Томас Харди (Гарди) Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with Miscellaneous Pieces
X IN THE NUPTIAL CHAMBER
“O that mastering tune?” And up in the bed Like a lace-robed phantom springs the bride; “And why?” asks the man she had that day wed, With a start, as the band plays on outside. “It’s the townsfolks’ cheery compliment Because of our marriage, my Innocent.”
“O but you don’t know! ’Tis the passionate air To which my old Love waltzed with me, And I swore as we spun that none should share My home, my kisses, till death, save he! And he dominates me and thrills me through, And it’s he I embrace while embracing you!”
XI IN THE RESTAURANT
“But hear. If you stay, and the child be born, It will pass as your husband’s with the rest, While, if we fly, the teeth of scorn Will be gleaming at us from east to west; And the child will come as a life despised; I feel an elopement is ill-advised!”
“O you realize not what it is, my dear, To a woman! Daily and hourly alarms Lest the truth should out. How can I stay here, And nightly take him into my arms! Come to the child no name or fame, Let us go, and face it, and bear the shame.”
XII AT THE DRAPER’S
“I stood at the back of the shop, my dear, But you did not perceive me. Well, when they deliver what you were shown I shall know nothing of it, believe me!”
And he coughed and coughed as she paled and said, “O, I didn’t see you come in there — Why couldn’t you speak?” – “Well, I didn’t. I left That you should not notice I’d been there.
“You were viewing some lovely things. ‘Soon required For a widow, of latest fashion’; And I knew ’twould upset you to meet the man Who had to be cold and ashen
“And screwed in a box before they could dress you ‘In the last new note in mourning,’ As they defined it. So, not to distress you, I left you to your adorning.”
XIII ON THE DEATH-BED
“I’ll tell – being past all praying for — Then promptly die.. He was out at the war, And got some scent of the intimacy That was under way between her and me; And he stole back home, and appeared like a ghost One night, at the very time almost That I reached her house. Well, I shot him dead, And secretly buried him. Nothing was said.
“The news of the battle came next day; He was scheduled missing. I hurried away, Got out there, visited the field, And sent home word that a search revealed He was one of the slain; though, lying alone And stript, his body had not been known.
“But she suspected. I lost her love, Yea, my hope of earth, and of Heaven above; And my time’s now come, and I’ll pay the score, Though it be burning for evermore.”
XIV OVER THE COFFIN
They stand confronting, the coffin between, His wife of old, and his wife of late, And the dead man whose they both had been Seems listening aloof, as to things past date. – “I have called,” says the first. “Do you marvel or not?” “In truth,” says the second, “I do – somewhat.”
“Well, there was a word to be said by me!. I divorced that man because of you — It seemed I must do it, boundenly; But now I am older, and tell you true, For life is little, and dead lies he; I would I had let alone you two! And both of us, scorning parochial ways, Had lived like the wives in the patriarchs’ days.”
XV IN THE MOONLIGHT
“O lonely workman, standing there In a dream, why do you stare and stare At her grave, as no other grave there were?
“If your great gaunt eyes so importune Her soul by the shine of this corpse-cold moon, Maybe you’ll raise her phantom soon!”
“Why, fool, it is what I would rather see Than all the living folk there be; But alas, there is no such joy for me!”
“Ah – she was one you loved, no doubt, Through good and evil, through rain and drought, And when she passed, all your sun went out?”
“Nay: she was the woman I did not love, Whom all the others were ranked above, Whom during her life I thought nothing of.”
LYRICS AND REVERIES (continued)
SELF-UNCONSCIOUS
Along the way He walked that day, Watching shapes that reveries limn, And seldom he Had eyes to see The moment that encompassed him.
Bright yellowhammers Made mirthful clamours, And billed long straws with a bustling air, And bearing their load Flew up the road That he followed, alone, without interest there.
From bank to ground And over and round They sidled along the adjoining hedge; Sometimes to the gutter Their yellow flutter Would dip from the nearest slatestone ledge.
The smooth sea-line With a metal shine, And flashes of white, and a sail thereon, He would also descry With a half-wrapt eye Between the projects he mused upon.
Yes, round him were these Earth’s artistries, But specious plans that came to his call Did most engage His pilgrimage, While himself he did not see at all.
Dead now as sherds Are the yellow birds, And all that mattered has passed away; Yet God, the Elf, Now shows him that self As he was, and should have been shown, that day.
O it would have been good Could he then have stood At a focussed distance, and conned the whole, But now such vision Is mere derision, Nor soothes his body nor saves his soul.
Not much, some may Incline to say, To see therein, had it all been seen. Nay! he is aware A thing was there That loomed with an immortal mien.
THE DISCOVERY
I wandered to a crude coast Like a ghost; Upon the hills I saw fires — Funeral pyres Seemingly – and heard breaking Waves like distant cannonades that set the land shaking.
And so I never once guessed A Love-nest, Bowered and candle-lit, lay In my way, Till I found a hid hollow, Where I burst on her my heart could not but follow.
TOLERANCE
“It is a foolish thing,” said I, “To bear with such, and pass it by; Yet so I do, I know not why!”
And at each clash I would surmise That if I had acted otherwise I might have saved me many sighs.
But now the only happiness In looking back that I possess — Whose lack would leave me comfortless —
Is to remember I refrained From masteries I might have gained, And for my tolerance was disdained;
For see, a tomb. And if it were I had bent and broke, I should not dare To linger in the shadows there.
BEFORE AND AFTER SUMMER
I
Looking forward to the spring One puts up with anything. On this February day, Though the winds leap down the street, Wintry scourgings seem but play, And these later shafts of sleet – Sharper pointed than the first — And these later snows – the worst — Are as a half-transparent blind Riddled by rays from sun behind.
II
Shadows of the October pine Reach into this room of mine: On the pine there stands a bird; He is shadowed with the tree. Mutely perched he bills no word; Blank as I am even is he. For those happy suns are past, Fore-discerned in winter last. When went by their pleasure, then? I, alas, perceived not when.
AT DAY-CLOSE IN NOVEMBER
The ten hours’ light is abating, And a late bird flies across, Where the pines, like waltzers waiting, Give their black heads a toss.
Beech leaves, that yellow the noon-time, Float past like specks in the eye; I set every tree in my June time, And now they obscure the sky.
And the children who ramble through here Conceive that there never has been A time when no tall trees grew here, A time when none will be seen.
THE YEAR’S AWAKENING
How do you know that the pilgrim track Along the belting zodiac Swept by the sun in his seeming rounds Is traced by now to the Fishes’ bounds And into the Ram, when weeks of cloud Have wrapt the sky in a clammy shroud, And never as yet a tinct of spring Has shown in the Earth’s apparelling; O vespering bird, how do you know, How do you know?
How do you know, deep underground, Hid in your bed from sight and sound, Without a turn in temperature, With weather life can scarce endure, That light has won a fraction’s strength, And day put on some moments’ length, Whereof in merest rote will come, Weeks hence, mild airs that do not numb; O crocus root, how do you know, How do you know?
February 1910.
UNDER THE WATERFALL
“Whenever I plunge my arm, like this, In a basin of water, I never miss The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day Fetched back from its thickening shroud of gray. Hence the only prime And real love-rhyme That I know by heart, And that leaves no smart, Is the purl of a little valley fall About three spans wide and two spans tall Over a table of solid rock, And into a scoop of the self-same block; The purl of a runlet that never ceases In stir of kingdoms, in wars, in peaces; With a hollow boiling voice it speaks And has spoken since hills were turfless peaks.”
“And why gives this the only prime Idea to you of a real love-rhyme? And why does plunging your arm in a bowl Full of spring water, bring throbs to your soul?”
“Well, under the fall, in a crease of the stone, Though where precisely none ever has known, Jammed darkly, nothing to show how prized, And by now with its smoothness opalized, Is a drinking-glass: For, down that pass My lover and I Walked under a sky Of blue with a leaf-woven awning of green, In the burn of August, to paint the scene, And we placed our basket of fruit and wine By the runlet’s rim, where we sat to dine; And when we had drunk from the glass together, Arched by the oak-copse from the weather, I held the vessel to rinse in the fall, Where it slipped, and sank, and was past recall, Though we stooped and plumbed the little abyss With long bared arms. There the glass still is. And, as said, if I thrust my arm below Cold water in basin or bowl, a throe From the past awakens a sense of that time, And the glass both used, and the cascade’s rhyme. The basin seems the pool, and its edge The hard smooth face of the brook-side ledge, And the leafy pattern of china-ware The hanging plants that were bathing there. By night, by day, when it shines or lours, There lies intact that chalice of ours, And its presence adds to the rhyme of love Persistently sung by the fall above. No lip has touched it since his and mine In turns therefrom sipped lovers’ wine.”
THE SPELL OF THE ROSE
“I mean to build a hall anon, And shape two turrets there, And a broad newelled stair, And a cool well for crystal water; Yes; I will build a hall anon, Plant roses love shall feed upon, And apple trees and pear.”
He set to build the manor-hall, And shaped the turrets there, And the broad newelled stair, And the cool well for crystal water; He built for me that manor-hall, And planted many trees withal, But no rose anywhere.
And as he planted never a rose That bears the flower of love, Though other flowers throve A frost-wind moved our souls to sever Since he had planted never a rose; And misconceits raised horrid shows, And agonies came thereof.
“I’ll mend these miseries,” then said I, And so, at dead of night, I went and, screened from sight, That nought should keep our souls in severance, I set a rose-bush. “This,” said I, “May end divisions dire and wry, And long-drawn days of blight.”
But I was called from earth – yea, called Before my rose-bush grew; And would that now I knew What feels he of the tree I planted, And whether, after I was called To be a ghost, he, as of old, Gave me his heart anew!
Perhaps now blooms that queen of trees I set but saw not grow, And he, beside its glow — Eyes couched of the mis-vision that blurred me — Ay, there beside that queen of trees He sees me as I was, though sees Too late to tell me so!
ST. LAUNCE’S REVISITED
Slip back, Time! Yet again I am nearing Castle and keep, uprearing Gray, as in my prime.
At the inn Smiling close, why is it Not as on my visit When hope and I were twin?
Groom and jade Whom I found here, moulder; Strange the tavern-holder, Strange the tap-maid.
Here I hired Horse and man for bearing Me on my wayfaring To the door desired.
Evening gloomed As I journeyed forward To the faces shoreward, Till their dwelling loomed.
If again Towards the Atlantic sea there I should speed, they’d be there Surely now as then?.
Why waste thought, When I know them vanished Under earth; yea, banished Ever into nought.
POEMS OF 1912–13
Veteris vestigia flammae
THE GOING
Why did you give no hint that night That quickly after the morrow’s dawn, And calmly, as if indifferent quite, You would close your term here, up and be gone Where I could not follow With wing of swallow To gain one glimpse of you ever anon!
Never to bid good-bye, Or give me the softest call, Or utter a wish for a word, while I Saw morning harden upon the wall, Unmoved, unknowing That your great going Had place that moment, and altered all.
Why do you make me leave the house And think for a breath it is you I see At the end of the alley of bending boughs Where so often at dusk you used to be; Till in darkening dankness The yawning blankness Of the perspective sickens me!
You were she who abode By those red-veined rocks far West, You were the swan-necked one who rode Along the beetling Beeny Crest, And, reining nigh me, Would muse and eye me, While Life unrolled us its very best.
Why, then, latterly did we not speak, Did we not think of those days long dead, And ere your vanishing strive to seek That time’s renewal? We might have said, “In this bright spring weather We’ll visit together Those places that once we visited.”
Well, well! All’s past amend, Unchangeable. It must go. I seem but a dead man held on end To sink down soon.. O you could not know That such swift fleeing No soul foreseeing — Not even I – would undo me so!
December 1912.
YOUR LAST DRIVE
Here by the moorway you returned, And saw the borough lights ahead That lit your face – all undiscerned To be in a week the face of the dead, And you told of the charm of that haloed view That never again would beam on you.
And on your left you passed the spot Where eight days later you were to lie, And be spoken of as one who was not; Beholding it with a cursory eye As alien from you, though under its tree You soon would halt everlastingly.
I drove not with you.. Yet had I sat At your side that eve I should not have seen That the countenance I was glancing at Had a last-time look in the flickering sheen, Nor have read the writing upon your face, “I go hence soon to my resting-place;
“You may miss me then. But I shall not know How many times you visit me there, Or what your thoughts are, or if you go There never at all. And I shall not care. Should you censure me I shall take no heed And even your praises I shall not need.”
True: never you’ll know. And you will not mind. But shall I then slight you because of such? Dear ghost, in the past did you ever find The thought “What profit?” move me much Yet the fact indeed remains the same, You are past love, praise, indifference, blame.
December 1912.
THE WALK
You did not walk with me Of late to the hill-top tree By the gated ways, As in earlier days; You were weak and lame, So you never came, And I went alone, and I did not mind, Not thinking of you as left behind.
I walked up there to-day Just in the former way: Surveyed around The familiar ground By myself again: What difference, then? Only that underlying sense Of the look of a room on returning thence.
RAIN ON A GRAVE
Clouds spout upon her Their waters amain In ruthless disdain, — Her who but lately Had shivered with pain As at touch of dishonour If there had lit on her So coldly, so straightly Such arrows of rain.
She who to shelter Her delicate head Would quicken and quicken Each tentative tread If drops chanced to pelt her That summertime spills In dust-paven rills When thunder-clouds thicken And birds close their bills.
Would that I lay there And she were housed here! Or better, together Were folded away there Exposed to one weather We both, – who would stray there When sunny the day there, Or evening was clear At the prime of the year.
Soon will be growing Green blades from her mound, And daises be showing Like stars on the ground, Till she form part of them — Ay – the sweet heart of them, Loved beyond measure With a child’s pleasure All her life’s round.
Jan. 31, 1913.
“I FOUND HER OUT THERE”
I found her out there On a slope few see, That falls westwardly To the salt-edged air, Where the ocean breaks On the purple strand, And the hurricane shakes The solid land.
I brought her here, And have laid her to rest In a noiseless nest No sea beats near. She will never be stirred In her loamy cell By the waves long heard And loved so well.
So she does not sleep By those haunted heights The Atlantic smites And the blind gales sweep, Whence she often would gaze At Dundagel’s far head, While the dipping blaze Dyed her face fire-red;
And would sigh at the tale Of sunk Lyonnesse, As a wind-tugged tress Flapped her cheek like a flail; Or listen at whiles With a thought-bound brow To the murmuring miles She is far from now.
Yet her shade, maybe, Will creep underground Till it catch the sound Of that western sea As it swells and sobs Where she once domiciled, And joy in its throbs With the heart of a child.