Frail luckless exiles hither
brought!
Thomas Hardy - Poems of the Past and Present
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 {290}
(_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.
MISCELLANEOUS POEMS
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
BROTHER 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.
