Poems by Thomas HardyYou did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb.
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
South of the Line, inland from far Durban,
A mouldering soldier lies--your countryman.
Awry and doubled up are his gray bones,
South of the Line, inland from far Durban,
A mouldering soldier lies--your countryman.
Awry and doubled up are his gray bones,
The day is turning ghost,
And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively,
To join the anonymous host
The day is turning ghost,
And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively,
To join the anonymous host
YOUR troubles shrink not, though I feel them less
Here, far away, than when I tarried near;
I
In Casterbridge there stood a noble pile,
Wrought with pilaster, bay, and balustrade
AS evening shaped I found me on a moor
Which sight could scarce sustain:
The black lean land, of featureless contour,
I MARK the months in liveries dank and dry,
The day-tides many-shaped and hued;
I see the nightfall shades subtrude,
In years defaced and lost,
Two sat here, transport-tossed,
Lit by a living love
The wilted world knew nothing of:
Between us now and here -
Two thrown together
Who are not wont to wear
Life's flushest feather -
Who see the scenes slide past,
I
O the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea,
And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free-
Between us now and here--
Two thrown together
Who are not wont to wear
Life's flushest feather--
Around the house the flakes fly faster,
And all the berries now are gone
From holly and cotoneaster
I
"O Lord, why grievest Thou? -
Since Life has ceased to be
Upon this globe, now cold
As lunar land and sea,
Here's one in whom Nature feared--faint at such vying -
Eclipse while he lived, and decease at his dying.
(After passing Sirmione, April 1887.)
Sirmio, thou dearest dear of strands
That Neptune strokes in lake and sea,
That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
I
"Percussus sum sicut foenum, et aruit cor meum."
- Ps. ci
Wintertime nighs;
But my bereavement-pain
It cannot bring again:
While the far farewell music thins and fails,
And the broad bottoms rip the bearing brine -
While the far farewell music thins and fails,
And the broad bottoms rip the bearing brine -
(E. L. G.)
BENEATH a knap where flown
Nestlings play,
Within walls of weathered stone,
Far away
It faces west, and round the back and sides
High beeches, bending, hang a veil of boughs,
I
There dwells a mighty pair -
Slow, statuesque, intense -
Amid the vague Immense:
None can their chronicle declare,
They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined -- just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around:
THEY sing their dearest songs--
He, she, all of them--yea,
Treble and tenor and bass.
And one to play;
Southampton Docks: October 1899
Here, where Vespasian's legions struck the sands,
And Cendric with the Saxons entered in,
Here, where Vespasian's legions struck the sands,
And Cerdic with his Saxons entered in,
And Henry's army leapt afloat to win
I'm Smith of Stoke aged sixty odd
I've lived without a dame all my life
And wish to God
My dad had done the same.
At last I entered a long dark gallery,
Catacomb-lined; and ranged at the side
Were the bodies of men from far and wide
WILLIAM Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,
Robert's kin, and John's, and Ned's,
Child, were I king, I'd yield my royal rule,
My chariot, sceptre, vassal-service due,
Long have I framed weak phantasies of Thee,
O Willer masked and dumb!
Who makest Life become, -
O epic-famed, god-haunted Central Sea,
Heave careless of the deep wrong done to thee
O epic-famed, god-haunted Central Sea,
Heave careless of the deep wrong done to thee
Forty years back, when much had place
That since has perished out of mind,
I heard that voice and saw that face.
I
I saw a slowly-stepping train --
Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar --
Following in files across a twilit plain
I towered far, and lo! I stood within
The presence of the Lord Most High,
Sent thither by the sons of earth, to win
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
IF but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing,
Well, World, you have kept faith with me,
Kept faith with me;
Upon the whole you have proved to be
Much as you said you were.
For A. W. B.
SHE sought the Studios, beckoning to her side
An arch-designer, for she planned to build.
'TWAS a death-bed summons, and forth I went
By the way of the Western Wall, so drear
On that winter night, and sought a gate--
THE two were silent in a sunless church,
Whose mildewed walls, uneven paving-stones,
UPON a noon I pilgrimed through
A pasture, mile by mile,
Unto the place where I last saw
My dead Love's living smile.
UPON a poet's page I wrote
Of old two letters of her name;
Part seemed she of the effulgent thought
Upon a poet?s page I wrote
Of old two letters of her name;
Part seemed she of the effulgent thought
"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 -
I
I have lived with shades so long,
And talked to them so oft,
Since forth from cot and croft
I went mankind among,
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,
I said to Love,
"It is not now as in old days
When men adored thee and thy ways
All else above;
I
I have lived with Shades so long,
So long have talked to them,
I sped to street and throng,
That sometimes they
I LOOK into my glass,
And view my wasting skin,
And say, "Would God it came to pass
My heart had shrunk as thin!"
I said to Love,
"It is not now as in old days
When men adored thee and thy ways
All else above;
I said to Love,
"It is not now as in old days
When men adored thee and thy ways
All else above;
THE years have gathered grayly
Since I danced upon this leaze
With one who kindled gayly
Love's fitful ecstasies!
I
Here's the mould of a musical bird long passed from light,
Which over the earth before man came was winging;
In a Wood
Pale beech and pine-tree blue,
Set in one clay,
Bough to bough cannot you
Bide out your day?
Pet was never mourned as you,
Purrer of the spotless hue,
Plumy tail, and wistful gaze
While you humoured our queer ways,
"OLD Norbert with the flat blue cap--
A German said to be--
Why let your pipe die on your lap,
Your eyes blink absently?"--
Minor Key
I
Let me enjoy the earth no less
Because the all-enacting Might
That fashioned forth its loveliness
Spoken by Miss Ada Rehan at the Lyceum Theatre, July 23, 1890, at a
In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.
Is it worth while, dear, now,
To call for bells, and sally forth arrayed
For marriage-rites -- discussed, decried, delayed
When the hamlet hailed a birth
Judy used to cry:
When she heard our christening mirth
She would kneel and sigh.
Song of the Soldiers
What of the faith and fire within us
Men who march away
Ere the barn-cocks say
Night is growing gray,
To M. H.
WE passed where flag and flower
Signalled a jocund throng;
We said: "Go to, the hour
Is apt!"--and joined the song;
In the third-class seat sat the journeying boy,
And the roof-lamp's oily flame
Played down on his listless form and face,
He was leaning by a face,
He was looking into eyes,
And he knew a trysting-place,
And he heard seductive sighs;
But the face,
That mirror
Which makes of men a transparency,
Who holds that mirror
And bids us such a breast-bare spectacle see
I
I traversed a dominion
Whose spokesmen spake out strong
Their purpose and opinion
Through pulpit, press, and song.
"ALIVE?"--And I leapt in my wonder,
Was faint of my joyance,
And grasses and grove shone in garments
Of glory to me.
My spirit will not haunt the mound
Above my breast,
But travel, memory-possessed,
To where my tremulous being found
WHEN I look forth at dawning, pool,
Field, flock, and lonely tree,
All seem to look at me
WE stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod,
When the wasting embers redden the chimney-breast,
And Life's bare pathway looms like a desert track to me,
A Load of brushes and baskets and cradles and chairs
Labours along the street in the rain:
Whence comes Solace?--Not from seeing
What is doing, suffering, being,
Not from noting Life's conditions,
My ardours for emprize nigh lost
Since Life has bared its bones to me,
I shrink to seek a modern coast
SNOW-BOUND in woodland, a mournful word,
Dropt now and then from the bill of a bird,
THOUGH I waste watches framing words to fetter
Some spirit to mine own in clasp and kiss,
We walked where Victor Jove was shrined awhile,
And passed to Livia's rich red mural show,
Who, then, was Cestius,
And what is he to me? -
Amid thick thoughts and memories multitudinous
One thought alone brings he.
Who, then, was Cestius,
And what is he to me? -
Amid thick thoughts and memories multitudinous
One thought alone brings he.
These numbered cliffs and gnarls of masonry
Outskeleton Time's central city, Rome;
Whereof each arch, entablature, and dome
These numbered cliffs and gnarls of masonry
Outskeleton Time's central city, Rome;
Whereof each arch, entablature, and dome
We walked where Victor Jove was shrined awhile,
And passed to Livia's rich red mural show,
I sat in the Muses' Hall at the mid of the day,
And it seemed to grow still, and the people to pass away,
With Thoughts of Sergeant M---- (Pensioner), who died 185-
"WHY, Sergeant, stray on the Ivel Way,
"Thou shalt be--Nothing."--Omar Khayyam.
"Tombless, with no remembrance."--W. Shakespeare.
Dead shalt thou lie; and nought
He enters, and mute on the edge of a chair
Sits a thin-faced lady, a stranger there,
A type of decayed gentility;
THEY bear him to his resting-place--
In slow procession sweeping by;
I follow at a stranger's space;
There was a time in former years--
While my roof-tree was his--
When I should have been distressed by fears
They bear him to his resting-place?
In slow procession sweeping by;
I follow at a stranger?s space;
I
WHEN you shall see me lined by tool of Time,
My lauded beauties carried off from me,
I WILL be faithful to thee; aye, I will!
And Death shall choose me with a wondering eye
That he did not discern and domicile
THIS love puts all humanity from me;
I can but maledict her, pray her dead,
For giving love and getting love of thee--
When you shall see me lined by tool of Time,
My lauded beauties carried off from me,
My eyes no longer stars as in their prime,
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.
In Memory of one of the Writer's Family who was a Volunteer during the War
with Napoleon
In a ferny byway
Much wonder I--here long low-laid -
That this dead wall should be
Betwixt the Maker and the made,
Between Thyself and me!
I
When of tender mind and body
I was moved by minstrelsy,
And that strain "The Bridge of Lodi"
I
When of tender mind and body
I was moved by minstrelsy,
And that strain "The Bridge of Lodi"
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
THE sun had wheeled from Grey's to Dammer's Crest,
And still I mused on that Thing imminent:
"Men know but little more than we,
Who count us least of things terrene,
How happy days are made to be!
THREE captains went to Indian wars,
And only one returned:
Their mate of yore, he singly wore
The laurels all had earned.
I rose at night and visited
The Cave of the Unborn,
And crowding shapes surrounded me
For tidings of the life to be,
'Whenever I plunge my arm, like this,
In a basin of water, I never miss
The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day
WHEN, soul in soul reflected,
We breathed an æthered air,
When we neglected
All things elsewhere,
Moments the mightiest pass calendared,
And when the Absolute
In backward Time outgave the deedful word
Moments the mightiest pass uncalendared,
And when the Absolute
In backward Time outgave the deedful word
By Corporal Tullidge. See "The Trumpet-Major"
In Memory of S. C. (Pensioner). Died 184-
WE trenched, we trumpeted and drummed,
This is the weather the cuckoo likes,
And so do I;
When showers betumble the chestnut spikes,
And nestlings fly;
When I set out for Lyonnesse,
A hundred miles away,
The rime was on the spray,
And starlight lit my lonesomeness
Scene.--A wide stretch of fallow ground recently sown with wheat, and
I
Never a careworn wife but shows,
If a joy suffuse her,
Something beautiful to those
Patient to peruse her,
Thirty-two years since, up against the sun,
Seven shapes, thin atomies to lower sight,
Thirty-two years since, up against the sun,
Seven shapes, thin atomies to lower sight,
