
+No more that severing scene
+   Can harrow me.
+
+   Birds faint in dread:
+I shall not lose old strength
+In the lone frost's black length:
+   Strength long since fled!
+
+   Leaves freeze to dun;
+But friends can not turn cold
+This season as of old
+   For him with none.
+
+   Tempests may scath;
+But love can not make smart
+Again this year his heart
+   Who no heart hath.
+
+   Black is night's cope;
+But death will not appal
+One who, past doubtings all,
+   Waits in unhope.
+
+
+DE PROFUNDIS
+
+
+
+II
+
+"Considerabam ad dexteram, et videbam; et non erat qui cognosceret me
+. . . Non est qui requirat animam meam."--Ps. cxli.
+
+When the clouds' swoln bosoms echo back the shouts of the many and
+strong
+That things are all as they best may be, save a few to be right ere
+long,
+And my eyes have not the vision in them to discern what to these is
+so clear,
+The blot seems straightway in me alone; one better he were not here.
+
+The stout upstanders say, All's well with us:  ruers have nought to
+rue!
+And what the potent say so oft, can it fail to be somewhat true?
+Breezily go they, breezily come; their dust smokes around their
+career,
+Till I think I am one horn out of due time, who has no calling here.
+
+Their dawns bring lusty joys, it seems; their eves exultance sweet;
+Our times are blessed times, they cry:  Life shapes it as is most
+meet,
+And nothing is much the matter; there are many smiles to a tear;
+Then what is the matter is I, I say.  Why should such an one be here?
+. . .
+
+Let him to whose ears the low-voiced Best seems stilled by the clash
+of the First,
+Who holds that if way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look
+at the Worst,
+Who feels that delight is a delicate growth cramped by crookedness,
+custom, and fear,
+Get him up and be gone as one shaped awry; he disturbs the order
+here.
+
+1895-96.
+
+
+
+DE PROFUNDIS
+
+
+
+III
+
+"Heu mihi, quia incolatus meus prolongatus est!  Habitavi cum
+habitantibus Cedar; multum incola fuit aninia mea."--Ps. cxix.
+
+There have been times when I well might have passed and the ending
+have come -
+Points in my path when the dark might have stolen on me, artless,
+unrueing -
+Ere I had learnt that the world was a welter of futile doing:
+Such had been times when I well might have passed, and the ending
+have come!
+
+Say, on the noon when the half-sunny hours told that April was nigh,
+And I upgathered and cast forth the snow from the crocus-border,
+Fashioned and furbished the soil into a summer-seeming order,
+Glowing in gladsome faith that I quickened the year thereby.
+
+Or on that loneliest of eves when afar and benighted we stood,
+She who upheld me and I, in the midmost of Egdon together,
+Confident I in her watching and ward through the blackening heather,
+Deeming her matchless in might and with measureless scope endued.
+
+Or on that winter-wild night when, reclined by the chimney-nook
+quoin,
+Slowly a drowse overgat me, the smallest and feeblest of folk there,
+Weak from my baptism of pain; when at times and anon I awoke there -
+Heard of a world wheeling on, with no listing or longing to join.
+
+Even then! while unweeting that vision could vex or that knowledge
+could numb,
+That sweets to the mouth in the belly are bitter, and tart, and
+untoward,
+Then, on some dim-coloured scene should my briefly raised curtain
+have lowered,
+Then might the Voice that is law have said "Cease!" and the ending
+have come.
+
+1896.
+
+
+
+THE CHURCH-BUILDER
+
+
+
+I
+
+The church flings forth a battled shade
+   Over the moon-blanched sward;
+The church; my gift; whereto I paid
+   My all in hand and hoard:
+      Lavished my gains
+      With stintless pains
+   To glorify the Lord.
+
+II
+
+I squared the broad foundations in
+   Of ashlared masonry;
+I moulded mullions thick and thin,
+   Hewed fillet and ogee;
+      I circleted
+      Each sculptured head
+   With nimb and canopy.
+
+III
+
+I called in many a craftsmaster
+   To fix emblazoned glass,
+To figure Cross and Sepulchre
+   On dossal, boss, and brass.
+      My gold all spent,
+      My jewels went
+   To gem the cups of Mass.
+
+IV
+
+I borrowed deep to carve the screen
+   And raise the ivoried Rood;
+I parted with my small demesne
+   To make my owings good.
+      Heir-looms unpriced
+      I sacrificed,
+   Until debt-free I stood.
+
+V
+
+So closed the task.  "Deathless the Creed
+   Here substanced!" said my soul:
+"I heard me bidden to this deed,
+   And straight obeyed the call.
+      Illume this fane,
+      That not in vain
+   I build it, Lord of all!"
+
+VI
+
+But, as it chanced me, then and there
+   Did dire misfortunes burst;
+My home went waste for lack of care,
+   My sons rebelled and curst;
+      Till I confessed
+      That aims the best
+   Were looking like the worst.
+
+VII
+
+Enkindled by my votive work
+   No burning faith I find;
+The deeper thinkers sneer and smirk,
+   And give my toil no mind;
+      From nod and wink
+      I read they think
+   That I am fool and blind.
+
+VIII
+
+My gift to God seems futile, quite;
+   The world moves as erstwhile;
+And powerful wrong on feeble right
+   Tramples in olden style.
+      My faith burns down,
+      I see no crown;
+   But Cares, and Griefs, and Guile.
+
+IX
+
+So now, the remedy?  Yea, this:
+   I gently swing the door
+Here, of my fane--no soul to wis -
+   And cross the patterned floor
+      To the rood-screen
+      That stands between
+   The nave and inner chore.
+
+X
+
+The rich red windows dim the moon,
+   But little light need I;
+I mount the prie-dieu, lately hewn
+   From woods of rarest dye;
+      Then from below
+      My garment, so,
+   I draw this cord, and tie
+
+XI
+
+One end thereof around the beam
+   Midway 'twixt Cross and truss:
+I noose the nethermost extreme,
+   And in ten seconds thus
+      I journey hence -
+      To that land whence
+   No rumour reaches us.
+
+XII
+
+Well:  Here at morn they'll light on one
+   Dangling in mockery
+Of what he spent his substance on
+   Blindly and uselessly! . . .
+      "He might," they'll say,
+      "Have built, some way.
+   A cheaper gallows-tree!"
+
+
+
+THE LOST PYX
+A MEDIAEVAL LEGEND {3}
+
+Some say the spot is banned; that the pillar Cross-and-Hand
+   Attests to a deed of hell;
+But of else than of bale is the mystic tale
+   That ancient Vale-folk tell.
+
+Ere Cernel's Abbey ceased hereabout there dwelt a priest,
+   (In later life sub-prior
+Of the brotherhood there, whose bones are now bare
+   In the field that was Cernel choir).
+
+One night in his cell at the foot of yon dell
+   The priest heard a frequent cry:
+"Go, father, in haste to the cot on the waste,
+   And shrive a man waiting to die."
+
+Said the priest in a shout to the caller without,
+   "The night howls, the tree-trunks bow;
+One may barely by day track so rugged a way,
+   And can I then do so now?"
+
+No further word from the dark was heard,
+   And the priest moved never a limb;
+And he slept and dreamed; till a Visage seemed
+   To frown from Heaven at him.
+
+In a sweat he arose; and the storm shrieked shrill,
+   And smote as in savage joy;
+While High-Stoy trees twanged to Bubb-Down Hill,
+   And Bubb-Down to High-Stoy.
+
+There seemed not a holy thing in hail,
+   Nor shape of light or love,
+From the Abbey north of Blackmore Vale
+   To the Abbey south thereof.
+
+Yet he plodded thence through the dark immense,
+   And with many a stumbling stride
+Through copse and briar climbed nigh and nigher
+   To the cot and the sick man's side.
+
+When he would have unslung the Vessels uphung
+   To his arm in the steep ascent,
+He made loud moan:  the Pyx was gone
+   Of the Blessed Sacrament.
+
+Then in dolorous dread he beat his head:
+   "No earthly prize or pelf
+Is the thing I've lost in tempest tossed,
+   But the Body of Christ Himself!"
+
+He thought of the Visage his dream revealed,
+   And turned towards whence he came,
+Hands groping the ground along foot-track and field,
+   And head in a heat of shame.
+
+Till here on the hill, betwixt vill and vill,
+   He noted a clear straight ray
+Stretching down from the sky to a spot hard by,
+   Which shone with the light of day.
+
+And gathered around the illumined ground
+   Were common beasts and rare,
+All kneeling at gaze, and in pause profound
+   Attent on an object there.
+
+'Twas the Pyx, unharmed 'mid the circling rows
+   Of Blackmore's hairy throng,
+Whereof were oxen, sheep, and does,
+   And hares from the brakes among;
+
+And badgers grey, and conies keen,
+   And squirrels of the tree,
+And many a member seldom seen
+   Of Nature's family.
+
+The ireful winds that scoured and swept
+   Through coppice, clump, and dell,
+Within that holy circle slept
+   Calm as in hermit's cell.
+
+Then the priest bent likewise to the sod
+   And thanked the Lord of Love,
+And Blessed Mary, Mother of God,
+   And all the saints above.
+
+And turning straight with his priceless freight,
+   He reached the dying one,
+Whose passing sprite had been stayed for the rite
+   Without which bliss hath none.
+
+And when by grace the priest won place,
+   And served the Abbey well,
+He reared this stone to mark where shone
+   That midnight miracle.
+
+
+
+TESS'S LAMENT
+
+
+
+I
+
+I would that folk forgot me quite,
+         Forgot me quite!
+I would that I could shrink from sight,
+   And no more see the sun.
+Would it were time to say farewell,
+To claim my nook, to need my knell,
+Time for them all to stand and tell
+   Of my day's work as done.
+
+II
+
+Ah! dairy where I lived so long,
+         I lived so long;
+Where I would rise up stanch and strong,
+   And lie down hopefully.
+'Twas there within the chimney-seat
+He watched me to the clock's slow beat -
+Loved me, and learnt to call me sweet,
+   And whispered words to me.
+
+III
+
+And now he's gone; and now he's gone; . . .
+      And now he's gone!
+The flowers we potted p'rhaps are thrown
+   To rot upon the farm.
+And where we had our supper-fire
+May now grow nettle, dock, and briar,
+And all the place be mould and mire
+   So cozy once and warm.
+
+IV
+
+And it was I who did it all,
+         Who did it all;
+'Twas I who made the blow to fall
+   On him who thought no guile.
+Well, it is finished--past, and he
+Has left me to my misery,
+And I must take my Cross on me
+   For wronging him awhile.
+
+V
+
+How gay we looked that day we wed,
+      That day we wed!
+"May joy be with ye!" all o'm said
+   A standing by the durn.
+I wonder what they say o's now,
+And if they know my lot; and how
+She feels who milks my favourite cow,
+   And takes my place at churn!
+
+VI
+
+It wears me out to think of it,
+      To think of it;
+I cannot bear my fate as writ,
+   I'd have my life unbe;
+Would turn my memory to a blot,
+Make every relic of me rot,
+My doings be as they were not,
+   And what they've brought to me!
+
+
+
+THE SUPPLANTER
+A TALE
+
+
+
+I
+
+He bends his travel-tarnished feet
+   To where she wastes in clay:
+From day-dawn until eve he fares
+   Along the wintry way;
+From day-dawn until eve repairs
+   Unto her mound to pray.
+
+II
+
+"Are these the gravestone shapes that meet
+   My forward-straining view?
+Or forms that cross a window-blind
+   In circle, knot, and queue:
+Gay forms, that cross and whirl and wind
+   To music throbbing through?" -
+
+III
+
+"The Keeper of the Field of Tombs
+   Dwells by its gateway-pier;
+He celebrates with feast and dance
+   His daughter's twentieth year:
+He celebrates with wine of France
+   The birthday of his dear." -
+
+IV
+
+"The gates are shut when evening glooms:
+   Lay down your wreath, sad wight;
+To-morrow is a time more fit
+   For placing flowers aright:
+The morning is the time for it;
+   Come, wake with us to-night!" -
+
+V
+
+He grounds his wreath, and enters in,
+   And sits, and shares their cheer. -
+"I fain would foot with you, young man,
+   Before all others here;
+I fain would foot it for a span
+   With such a cavalier!"
+
+VI
+
+She coaxes, clasps, nor fails to win
+   His first-unwilling hand:
+The merry music strikes its staves,
+   The dancers quickly band;
+And with the damsel of the graves
+   He duly takes his stand.
+
+VII
+
+"You dance divinely, stranger swain,
+   Such grace I've never known.
+O longer stay!  Breathe not adieu
+   And leave me here alone!
+O longer stay:  to her be true
+   Whose heart is all your own!" -
+
+VIII
+
+"I mark a phantom through the pane,
+   That beckons in despair,
+Its mouth all drawn with heavy moan -
+   Her to whom once I sware!" -
+"Nay; 'tis the lately carven stone
+   Of some strange girl laid there!" -
+
+IX
+
+"I see white flowers upon the floor
+   Betrodden to a clot;
+My wreath were they?"--"Nay; love me much,
+   Swear you'll forget me not!
+'Twas but a wreath!  Full many such
+   Are brought here and forgot."
+
+* * *
+
+X
+
+The watches of the night grow hoar,
+   He rises ere the sun;
+"Now could I kill thee here!" he says,
+   "For winning me from one
+Who ever in her living days
+   Was pure as cloistered nun!"
+
+XI
+
+She cowers, and he takes his track
+   Afar for many a mile,
+For evermore to be apart
+   From her who could beguile
+His senses by her burning heart,
+   And win his love awhile.
+
+XII
+
+A year:  and he is travelling back
+   To her who wastes in clay;
+From day-dawn until eve he fares
+   Along the wintry way,
+From day-dawn until eve repairs
+   Unto her mound to pray.
+
+XIII
+
+And there he sets him to fulfil
+   His frustrate first intent:
+And lay upon her bed, at last,
+   The offering earlier meant:
+When, on his stooping figure, ghast
+   And haggard eyes are bent.
+
+XIV
+
+"O surely for a little while
+   You can be kind to me!
+For do you love her, do you hate,
+   She knows not--cares not she:
+Only the living feel the weight
+   Of loveless misery!
+
+XV
+
+"I own my sin; I've paid its cost,
+   Being outcast, shamed, and bare:
+I give you daily my whole heart,
+   Your babe my tender care,
+I pour you prayers; and aye to part
+   Is more than I can bear!"
+
+XVI
+
+He turns--unpitying, passion-tossed;
+   "I know you not!" he cries,
+"Nor know your child.  I knew this maid,
+   But she's in Paradise!"
+And swiftly in the winter shade
+   He breaks from her and flies.
+
+
+
+SAPPHIC FRAGMENT
+
+
+
+"Thou shalt be--Nothing."--OMAR KHAYYAM.
+"Tombless, with no remembrance."--W. SHAKESPEARE.
+
+Dead shalt thou lie; and nought
+   Be told of thee or thought,
+For thou hast plucked not of the Muses' tree:
+   And even in Hades' halls
+   Amidst thy fellow-thralls
+No friendly shade thy shade shall company!
+
+
+
+CATULLUS:  XXXI
+(After passing Sirmione, April 1887.)
+
+
+
+Sirmio, thou dearest dear of strands
+That Neptune strokes in lake and sea,
+With what high joy from stranger lands
+Doth thy old friend set foot on thee!
+Yea, barely seems it true to me
+That no Bithynia holds me now,
+But calmly and assuringly
+Around me stretchest homely Thou.
+
+Is there a scene more sweet than when
+Our clinging cares are undercast,
+And, worn by alien moils and men,
+The long untrodden sill repassed,
+We press the pined for couch at last,
+And find a full repayment there?
+Then hail, sweet Sirmio; thou that wast,
+And art, mine own unrivalled Fair!
+
+
+
+AFTER SCHILLER
+
+
+
+Knight, a true sister-love
+   This heart retains;
+Ask me no other love,
+   That way lie pains!
+
+Calm must I view thee come,
+   Calm see thee go;
+Tale-telling tears of thine
+   I must not know!
+
+
+
+SONG FROM HEINE
+
+
+
+I scanned her picture dreaming,
+   Till each dear line and hue
+Was imaged, to my seeming,
+   As if it lived anew.
+
+Her lips began to borrow
+   Their former wondrous smile;
+Her fair eyes, faint with sorrow,
+   Grew sparkling as erstwhile.
+
+Such tears as often ran not
+   Ran then, my love, for thee;
+And O, believe I cannot
+   That thou are lost to me!
+
+
+
+FROM VICTOR HUGO
+
+
+
+Child, were I king, I'd yield my royal rule,
+   My chariot, sceptre, vassal-service due,
+My crown, my porphyry-basined waters cool,
+My fleets, whereto the sea is but a pool,
+   For a glance from you!
+
+Love, were I God, the earth and its heaving airs,
+   Angels, the demons abject under me,
+Vast chaos with its teeming womby lairs,
+Time, space, all would I give--aye, upper spheres,
+   For a kiss from thee!
+
+
+
+CARDINAL BEMBO'S EPITAPH ON RAPHAEL
+
+
+
+Here's one in whom Nature feared--faint at such vying -
+Eclipse while he lived, and decease at his dying.
+
+
+
+"I HAVE LIVED WITH SHADES"
+
+
+
+I
+
+I have lived with shades so long,
+And talked to them so oft,
+Since forth from cot and croft
+I went mankind among,
+   That sometimes they
+   In their dim style
+   Will pause awhile
+   To hear my say;
+
+II
+
+And take me by the hand,
+And lead me through their rooms
+In the To-be, where Dooms
+Half-wove and shapeless stand:
+   And show from there
+   The dwindled dust
+   And rot and rust
+   Of things that were.
+
+III
+
+"Now turn," spake they to me
+One day:  "Look whence we came,
+And signify his name
+Who gazes thence at thee." -
+  --"Nor name nor race
+   Know I, or can,"
+   I said, "Of man
+   So commonplace.
+
+IV
+
+"He moves me not at all;
+I note no ray or jot
+Of rareness in his lot,
+Or star exceptional.
+   Into the dim
+   Dead throngs around
+   He'll sink, nor sound
+   Be left of him."
+
+V
+
+"Yet," said they, "his frail speech,
+Hath accents pitched like thine -
+Thy mould and his define
+A likeness each to each -
+   But go!  Deep pain
+   Alas, would be
+   His name to thee,
+   And told in vain!"
+
+Feb. 2, 1899.
+
+
+
+MEMORY AND I
+
+
+
+"O memory, where is now my youth,
+Who used to say that life was truth?"
+
+"I saw him in a crumbled cot
+   Beneath a tottering tree;
+That he as phantom lingers there
+   Is only known to me."
+
+"O Memory, where is now my joy,
+Who lived with me in sweet employ?"
+
+"I saw him in gaunt gardens lone,
+   Where laughter used to be;
+That he as phantom wanders there
+   Is known to none but me."
+
+"O Memory, where is now my hope,
+Who charged with deeds my skill and scope?"
+
+"I saw her in a tomb of tomes,
+   Where dreams are wont to be;
+That she as spectre haunteth there
+   Is only known to me."
+
+"O Memory, where is now my faith,
+One time a champion, now a wraith?"
+
+"I saw her in a ravaged aisle,
+   Bowed down on bended knee;
+That her poor ghost outflickers there
+   Is known to none but me."
+
+"O Memory, where is now my love,
+That rayed me as a god above?"
+
+"I saw him by an ageing shape
+   Where beauty used to be;
+That his fond phantom lingers there
+   Is only known to me."
+
+
+
+[GREEK TITLE]
+
+
+
+Long have I framed weak phantasies of Thee,
+   O Willer masked and dumb!
+   Who makest Life become, -
+As though by labouring all-unknowingly,
+   Like one whom reveries numb.
+
+How much of consciousness informs Thy will
+   Thy biddings, as if blind,
+   Of death-inducing kind,
+Nought shows to us ephemeral ones who fill
+   But moments in Thy mind.
+
+Perhaps Thy ancient rote-restricted ways
+   Thy ripening rule transcends;
+   That listless effort tends
+To grow percipient with advance of days,
+   And with percipience mends.
+
+For, in unwonted purlieus, far and nigh,
+   At whiles or short or long,
+   May be discerned a wrong
+Dying as of self-slaughter; whereat I
+   Would raise my voice in song.
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+{1}  The "Race" is the turbulent sea-area off the Bill of Portland,
+where contrary tides meet.
+
+{2}  Pronounce "Loddy."
+
+{3}  On a lonely table-land above the Vale of Blackmore, between
+High-Stoy and Bubb-Down hills, and commanding in clear weather views
+that extend from the English to the Bristol Channel, stands a pillar,
+apparently mediaeval, called Cross-and-Hand or Christ-in-Hand.  Among
+other stories of its origin a local tradition preserves the one here
+given.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Poems of the Past and the Present, by Hardy
+
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