Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated), page 781
“But we were not married at all!” urged you:
“Why, of course we were!” I said. Your tone,
I noted, was world-wise. You went on:
“‘Twas sweet while it lasted. But you well know
That law is law. He’ll be, anon,
My husband really. You, Dear, weren’t so.”
“I wished — but to learn if — ” faltered I,
And stopped. “But I’ll sting you not. Farewell!”
And we parted. — Do you recall the bell
That tolled by chance as we said good-bye? . . .
I saw you no more. The track of a high,
Sweet, liberal lady you’ve doubtless trod.
— All’s past! No heart was burst thereby,
And no one knew, unless it was God.
The foregoing was intended to preserve an episode in the story of “The Poor Man and the Lady,” written in 1868, and, like these lines, in the first person; but never printed, and ultimately destroyed.
AN EXPOSTULATION
Why want to go afar
Where pitfalls are,
When all we swains adore
Your featness more and more
As heroine of our artless masquings here,
And count few Wessex’ daughters half so dear?
Why paint your appealing face,
When its born grace
Is such no skill can match
With powder, puff, or patch,
Whose every touch defames your bloomfulness,
And with each stain increases our distress?
Yea, is it not enough
That (rare or rough
Your lines here) all uphold you,
And as with wings enfold you,
But you must needs desert the kine-cropt vale
Wherein your foredames gaily filled the pail?
TO A SEA-CLIFF
(DURLSTON HEAD)
Lend me an ear
While I read you here
A page from your history,
Old cliff — not known
To your solid stone,
Yet yours inseparably.
Near to your crown
There once sat down
A silent listless pair;
And the sunset ended,
And dark descended,
And still the twain sat there.
Past your jutting head
Then a line-ship sped,
Lit brightly as a city;
And she sobbed: “There goes
A man who knows
I am his, beyond God’s pity!”
He slid apart
Who had thought her heart
His own, and not aboard
A bark, sea-bound. . . .
That night they found
Between them lay a sword.
THE ECHO-ELF ANSWERS
How much shall I love her?
For life, or not long?
“Not long.”
Alas! When forget her?
In years, or by June?
“By June.”
And whom woo I after?
No one, or a throng?
“A throng.”
Of these shall I wed one
Long hence, or quite soon?
“Quite soon.”
And which will my bride be?
The right or the wrong?
“The wrong.”
And my remedy — what kind?
Wealth-wove, or earth-hewn?
“Earth-hewn.”
CYNIC’S EPITAPH
A race with the sun as he downed
I ran at evetide,
Intent who should first gain the ground
And there hide.
He beat me by some minutes then,
But I triumphed anon,
For when he’d to rise up again
I stayed on.
A BEAUTY’S SOLILOQUY DURING HER HONEYMOON
Too late, too late! I did not know my fairness
Would catch the world’s keen eyes so!
How the men look at me! My radiant rareness
I deemed not they would prize so!
That I was a peach for any man’s possession
Why did not some one say
Before I leased myself in an hour’s obsession
To this dull mate for aye!
His days are mine. I am one who cannot steal her
Ahead of his plodding pace:
As he is, so am I. One doomed to feel her
A wasted form and face!
I was so blind! It did sometimes just strike me
All girls were not as I,
But, dwelling much alone, how few were like me
I could not well descry;
Till, at this Grand Hotel, all looks bend on me
In homage as I pass
To take my seat at breakfast, dinner, — con me
As poorly spoused, alas!
I was too young. I dwelt too much on duty:
If I had guessed my powers
Where might have sailed this cargo of choice beauty
In its unanchored hours!
Well, husband, poor plain man; I’ve lost life’s battle! —
Come — let them look at me.
O damn, don’t show in your looks that I’m your chattel
Quite so emphatically!
In a London Hotel, 1892.
DONAGHADEE
(SONG)
I’ve never gone to Donaghadee,
That vague far townlet by the sea;
In Donaghadee I shall never be:
Then why do I sing of Donaghadee,
That I know not in a faint degree? . . .
— Well, once a woman wrote to me
With a tender pen from Donaghadee.
“Susan,” I’ve sung, “Pride of Kildare,”
Because I’d heard of a Susan there,
The “Irish Washerwoman’s” capers
I’ve shared for hours to midnight tapers,
And “Kitty O’Linch” has made me spin
Till dust rose high, and day broke in:
That other “Kitty, of Coleraine,”
Too, set me aching in heart and brain:
While “Kathleen Mavourneen,” of course, would ring
When that girl learnt to make me sing.
Then there was “Irish Molly O”
I tuned as “the fairest one I know,”
And “Nancy Dawson,” if I remember,
Rhymed sweet in moonlight one September.
But the damsel who once wrote so free
And tender-toned from Donaghadee,
Is a woman who has no name for me —
Moving sylph-like, mysteriously,
(For doubtless, of that sort is she)
In the pathways of her destiny;
But that is where I never shall be; —
And yet I sing of Donaghadee!
HE INADVERTENTLY CURES HIS LOVE-PAINS
(SONG)
I said: “O let me sing the praise
Of her who sweetly racks my days, —
Her I adore;
Her lips, her eyes, her moods, her ways!”
In miseries of pulse and pang
I strung my harp, and straightway sang
As none before: —
To wondrous words my quavers rang!
Thus I let heartaches lilt my verse,
Which suaged and soothed, and made disperse
The smarts I bore
To stagnance like a sepulchre’s.
But, eased, the days that thrilled ere then
Lost value; and I ask, O when,
And how, restore
Those old sweet agonies again!
THE PEACE PEAL
(AFTER FOUR YEARS OF SILENCE)
Said a wistful daw in Saint Peter’s tower,
High above Casterbridge slates and tiles,
“Why do the walls of my Gothic bower
Shiver, and shrill out sounds for miles?
This gray old rubble
Has scorned such din
Since I knew trouble
And joy herein.
How still did abide them
These bells now swung,
While our nest beside them
Securely clung! . . .
It means some snare
For our feet or wings;
But I’ll be ware
Of such baleful things!”
And forth he flew from his louvred niche
To take up life in a damp dark ditch.
— So mortal motives are misread,
And false designs attributed,
In upper spheres of straws and sticks,
Or lower, of pens and politics.
At the end of the War.
LADY VI
There goes the Lady Vi. How well,
How well I know the spectacle
The earth presents
And its events
To her sweet sight
Each day and night!
“Life is a wheeling show, with me
As its pivot of interest constantly.
Below in the hollows of towns is sin,
Like a blue brimstone mist therein,
Which makes men lively who plunge amid it,
But wrongfully, and wives forbid it.
London is a place for prancing
Along the Row and, later, dancing
Till dawn, with tightening arm-embowments
As hours warm up to tender moments.
“Travel is piquant, and most thrilling
If, further, joined to big-game killing:
At home, too, hunting, hounds full cry,
When Reynard nears his time to die,
‘Tis glee to mark his figure flag,
And how his brush begins to drag,
Till, his earth reached by many a wend,
He finds it stopped, and meets his end.
“Religion is good for all who are meek;
It stays in the Bible through the week,
And floats about the house on Sundays,
But does not linger on till Mondays.
The ten Commandments in one’s prime
Are matter for another time,
While griefs and graves and things allied
In well-bred talk one keeps outside.”
A POPULAR PERSONAGE AT HOME
“I live here: ‘Wessex’ is my name:
I am a dog known rather well:
I guard the house; but how that came
To be my whim I cannot tell.
“With a leap and a heart elate I go
At the end of an hour’s expectancy
To take a walk of a mile or so
With the folk I let live here with me.
“Along the path, amid the grass
I sniff, and find out rarest smells
For rolling over as I pass
The open fields towards the dells.
“No doubt I shall always cross this sill,
And turn the corner, and stand steady,
Gazing back for my mistress till
She reaches where I have run already,
“And that this meadow with its brook,
And bulrush, even as it appears
As I plunge by with hasty look,
Will stay the same a thousand years.”
Thus “Wessex.” But a dubious ray
At times informs his steadfast eye,
Just for a trice, as though to say,
“Yet, will this pass, and pass shall I?”
1924.
INSCRIPTIONS FOR A PEAL OF EIGHT BELLS
AFTER A RESTORATION
I
Thomas Tremble new-made me
Eighteen hundred and fifty-three:
Why he did I fail to see.
II
I was well-toned by William Brine,
Seventeen hundred and twenty-nine;
Now, re-cast, I weakly whine!
III
Fifteen hundred used to be
My date, but since they melted me
‘Tis only eighteen fifty-three.
IV
Henry Hopkins got me made,
And I summon folk as bade;
Not to much purpose, I’m afraid!
V
I likewise; for I bang and bid
In commoner metal than I did,
Some of me being stolen and hid.
VI
I, too, since in a mould they flung me,
Drained my silver, and rehung me,
So that in tin-like tones I tongue me.
VII
In nineteen hundred, so ‘tis said,
They cut my canon off my head,
And made me look scalped, scraped, and dead.
VIII
I’m the peal’s tenor still, but rue it!
Once it took two to swing me through it:
Now I’m rehung, one dolt can do it.
A REFUSAL
Said the grave Dean of Westminster:
Mine is the best minster
Seen in Great Britain,
As many have written:
So therefore I cannot
Rule here if I ban not
Such liberty-taking
As movements for making
Its grayness environ
The memory of Byron,
Which some are demanding
Who think them of standing,
But in my own viewing
Require some subduing
For tendering suggestions
On Abbey-wall questions
That must interfere here
With my proper sphere here,
And bring to disaster
This fane and its master,
Whose dict is but Christian
Though nicknamed Philistian.
A lax Christian charity —
No mental clarity
Ruling its movements
For fabric improvements —
Demands admonition
And strict supervision
When bent on enshrining
Rapscallions, and signing
Their names on God’s stonework,
As if like His own work
Were their lucubrations:
And passed is my patience
That such a creed-scorner
(Not mentioning horner)
Should claim Poet’s Corner.
‘Tis urged that some sinners
Are here for worms’ dinners
Already in person;
That he could not worsen
The walls by a name mere
With men of such fame here.
Yet nay; they but leaven
The others in heaven
In just true proportion,
While more mean distortion.
‘Twill next be expected
That I get erected
To Shelley a tablet
In some niche or gablet.
Then — what makes my skin burn,
Yea, forehead to chin burn —
That I ensconce Swinburne!
August 1924.
EPITAPH ON A PESSIMIST
I’m Smith of Stoke, aged sixty-odd,
I’ve lived without a dame
From youth-time on; and would to God
My dad had done the same.
From the French and Greek.
THE PROTEAN MAIDEN
(SONG)
This single girl is two girls:
How strange such things should be!
One noon eclipsed by few girls,
The next no beauty she.
And daily cries the lover,
In voice and feature vext:
“My last impression of her
Is never to be the next!
“She’s plain: I will forget her!
She’s turned to fair. Ah no,
Forget? — not I! I’ll pet her
With kisses swift and slow.”
A WATERING-PLACE LADY INVENTORIED
A sweetness of temper unsurpassed and unforgettable,
A mole on the cheek whose absence would have been regrettable,
A ripple of pleasant converse full of modulation,
A bearing of inconveniences without vexation,
Till a cynic would find her amiability provoking,
Tempting him to indulge in mean and wicked joking.
Flawlessly oval of face, especially cheek and chin,
With a glance of a quality that beckoned for a glance akin,
A habit of swift assent to any intelligence broken,
Before the fact to be conveyed was fully spoken
And she could know to what her colloquist would win her, —
This from a too alive impulsion to sympathy in her, —
All with a sense of the ridiculous, keen yet charitable;
In brief, a rich, profuse attractiveness unnarratable.
I should have added her hints that her husband prized her but slenderly,
And that (with a sigh) ‘twas a pity she’d no one to treat her tenderly.
THE SEA FIGHT
31 May: 1916
IN MEMORIAM CAPTAIN PROWSE
Down went the grand “Queen Mary,”
“Queen Mary’s” captain, and her crew;
The brunt of battle bare he,
And he died;
And he died, as heroes do.
More really now we view him,
More really lives he, moves with men,
Than while on earth we knew him
As our fellow,
As our fellow-denizen.
Maybe amid the changes
Of ocean’s caverned dim profound,
