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Title: Wessex Poems and Other Verses

Author: Thomas Hardy

Release date: April 1, 2002 [eBook #3167]

Most recently updated: January 30, 2015

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/3167

Credits: Transcribed from the 1919 Macmillan and Co. “Wessex Poems and Other Verses; Poems of the Past and the Present” edition by David Price

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WESSEX POEMS AND OTHER VERSES ***

Transcribed from the 1919 Macmillan and Co. “Wessex Poems and Other Verses; Poems of the Past and the Present” edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

WESSEX POEMS AND

OTHER VERSES

BY

THOMAS HARDY

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED

ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON

1919

COPYRIGHT

“Wessex Poems”: First Edition, Crown 8vo, 1898.  New Edition 1903.

First Pocket Edition June 1907.  Reprinted January 1909, 1913

“Poems, Past and Present”: First edition 1901 (dated 1902)

Second Edition 1903.  First Pocket Edition June 1907

Reprinted January 1908, 1913, 1918, 1919

PREFACE TO WESSEX POEMS

OF the miscellaneous collection of verse that follows, only four pieces have been published, though many were written long ago, and other partly written.  In some few cases the verses were turned into prose and printed as such, it having been unanticipated at that time that they might see the light.

Whenever an ancient and legitimate word of the district, for which there was no equivalent in received English, suggested itself as the most natural, nearest, and often only expression of a thought, it has been made use of, on what seemed good grounds.

The pieces are in a large degree dramatic or personative in conception; and this even where they are not obviously so.

The dates attached to some of the poems do not apply to the rough sketches given in illustration, which have been recently made, and, as may be surmised, are inserted for personal and local reasons rather than for their intrinsic qualities.

T. H.

September 1898.

CONTENTS

PAGE

THE TEMPORARY THE ALL

1

AMABEL

4

HAP

7

“IN VISION I ROAMED”

9

AT A BRIDAL

11

POSTPONEMENT

13

A CONFESSION TO A FRIEND IN TROUBLE

15

NEUTRAL TONES

17

SHE

19

HER INITIALS

21

HER DILEMMA

23

REVULSION

27

SHE, TO HIM, I.

31

,,     ,,   II.

33

,,     ,,   III.

35

,,     ,,   IV.

37

DITTY

39

THE SERGEANT’S SONG

43

VALENCIENNES

45

SAN SEBASTIAN

51

THE STRANGER’S SONG

59

THE BURGHERS

61

LEIPZIG

67

THE PEASANT’S CONFESSION

79

THE ALARM

91

HER DEATH AND AFTER

103

THE DANCE AT THE PHŒNIX

115

THE CASTERBRIDGE CAPTAINS

125

A SIGN-SEEKER

129

MY CICELY

133

HER IMMORTALITY

143

THE IVY-WIFE

147

A MEETING WITH DESPAIR

149

UNKNOWING

153

FRIENDS BEYOND

155

TO OUTER NATURE

159

THOUGHTS OF PHENA

163

MIDDLE-AGE ENTHUSIASMS

167

IN A WOOD

169

TO A LADY

173

TO AN ORPHAN CHILD

175

NATURE’S QUESTIONING

177

THE IMPERCIPIENT

181

AT AN INN

187

THE SLOW NATURE

191

IN A EWELEAZE NEAR WEATHERBURY

195

THE FIRE AT TRANTER SWEATLEY’S

201

HEIRESS AND ARCHITECT

211

THE TWO MEN

217

LINES

223

“I LOOK INTO MY GLASS”

227

THE TEMPORARY THE ALL

CHANGE and chancefulness in my flowering youthtime,

Set me sun by sun near to one unchosen;

Wrought us fellow-like, and despite divergence,

Friends interlinked us.

“Cherish him can I while the true one forthcome—

Come the rich fulfiller of my prevision;

Life is roomy yet, and the odds unbounded.”

So self-communed I.

Thwart my wistful way did a damsel saunter,

Fair, the while unformed to be all-eclipsing;

“Maiden meet,” held I, “till arise my forefelt

Wonder of women.”

Long a visioned hermitage deep desiring,

Tenements uncouth I was fain to house in;

“Let such lodging be for a breath-while,” thought I,

“Soon a more seemly.

“Then, high handiwork will I make my life-deed,

Truth and Light outshow; but the ripe time pending,

Intermissive aim at the thing sufficeth.”

Thus I . . . But lo, me!

Mistress, friend, place, aims to be bettered straightway,

Bettered not has Fate or my hand’s achieving;

Sole the showance those of my onward earth-track—

Never transcended!

AMABEL

I MARKED her ruined hues,

Her custom-straitened views,

And asked, “Can there indwell

My Amabel?”

I looked upon her gown,

Once rose, now earthen brown;

The change was like the knell

Of Amabel.

Her step’s mechanic ways

Had lost the life of May’s;

Her laugh, once sweet in swell,

Spoilt Amabel.

I mused: “Who sings the strain

I sang ere warmth did wane?

Who thinks its numbers spell

His Amabel?”—

Knowing that, though Love cease,

Love’s race shows undecrease;

All find in dorp or dell

An Amabel.

—I felt that I could creep

To some housetop, and weep,

That Time the tyrant fell

Ruled Amabel!

I said (the while I sighed

That love like ours had died),

“Fond things I’ll no more tell

To Amabel,

“But leave her to her fate,

And fling across the gate,

‘Till the Last Trump, farewell,

O Amabel!’”

1865.

HAP

IF but some vengeful god would call to me

From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing,

Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,

That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!”

Then would I bear, and clench myself, and die,

Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;

Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I

Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so.  How arrives it joy lies slain,

And why unblooms the best hope ever sown?

—Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain,

And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan . . .

These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown

Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

1866.

“IN VISION I ROAMED”

TO —

IN vision I roamed the flashing Firmament,

So fierce in blazon that the Night waxed wan,

As though with an awed sense of such ostent;

And as I thought my spirit ranged on and on

In footless traverse through ghast heights of sky,

To the last chambers of the monstrous Dome,

Where stars the brightest here to darkness die:

Then, any spot on our own Earth seemed Home!

And the sick grief that you were far away

Grew pleasant thankfulness that you were near?

Who might have been, set on some outstep sphere,

Less than a Want to me, as day by day

I lived unware, uncaring all that lay

Locked in that Universe taciturn and drear.

1866.

AT A BRIDAL

TO —

WHEN you paced forth, to wait maternity,

A dream of other offspring held my mind,

Compounded of us twain as Love designed;

Rare forms, that corporate now will never be!

Should I, too, wed as slave to Mode’s decree,

And each thus found apart, of false desire,

A stolid line, whom no high aims will fire

As had fired ours could ever have mingled we;

And, grieved that lives so matched should mis-compose,

Each mourn the double waste; and question dare

To the Great Dame whence incarnation flows.

Why those high-purposed children never were:

What will she answer?  That she does not care

If the race all such sovereign types unknows.

1866.

POSTPONEMENT

SNOW-BOUND in woodland, a mournful word,

Dropt now and then from the bill of a bird,

Reached me on wind-wafts; and thus I heard,

Wearily waiting:—

“I planned her a nest in a leafless tree,

But the passers eyed and twitted me,

And said: ‘How reckless a bird is he,

Cheerily mating!’

“Fear-filled, I stayed me till summer-tide,

In lewth of leaves to throne her bride;

But alas! her love for me waned and died,

Wearily waiting.

“Ah, had I been like some I see,

Born to an evergreen nesting-tree,

None had eyed and twitted me,

Cheerily mating!”

1866.

A CONFESSION TO A FRIEND IN TROUBLE

YOUR troubles shrink not, though I feel them less

Here, far away, than when I tarried near;

I even smile old smiles—with listlessness—

Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries mere.

A thought too strange to house within my brain

Haunting its outer precincts I discern:

—That I will not show zeal again to learn

Your griefs, and sharing them, renew my pain . . .

It goes, like murky bird or buccaneer

That shapes its lawless figure on the main,

And each new impulse tends to make outflee

The unseemly instinct that had lodgment here;

Yet, comrade old, can bitterer knowledge be

Than that, though banned, such instinct was in me!

1866.

NEUTRAL TONES

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,

—They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove

Over tedious riddles solved years ago;

And some words played between us to and fro—

On which lost the more by our love.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing

Alive enough to have strength to die;

And a grin of bitterness swept thereby

Like an ominous bird a-wing . . .

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,

And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me

Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,

And a pond edged with grayish leaves.

1867.

SHE

AT HIS FUNERAL

THEY bear him to his resting-place—

In slow procession sweeping by;

I follow at a stranger’s space;

His kindred they, his sweetheart I.

Unchanged my gown of garish dye,

Though sable-sad is their attire;

But they stand round with griefless eye,

Whilst my regret consumes like fire!

187–.

HER INITIALS

UPON a poet’s page I wrote

Of old two letters of her name;

Part seemed she of the effulgent thought

Whence that high singer’s rapture came.

—When now I turn the leaf the same

Immortal light illumes the lay,

But from the letters of her name

The radiance has died away!

1869.

HER DILEMMA

(IN — CHURCH)

THE two were silent in a sunless church,

Whose mildewed walls, uneven paving-stones,

And wasted carvings passed antique research;

And nothing broke the clock’s dull monotones.

Leaning against a wormy poppy-head,

So wan and worn that he could scarcely stand,

—For he was soon to die,—he softly said,

“Tell me you love me!”—holding hard her hand.

She would have given a world to breathe “yes” truly,

So much his life seemed handing on her mind,

And hence she lied, her heart persuaded throughly

’Twas worth her soul to be a moment kind.

But the sad need thereof, his nearing death,

So mocked humanity that she shamed to prize

A world conditioned thus, or care for breath

Where Nature such dilemmas could devise.

1866.

REVULSION

THOUGH I waste watches framing words to fetter

Some spirit to mine own in clasp and kiss,

Out of the night there looms a sense ’twere better

To fail obtaining whom one fails to miss.

For winning love we win the risk of losing,

And losing love is as one’s life were riven;

It cuts like contumely and keen ill-using

To cede what was superfluously given.

Let me then feel no more the fateful thrilling

That devastates the love-worn wooer’s frame,

The hot ado of fevered hopes, the chilling

That agonizes disappointed aim!

So may I live no junctive law fulfilling,

And my heart’s table bear no woman’s name.

1866.

SHE, TO HIM

I

WHEN you shall see me in the toils of Time,

My lauded beauties carried off from me,

My eyes no longer stars as in their prime,

My name forgot of Maiden Fair and Free;

When in your being heart concedes to mind,

And judgment, though you scarce its process know,

Recalls the excellencies I once enshrined,

And you are irked that they have withered so:

Remembering that with me lies not the blame,

That Sportsman Time but rears his brood to kill,

Knowing me in my soul the very same—

One who would die to spare you touch of ill!—

Will you not grant to old affection’s claim

The hand of friendship down Life’s sunless hill?

1866.

SHE, TO HIM

II

PERHAPS, long hence, when I have passed away,

Some other’s feature, accent, thought like mine,

Will carry you back to what I used to say,

And bring some memory of your love’s decline.

Then you may pause awhile and think, “Poor jade!”

And yield a sigh to me—as ample due,

Not as the tittle of a debt unpaid

To one who could resign her all to you—

And thus reflecting, you will never see

That your thin thought, in two small words conveyed,

Was no such fleeting phantom-thought to me,

But the Whole Life wherein my part was played;

And you amid its fitful masquerade

A Thought—as I in yours but seem to be.

1866.

SHE, TO HIM

III

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

One his by right ever since that last Good-bye!

I have no care for friends, or kin, or prime

Of manhood who deal gently with me here;

Amid the happy people of my time

Who work their love’s fulfilment, I appear

Numb as a vane that cankers on its point,

True to the wind that kissed ere canker came;

Despised by souls of Now, who would disjoint

The mind from memory, and make Life all aim,

My old dexterities of hue quite gone,

And nothing left for Love to look upon.

1866.

SHE, TO HIM

IV

This love puts all humanity from me;

I can but maledict her, pray her dead,

For giving love and getting love of thee—

Feeding a heart that else mine own had fed!

How much I love I know not, life not known,

Save as some unit I would add love by;

But this I know, my being is but thine own—

Fused from its separateness by ecstasy.

And thus I grasp thy amplitudes, of her

Ungrasped, though helped by nigh-regarding eyes;

Canst thou then hate me as an envier

Who see unrecked what I so dearly prize?

Believe me, Lost One, Love is lovelier

The more it shapes its moan in selfish-wise.

1866.

DITTY

(E. L G.)

BENEATH a knap where flown

Nestlings play,

Within walls of weathered stone,

Far away

From the files of formal houses,

By the bough the firstling browses,

Lives a Sweet: no merchants meet,

No man barters, no man sells

Where she dwells.

Upon that fabric fair

“Here is she!”

Seems written everywhere

Unto me.

But to friends and nodding neighbours,

Fellow-wights in lot and labours,

Who descry the times as I,

No such lucid legend tells

Where she dwells.

Should I lapse to what I was

Ere we met;

(Such can not be, but because

Some forget

Let me feign it)—none would notice

That where she I know by rote is

Spread a strange and withering change,

Like a drying of the wells

Where she dwells.

To feel I might have kissed—

Loved as true—

Otherwhere, nor Mine have missed

My life through.

Had I never wandered near her,

Is a smart severe—severer

In the thought that she is nought,

Even as I, beyond the dells

Where she dwells.

And Devotion droops her glance

To recall

What bond-servants of Chance

We are all.

I but found her in that, going

On my errant path unknowing,

I did not out-skirt the spot

That no spot on earth excels,

—Where she dwells!

1870.

THE SERGEANT’S SONG

(1803)

WHEN Lawyers strive to heal a breach,

And Parsons practise what they preach;

Then Little Boney he’ll pounce down,

And march his men on London town!

Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lorum,

Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lay!

When Justices hold equal scales,

And Rogues are only found in jails;

Then Little Boney he’ll pounce down,

And march his men on London town!

Rollicum-rorum, &c.

When Rich Men find their wealth a curse,

And fill therewith the Poor Man’s purse;

Then Little Boney he’ll pounce down,

And march his men on London town!

Rollicum-rorum, &c.

When Husbands with their Wives agree,

And Maids won’t wed from modesty;

Then Little Boney he’ll pounce down,

And march his men on London town!

Rollicum-rorum, tol-tol-lorum,

Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lay!

1878.

Published in “The Trumpet-Major,” 1880.

VALENCIENNES

(1793)

BY CORP’L TULLIDGE: see “The Trumpet-Major”

IN MEMORY OF S. C. (PENSIONER).  DIED 184–

WE trenched, we trumpeted and drummed,

And from our mortars tons of iron hummed

Ath’art the ditch, the month we bombed

The Town o’ Valencieën.

’Twas in the June o’ Ninety-dree

(The Duke o’ Yark our then Commander been)

The German Legion, Guards, and we

Laid siege to Valencieën.

This was the first time in the war

That French and English spilled each other’s gore;

—Few dreamt how far would roll the roar

Begun at Valencieën!

’Twas said that we’d no business there

A-topperèn the French for disagreën;

However, that’s not my affair—

We were at Valencieën.

Such snocks and slats, since war began

Never knew raw recruit or veteran:

Stone-deaf therence went many a man

Who served at Valencieën.

Into the streets, ath’art the sky,

A hundred thousand balls and bombs were fleën;

And harmless townsfolk fell to die

Each hour at Valencieën!

And, sweatèn wi’ the bombardiers,

A shell was slent to shards anighst my ears:

—’Twas nigh the end of hopes and fears

For me at Valencieën!

They bore my wownded frame to camp,

And shut my gapèn skull, and washed en cleän,

And jined en wi’ a zilver clamp

Thik night at Valencieën.

“We’ve fetched en back to quick from dead;

But never more on earth while rose is red

Will drum rouse Corpel!” Doctor said

O’ me at Valencieën.

’Twer true.  No voice o’ friend or foe

Can reach me now, or any livèn beën;

And little have I power to know

Since then at Valencieën!

I never hear the zummer hums

O’ bees; and don’ know when the cuckoo comes;

But night and day I hear the bombs

We threw at Valencieën . . .

As for the Duke o’ Yark in war,

There be some volk whose judgment o’ en is mean;

But this I say—a was not far

From great at Valencieën.

O’ wild wet nights, when all seems sad,

My wownds come back, as though new wownds I’d had;

But yet—at times I’m sort o’ glad

I fout at Valencieën.

Well: Heaven wi’ its jasper halls

Is now the on’y Town I care to be in . . .

Good Lord, if Nick should bomb the walls

As we did Valencieën!

1878–1897.

SAN SEBASTIAN

(August 1813)

WITH THOUGHTS OF SERGEANT M— (PENSIONER), WHO DIED 185–.

“WHY, Sergeant, stray on the Ivel Way,

As though at home there were spectres rife?

From first to last ’twas a proud career!

And your sunny years with a gracious wife

Have brought you a daughter dear.

“I watched her to-day; a more comely maid,

As she danced in her muslin bowed with blue,

Round a Hintock maypole never gayed.”

—“Aye, aye; I watched her this day, too,

As it happens,” the Sergeant said.

“My daughter is now,” he again began,

“Of just such an age as one I knew

When we of the Line and Forlorn-hope van,

On an August morning—a chosen few—

Stormed San Sebastian.

“She’s a score less three; so about was she—

The maiden I wronged in Peninsular days . . .

You may prate of your prowess in lusty times,

But as years gnaw inward you blink your bays,

And see too well your crimes!

“We’d stormed it at night, by the vlanker-light

Of burning towers, and the mortar’s boom:

We’d topped the breach; but had failed to stay,

For our files were misled by the baffling gloom;

And we said we’d storm by day.

“So, out of the trenches, with features set,

On that hot, still morning, in measured pace,

Our column climbed; climbed higher yet,

Past the fauss’bray, scarp, up the curtain-face,

And along the parapet.

“From the battened hornwork the cannoneers

Hove crashing balls of iron fire;

On the shaking gap mount the volunteers

In files, and as they mount expire

Amid curses, groans, and cheers.

“Five hours did we storm, five hours re-form,

As Death cooled those hot blood pricked on;

Till our cause was helped by a woe within:

They swayed from the summit we’d leapt upon,

And madly we entered in.

“On end for plunder, ’mid rain and thunder

That burst with the lull of our cannonade,

We vamped the streets in the stifling air—

Our hunger unsoothed, our thirst unstayed—

And ransacked the buildings there.

“Down the stony steps of the house-fronts white

We rolled rich puncheons of Spanish grape,

Till at length, with the fire of the wine alight,

I saw at a doorway a fair fresh shape—

A woman, a sylph, or sprite.

“Afeard she fled, and with heated head

I pursued to the chamber she called her own;

—When might is right no qualms deter,

And having her helpless and alone

I wreaked my will on her.

“She raised her beseeching eyes to me,

And I heard the words of prayer she sent

In her own soft language . . . Seemingly

I copied those eyes for my punishment

In begetting the girl you see!

“So, to-day I stand with a God-set brand

Like Cain’s, when he wandered from kindred’s ken . . .

I served through the war that made Europe free;

I wived me in peace-year.  But, hid from men,

I bear that mark on me.

“And I nightly stray on the Ivel Way

As though at home there were spectres rife;

I delight me not in my proud career;

And ’tis coals of fire that a gracious wife

Should have brought me a daughter dear!”

THE STRANGER’S SONG

(As sung by MR. CHARLES CHARRINGTON in the play of “The Three Wayfarers”)

O MY trade it is the rarest one,

Simple shepherds all—

My trade is a sight to see;

For my customers I tie, and take ’em up on high,

And waft ’em to a far countree!

My tools are but common ones,

Simple shepherds all—

My tools are no sight to see:

A little hempen string, and a post whereon to swing,

Are implements enough for me!

To-morrow is my working day,

Simple shepherds all—

To-morrow is a working day for me:

For the farmer’s sheep is slain, and the lad who did it ta’en,

And on his soul may God ha’ mer-cy!

Printed in “The Three Strangers,” 1883.

THE BURGHERS

(17–)

THE sun had wheeled from Grey’s to Dammer’s Crest,

And still I mused on that Thing imminent:

At length I sought the High-street to the West.

The level flare raked pane and pediment

And my wrecked face, and shaped my nearing friend

Like one of those the Furnace held unshent.

“I’ve news concerning her,” he said.  “Attend.

They fly to-night at the late moon’s first gleam:

Watch with thy steel: two righteous thrusts will end

Her shameless visions and his passioned dream.

I’ll watch with thee, to testify thy wrong—

To aid, maybe.—Law consecrates the scheme.”

I started, and we paced the flags along

Till I replied: “Since it has come to this

I’ll do it!  But alone.  I can be strong.”

Three hours past Curfew, when the Froom’s mild hiss

Reigned sole, undulled by whirr of merchandize,

From Pummery-Tout to where the Gibbet is,

I crossed my pleasaunce hard by Glyd’path Rise,

And stood beneath the wall.  Eleven strokes went,

And to the door they came, contrariwise,

And met in clasp so close I had but bent

My lifted blade upon them to have let

Their two souls loose upon the firmament.

But something held my arm.  “A moment yet

As pray-time ere you wantons die!” I said;

And then they saw me.  Swift her gaze was set

With eye and cry of love illimited

Upon her Heart-king.  Never upon me

Had she thrown look of love so thorough-sped! . . .

At once she flung her faint form shieldingly

On his, against the vengeance of my vows;

The which o’erruling, her shape shielded he.

Blanked by such love, I stood as in a drowse,

And the slow moon edged from the upland nigh,

My sad thoughts moving thuswise: “I may house

And I may husband her, yet what am I

But licensed tyrant to this bonded pair?

Says Charity, Do as ye would be done by.” . . .

Hurling my iron to the bushes there,

I bade them stay.  And, as if brain and breast

Were passive, they walked with me to the stair.

Inside the house none watched; and on we prest

Before a mirror, in whose gleam I read

Her beauty, his,—and mine own mien unblest;

Till at her room I turned.  “Madam,” I said,

“Have you the wherewithal for this?  Pray speak.

Love fills no cupboard.  You’ll need daily bread.”

“We’ve nothing, sire,” said she; “and nothing seek.

’Twere base in me to rob my lord unware;

Our hands will earn a pittance week by week.”

And next I saw she’d piled her raiment rare

Within the garde-robes, and her household purse,

Her jewels, and least lace of personal wear;

And stood in homespun.  Now grown wholly hers,

I handed her the gold, her jewels all,

And him the choicest of her robes diverse.

“I’ll take you to the doorway in the wall,

And then adieu,” I to them.  “Friends, withdraw.”

They did so; and she went—beyond recall.

And as I paused beneath the arch I saw

Their moonlit figures—slow, as in surprise—

Descend the slope, and vanish on the haw.

“‘Fool,’ some will say,” I thought.  “But who is wise,

Save God alone, to weigh my reasons why?”

—“Hast thou struck home?” came with the boughs’ night-sighs.

It was my friend.  “I have struck well.  They fly,

But carry wounds that none can cicatrize.”

—“Not mortal?” said he.  “Lingering—worse,” said I.

LEIPZIG

(1813)

Scene: The Master-tradesmen’s Parlour at the Old Ship Inn, Casterbridge.  Evening.

“OLD Norbert with the flat blue cap—

A German said to be—

Why let your pipe die on your lap,

Your eyes blink absently?”—

—“Ah! . . . Well, I had thought till my cheek was wet

Of my mother—her voice and mien

When she used to sing and pirouette,

And touse the tambourine

“To the march that yon street-fiddler plies:

She told me ’twas the same

She’d heard from the trumpets, when the Allies

Her city overcame.

“My father was one of the German Hussars,

My mother of Leipzig; but he,

Long quartered here, fetched her at close of the wars,

And a Wessex lad reared me.

“And as I grew up, again and again

She’d tell, after trilling that air,

Of her youth, and the battles on Leipzig plain

And of all that was suffered there! . . .

“—’Twas a time of alarms.  Three Chiefs-at-arms

Combined them to crush One,

And by numbers’ might, for in equal fight

He stood the matched of none.

“Carl Schwarzenberg was of the plot,

And Blücher, prompt and prow,

And Jean the Crown-Prince Bernadotte:

Buonaparte was the foe.

“City and plain had felt his reign

From the North to the Middle Sea,

And he’d now sat down in the noble town

Of the King of Saxony.

“October’s deep dew its wet gossamer threw

Upon Leipzig’s lawns, leaf-strewn,

Where lately each fair avenue

Wrought shade for summer noon.

“To westward two dull rivers crept

Through miles of marsh and slough,

Whereover a streak of whiteness swept—

The Bridge of Lindenau.

“Hard by, in the City, the One, care-tossed,

Gloomed over his shrunken power;

And without the walls the hemming host

Waxed denser every hour.

“He had speech that night on the morrow’s designs

With his chiefs by the bivouac fire,

While the belt of flames from the enemy’s lines

Flared nigher him yet and nigher.

“Three sky-lights then from the girdling trine

Told, ‘Ready!’  As they rose

Their flashes seemed his Judgment-Sign

For bleeding Europe’s woes.

“’Twas seen how the French watch-fires that night

Glowed still and steadily;

And the Three rejoiced, for they read in the sight

That the One disdained to flee . . .

“—Five hundred guns began the affray

On next day morn at nine;

Such mad and mangling cannon-play

Had never torn human line.

“Around the town three battles beat,

Contracting like a gin;

As nearer marched the million feet

Of columns closing in.

“The first battle nighed on the low Southern side;

The second by the Western way;

The nearing of the third on the North was heard:

—The French held all at bay.

“Against the first band did the Emperor stand;

Against the second stood Ney;

Marmont against the third gave the order-word:

—Thus raged it throughout the day.

“Fifty thousand sturdy souls on those trampled plains and knolls,

Who met the dawn hopefully,

And were lotted their shares in a quarrel not theirs,

Dropt then in their agony.

“‘O,’ the old folks said, ‘ye Preachers stern!

O so-called Christian time!

When will men’s swords to ploughshares turn?

When come the promised prime?’ . . .

“—The clash of horse and man which that day began,

Closed not as evening wore;

And the morrow’s armies, rear and van,

Still mustered more and more.

“From the City towers the Confederate Powers

Were eyed in glittering lines,

And up from the vast a murmuring passed

As from a wood of pines.

“‘’Tis well to cover a feeble skill

By numbers!’ scoffèd He;

‘But give me a third of their strength, I’d fill

Half Hell with their soldiery!’

“All that day raged the war they waged,

And again dumb night held reign,

Save that ever upspread from the dark deathbed

A miles-wide pant of pain.

“Hard had striven brave Ney, the true Bertrand,

Victor, and Augereau,

Bold Poniatowski, and Lauriston,

To stay their overthrow;

“But, as in the dream of one sick to death

There comes a narrowing room

That pens him, body and limbs and breath,

To wait a hideous doom,

“So to Napoleon, in the hush

That held the town and towers

Through these dire nights, a creeping crush

Seemed inborne with the hours.

“One road to the rearward, and but one,

Did fitful Chance allow;

’Twas where the Pleiss’ and Elster run—

The Bridge of Lindenau.

“The nineteenth dawned.  Down street and Platz

The wasted French sank back,

Stretching long lines across the Flats

And on the bridge-way track;

“When there surged on the sky an earthen wave,

And stones, and men, as though

Some rebel churchyard crew updrave

Their sepulchres from below.

“To Heaven is blown Bridge Lindenau;

Wrecked regiments reel therefrom;

And rank and file in masses plough

The sullen Elster-Strom.

“A gulf was Lindenau; and dead

Were fifties, hundreds, tens;

And every current rippled red

With Marshal’s blood and men’s.

“The smart Macdonald swam therein,

And barely won the verge;

Bold Poniatowski plunged him in

Never to re-emerge.

“Then stayed the strife.  The remnants wound

Their Rhineward way pell-mell;

And thus did Leipzig City sound

An Empire’s passing bell;

“While in cavalcade, with band and blade,

Came Marshals, Princes, Kings;

And the town was theirs . . . Ay, as simple maid,

My mother saw these things!

“And whenever those notes in the street begin,

I recall her, and that far scene,

And her acting of how the Allies marched in,

And her touse of the tambourine!”

THE PEASANT’S CONFESSION

“Si le maréchal Grouchy avait été rejoint par l’officier que Napoléon lui avait expédié la veille à dix heures du soir, toute question eût disparu.  Mais cet officier n’était point parvenu à sa destination, ainsi que le maréchal n’a cessé de l’affirmer toute sa vie, et il faut l’en croire, car autrement il n’aurait eu aucune raison pour hésiter.  Cet officier avait-il été pris? avait-il passé à l’ennemi?  C’est ce qu’on a toujours ignoré.”

—THIERS: Histoire de l’Empire.  “Waterloo.”

GOOD Father! . . . ’Twas an eve in middle June,

And war was waged anew

By great Napoleon, who for years had strewn

Men’s bones all Europe through.

Three nights ere this, with columned corps he’d crossed

The Sambre at Charleroi,

To move on Brussels, where the English host

Dallied in Parc and Bois.

The yestertide we’d heard the gloomy gun

Growl through the long-sunned day

From Quatre-Bras and Ligny; till the dun

Twilight suppressed the fray;

Albeit therein—as lated tongues bespoke—

Brunswick’s high heart was drained,

And Prussia’s Line and Landwehr, though unbroke,

Stood cornered and constrained.

And at next noon-time Grouchy slowly passed

With thirty thousand men:

We hoped thenceforth no army, small or vast,

Would trouble us again.

My hut lay deeply in a vale recessed,

And never a soul seemed nigh

When, reassured at length, we went to rest—

My children, wife, and I.

But what was this that broke our humble ease?

What noise, above the rain,

Above the dripping of the poplar trees

That smote along the pane?

—A call of mastery, bidding me arise,

Compelled me to the door,

At which a horseman stood in martial guise—

Splashed—sweating from every pore.

Had I seen Grouchy?  Yes?  Which track took he?

Could I lead thither on?—

Fulfilment would ensure gold pieces three,

Perchance more gifts anon.

“I bear the Emperor’s mandate,” then he said,

“Charging the Marshal straight

To strike between the double host ahead

Ere they co-operate,

“Engaging Blücher till the Emperor put

Lord Wellington to flight,

And next the Prussians.  This to set afoot

Is my emprise to-night.”

I joined him in the mist; but, pausing, sought

To estimate his say.

Grouchy had made for Wavre; and yet, on thought,

I did not lead that way.

I mused: “If Grouchy thus instructed be,

The clash comes sheer hereon;

My farm is stript.  While, as for pieces three,

Money the French have none.

“Grouchy unwarned, moreo’er, the English win,

And mine is left to me—

They buy, not borrow.”—Hence did I begin

To lead him treacherously.

By Joidoigne, near to east, as we ondrew,

Dawn pierced the humid air;

And eastward faced I with him, though I knew

Never marched Grouchy there.

Near Ottignies we passed, across the Dyle

(Lim’lette left far aside),

And thence direct toward Pervez and Noville

Through green grain, till he cried:

“I doubt thy conduct, man! no track is here—

I doubt thy gagèd word!”

Thereat he scowled on me, and pranced me near,

And pricked me with his sword.

“Nay, Captain, hold!  We skirt, not trace the course

Of Grouchy,” said I then:

“As we go, yonder went he, with his force

Of thirty thousand men.”

—At length noon nighed; when west, from Saint-John’s-Mound,

A hoarse artillery boomed,

And from Saint-Lambert’s upland, chapel-crowned,

The Prussian squadrons loomed.

Then to the wayless wet gray ground he leapt;

“My mission fails!” he cried;

“Too late for Grouchy now to intercept,

For, peasant, you have lied!”

He turned to pistol me.  I sprang, and drew

The sabre from his flank,

And ’twixt his nape and shoulder, ere he knew,

I struck, and dead he sank.

I hid him deep in nodding rye and oat—

His shroud green stalks and loam;

His requiem the corn-blade’s husky note—

And then I hastened home, . . .

—Two armies writhe in coils of red and blue,

And brass and iron clang

From Goumont, past the front of Waterloo,

To Pap’lotte and Smohain.

The Guard Imperial wavered on the height;

The Emperor’s face grew glum;

“I sent,” he said, “to Grouchy yesternight,

And yet he does not come!”

’Twas then, Good Father, that the French espied,

Streaking the summer land,

The men of Blücher.  But the Emperor cried,

“Grouchy is now at hand!”

And meanwhile Vand’leur, Vivian, Maitland, Kempt,

Met d’Erlon, Friant, Ney;

But Grouchy—mis-sent, blamed, yet blame-exempt—

Grouchy was far away.

By even, slain or struck, Michel the strong,

Bold Travers, Dnop, Delord,

Smart Guyot, Reil-le, l’Heriter, Friant,

Scattered that champaign o’er.

Fallen likewise wronged Duhesme, and skilled Lobau

Did that red sunset see;

Colbert, Legros, Blancard! . . . And of the foe

Picton and Ponsonby;

With Gordon, Canning, Blackman, Ompteda,

L’Estrange, Delancey, Packe,

Grose, D’Oyly, Stables, Morice, Howard, Hay,

Von Schwerin, Watzdorf, Boek,

Smith, Phelips, Fuller, Lind, and Battersby,

And hosts of ranksmen round . . .

Memorials linger yet to speak to thee

Of those that bit the ground!

The Guards’ last column yielded; dykes of dead

Lay between vale and ridge,

As, thinned yet closing, faint yet fierce, they sped

In packs to Genappe Bridge.

Safe was my stock; my capple cow unslain;

Intact each cock and hen;

But Grouchy far at Wavre all day had lain,

And thirty thousand men.

O Saints, had I but lost my earing corn

And saved the cause once prized!

O Saints, why such false witness had I borne

When late I’d sympathized! . . .

So now, being old, my children eye askance

My slowly dwindling store,

And crave my mite; till, worn with tarriance,

I care for life no more.

To Almighty God henceforth I stand confessed,

And Virgin-Saint Marie;

O Michael, John, and Holy Ones in rest,

Entreat the Lord for me!

THE ALARM

(1803)

See “The Trumpet-Major”

IN MEMORY OF ONE OF THE WRITER’S FAMILY WHO WAS A

VOLUNTEER DURING THE WAR WITH NAPOLEON

IN a ferny byway

Near the great South-Wessex Highway,

A homestead raised its breakfast-smoke aloft;

The dew-damps still lay steamless, for the sun had made no sky-way,

And twilight cloaked the croft.

’Twas hard to realize on

This snug side the mute horizon

That beyond it hostile armaments might steer,

Save from seeing in the porchway a fair woman weep with eyes on

A harnessed Volunteer.

In haste he’d flown there

To his comely wife alone there,

While marching south hard by, to still her fears,

For she soon would be a mother, and few messengers were known there

In these campaigning years.

’Twas time to be Good-bying,

Since the assembly-hour was nighing

In royal George’s town at six that morn;

And betwixt its wharves and this retreat were ten good miles of hieing

Ere ring of bugle-horn.

“I’ve laid in food, Dear,

And broached the spiced and brewed, Dear;

And if our July hope should antedate,

Let the char-wench mount and gallop by the halterpath and wood, Dear,

And fetch assistance straight.

“As for Buonaparte, forget him;

He’s not like to land!  But let him,

Those strike with aim who strike for wives and sons!

And the war-boats built to float him; ’twere but wanted to upset him

A slat from Nelson’s guns!

“But, to assure thee,

And of creeping fears to cure thee,

If he should be rumoured anchoring in the Road,

Drive with the nurse to Kingsbere; and let nothing thence allure thee

Till we’ve him safe-bestowed.

“Now, to turn to marching matters:—

I’ve my knapsack, firelock, spatters,

Crossbelts, priming-horn, stock, bay’net, blackball, clay,

Pouch, magazine, flints, flint-box that at every quick-step clatters;

. . . My heart, Dear; that must stay!”

—With breathings broken

Farewell was kissed unspoken,

And they parted there as morning stroked the panes;

And the Volunteer went on, and turned, and twirled his glove for token,

And took the coastward lanes.

When above He’th Hills he found him,

He saw, on gazing round him,

The Barrow-Beacon burning—burning low,

As if, perhaps, uplighted ever since he’d homeward bound him;

And it meant: Expect the Foe!

Leaving the byway,

And following swift the highway,

Car and chariot met he, faring fast inland;

“He’s anchored, Soldier!” shouted some: “God save thee, marching thy way,

Th’lt front him on the strand!”

He slowed; he stopped; he paltered

Awhile with self, and faltered,

“Why courting misadventure shoreward roam?

To Molly, surely!  Seek the woods with her till times have altered;

Charity favours home.

“Else, my denying

He would come she’ll read as lying—

Think the Barrow-Beacon must have met my eyes—

That my words were not unwareness, but deceit of her, while trying

My life to jeopardize.

“At home is stocked provision,

And to-night, without suspicion,

We might bear it with us to a covert near;

Such sin, to save a childing wife, would earn it Christ’s remission,

Though none forgive it here!”

While thus he, thinking,

A little bird, quick drinking

Among the crowfoot tufts the river bore,

Was tangled in their stringy arms, and fluttered, well-nigh sinking,

Near him, upon the moor.

He stepped in, reached, and seized it,

And, preening, had released it

But that a thought of Holy Writ occurred,

And Signs Divine ere battle, till it seemed him Heaven had pleased it

As guide to send the bird.

“O Lord, direct me! . . .

Doth Duty now expect me

To march a-coast, or guard my weak ones near?

Give this bird a flight according, that I thence know to elect me

The southward or the rear.”

He loosed his clasp; when, rising,

The bird—as if surmising—

Bore due to southward, crossing by the Froom,

And Durnover Great-Field and Fort, the soldier clear advising—

Prompted he wist by Whom.

Then on he panted

By grim Mai-Don, and slanted

Up the steep Ridge-way, hearkening betwixt whiles;

Till, nearing coast and harbour, he beheld the shore-line planted

With Foot and Horse for miles.

Mistrusting not the omen,

He gained the beach, where Yeomen,

Militia, Fencibles, and Pikemen bold,

With Regulars in thousands, were enmassed to meet the Foemen,

Whose fleet had not yet shoaled.

Captain and Colonel,

Sere Generals, Ensigns vernal,

Were there; of neighbour-natives, Michel, Smith,

Meggs, Bingham, Gambier, Cunningham, roused by the hued nocturnal

Swoop on their land and kith.

But Buonaparte still tarried;

His project had miscarried;

At the last hour, equipped for victory,

The fleet had paused; his subtle combinations had been parried

By British strategy.

Homeward returning

Anon, no beacons burning,

No alarms, the Volunteer, in modest bliss,

Te Deum sang with wife and friends: “We praise Thee, Lord, discerning

That Thou hast helped in this!”

HER DEATH AND AFTER

’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 home, by Fate,

Of one I had long held dear.

And there, as I paused by her tenement,

And the trees shed on me their rime and hoar,

I thought of the man who had left her lone—

Him who made her his own

When I loved her, long before.

The rooms within had the piteous shine

That home-things wear when there’s aught amiss;

From the stairway floated the rise and fall

Of an infant’s call,

Whose birth had brought her to this.

Her life was the price she would pay for that whine—

For a child by the man she did not love.

“But let that rest for ever,” I said,

And bent my tread

To the chamber up above.

She took my hand in her thin white own,

And smiled her thanks—though nigh too weak—

And made them a sign to leave us there

Then faltered, ere

She could bring herself to speak.

“’Twas to see you before I go—he’ll condone

Such a natural thing now my time’s not much—

When Death is so near it hustles hence

All passioned sense

Between woman and man as such!

“My husband is absent.  As heretofore

The City detains him.  But, in truth,

He has not been kind . . . I will speak no blame,

But—the child is lame;

O, I pray she may reach his ruth!

“Forgive past days—I can say no more—

Maybe if we’d wedded you’d now repine! . . .

But I treated you ill.  I was punished.  Farewell!

—Truth shall I tell?

Would the child were yours and mine!

“As a wife I was true.  But, such my unease

That, could I insert a deed back in Time,

I’d make her yours, to secure your care;

And the scandal bear,

And the penalty for the crime!”

—When I had left, and the swinging trees

Rang above me, as lauding her candid say,

Another was I.  Her words were enough:

Came smooth, came rough,

I felt I could live my day.

Next night she died; and her obsequies

In the Field of Tombs, by the Via renowned,

Had her husband’s heed.  His tendance spent,

I often went

And pondered by her mound.

All that year and the next year whiled,

And I still went thitherward in the gloam;

But the Town forgot her and her nook,

And her husband took

Another Love to his home.

And the rumour flew that the lame lone child

Whom she wished for its safety child of mine,

Was treated ill when offspring came

Of the new-made dame,

And marked a more vigorous line.

A smarter grief within me wrought

Than even at loss of her so dear;

Dead the being whose soul my soul suffused,

Her child ill-used,

I helpless to interfere!

One eve as I stood at my spot of thought

In the white-stoned Garth, brooding thus her wrong,

Her husband neared; and to shun his view

By her hallowed mew

I went from the tombs among

To the Cirque of the Gladiators which faced—

That haggard mark of Imperial Rome,

Whose Pagan echoes mock the chime

Of our Christian time:

It was void, and I inward clomb.

Scarce night the sun’s gold touch displaced

From the vast Rotund and the neighbouring dead

When her husband followed; bowed; half-passed,

With lip upcast;

Then, halting, sullenly said:

“It is noised that you visit my first wife’s tomb.

Now, I gave her an honoured name to bear

While living, when dead.  So I’ve claim to ask

By what right you task

My patience by vigiling there?

“There’s decency even in death, I assume;

Preserve it, sir, and keep away;

For the mother of my first-born you

Show mind undue!

—Sir, I’ve nothing more to say.”

A desperate stroke discerned I then—

God pardon—or pardon not—the lie;

She had sighed that she wished (lest the child should pine

Of slights) ’twere mine,

So I said: “But the father I.

“That you thought it yours is the way of men;

But I won her troth long ere your day:

You learnt how, in dying, she summoned me?

’Twas in fealty.

—Sir, I’ve nothing more to say,

“Save that, if you’ll hand me my little maid,

I’ll take her, and rear her, and spare you toil.

Think it more than a friendly act none can;

I’m a lonely man,

While you’ve a large pot to boil.

“If not, and you’ll put it to ball or blade—

To-night, to-morrow night, anywhen—

I’ll meet you here . . . But think of it,

And in season fit

Let me hear from you again.”

—Well, I went away, hoping; but nought I heard

Of my stroke for the child, till there greeted me

A little voice that one day came

To my window-frame

And babbled innocently:

“My father who’s not my own, sends word

I’m to stay here, sir, where I belong!”

Next a writing came: “Since the child was the fruit

Of your lawless suit,

Pray take her, to right a wrong.”

And I did.  And I gave the child my love,

And the child loved me, and estranged us none.

But compunctions loomed; for I’d harmed the dead

By what I’d said

For the good of the living one.

—Yet though, God wot, I am sinner enough,

And unworthy the woman who drew me so,

Perhaps this wrong for her darling’s good

She forgives, or would,

If only she could know!

THE DANCE AT THE PHŒNIX

TO Jenny came a gentle youth

From inland leazes lone,

His love was fresh as apple-blooth

By Parrett, Yeo, or Tone.

And duly he entreated her

To be his tender minister,

And call him aye her own.

Fair Jenny’s life had hardly been

A life of modesty;

At Casterbridge experience keen

Of many loves had she

From scarcely sixteen years above;

Among them sundry troopers of

The King’s-Own Cavalry.

But each with charger, sword, and gun,

Had bluffed the Biscay wave;

And Jenny prized her gentle one

For all the love he gave.

She vowed to be, if they were wed,

His honest wife in heart and head

From bride-ale hour to grave.

Wedded they were.  Her husband’s trust

In Jenny knew no bound,

And Jenny kept her pure and just,

Till even malice found

No sin or sign of ill to be

In one who walked so decently

The duteous helpmate’s round.

Two sons were born, and bloomed to men,

And roamed, and were as not:

Alone was Jenny left again

As ere her mind had sought

A solace in domestic joys,

And ere the vanished pair of boys

Were sent to sun her cot.

She numbered near on sixty years,

And passed as elderly,

When, in the street, with flush of fears,

One day discovered she,

From shine of swords and thump of drum.

Her early loves from war had come,

The King’s-Own Cavalry.

She turned aside, and bowed her head

Anigh Saint Peter’s door;

“Alas for chastened thoughts!” she said;

“I’m faded now, and hoar,

And yet those notes—they thrill me through,

And those gay forms move me anew

As in the years of yore!” . . .

’Twas Christmas, and the Phœnix Inn

Was lit with tapers tall,

For thirty of the trooper men

Had vowed to give a ball

As “Theirs” had done (’twas handed down)

When lying in the selfsame town

Ere Buonaparté’s fall.

That night the throbbing “Soldier’s Joy,”

The measured tread and sway

Of “Fancy-Lad” and “Maiden Coy,”

Reached Jenny as she lay

Beside her spouse; till springtide blood

Seemed scouring through her like a flood

That whisked the years away.

She rose, and rayed, and decked her head

Where the bleached hairs ran thin;

Upon her cap two bows of red

She fixed with hasty pin;

Unheard descending to the street,

She trod the flags with tune-led feet,

And stood before the Inn.

Save for the dancers’, not a sound

Disturbed the icy air;

No watchman on his midnight round

Or traveller was there;

But over All-Saints’, high and bright,

Pulsed to the music Sirius white,

The Wain by Bullstake Square.

She knocked, but found her further stride

Checked by a sergeant tall:

“Gay Granny, whence come you?” he cried;

“This is a private ball.”

—“No one has more right here than me!

Ere you were born, man,” answered she,

“I knew the regiment all!”

“Take not the lady’s visit ill!”

Upspoke the steward free;

“We lack sufficient partners still,

So, prithee let her be!”

They seized and whirled her ’mid the maze,

And Jenny felt as in the days

Of her immodesty.

Hour chased each hour, and night advanced;

She sped as shod with wings;

Each time and every time she danced—

Reels, jigs, poussettes, and flings:

They cheered her as she soared and swooped,

(She’d learnt ere art in dancing drooped

From hops to slothful swings).

The favourite Quick-step “Speed the Plough”—

(Cross hands, cast off, and wheel)—

“The Triumph,” “Sylph,” “The Row-dow-dow,”

Famed “Major Malley’s Reel,”

“The Duke of York’s,” “The Fairy Dance,”

“The Bridge of Lodi” (brought from France),

She beat out, toe and heel.

The “Fall of Paris” clanged its close,

And Peter’s chime told four,

When Jenny, bosom-beating, rose

To seek her silent door.

They tiptoed in escorting her,

Lest stroke of heel or clink of spur

Should break her goodman’s snore.

The fire that late had burnt fell slack

When lone at last stood she;

Her nine-and-fifty years came back;

She sank upon her knee

Beside the durn, and like a dart

A something arrowed through her heart

In shoots of agony.

Their footsteps died as she leant there,

Lit by the morning star

Hanging above the moorland, where

The aged elm-rows are;

And, as o’ernight, from Pummery Ridge

To Maembury Ring and Standfast Bridge

No life stirred, near or far.

Though inner mischief worked amain,

She reached her husband’s side;

Where, toil-weary, as he had lain

Beneath the patchwork pied

When yestereve she’d forthward crept,

And as unwitting, still he slept

Who did in her confide.

A tear sprang as she turned and viewed

His features free from guile;

She kissed him long, as when, just wooed,

She chose his domicile.

She felt she could have given her life

To be the single-hearted wife

That she had been erstwhile.

Time wore to six.  Her husband rose

And struck the steel and stone;

He glanced at Jenny, whose repose

Seemed deeper than his own.

With dumb dismay, on closer sight,

He gathered sense that in the night,

Or morn, her soul had flown.

When told that some too mighty strain

For one so many-yeared

Had burst her bosom’s master-vein,

His doubts remained unstirred.

His Jenny had not left his side

Betwixt the eve and morning-tide:

—The King’s said not a word.

Well! times are not as times were then,

Nor fair ones half so free;

And truly they were martial men,

The King’s-Own Cavalry.

And when they went from Casterbridge

And vanished over Mellstock Ridge,

’Twas saddest morn to see.

THE CASTERBRIDGE CAPTAINS

(KHYBER PASS, 1842)

A TRADITION OF J. B. L—, T. G. B—, AND J. L—.

THREE captains went to Indian wars,

And only one returned:

Their mate of yore, he singly wore

The laurels all had earned.

At home he sought the ancient aisle

Wherein, untrumped of fame,

The three had sat in pupilage,

And each had carved his name.

The names, rough-hewn, of equal size,

Stood on the panel still;

Unequal since.—“’Twas theirs to aim,

Mine was it to fulfil!”

—“Who saves his life shall lose it, friends!”

Outspake the preacher then,

Unweeting he his listener, who

Looked at the names again.

That he had come and they’d been stayed,

’Twas but the chance of war:

Another chance, and they’d sat here,

And he had lain afar.

Yet saw he something in the lives

Of those who’d ceased to live

That sphered them with a majesty

Which living failed to give.

Transcendent triumph in return

No longer lit his brain;

Transcendence rayed the distant urn

Where slept the fallen twain.

A SIGN-SEEKER

I MARK the months in liveries dank and dry,

The noontides many-shaped and hued;

I see the nightfall shades subtrude,

And hear the monotonous hours clang negligently by.

I view the evening bonfires of the sun

On hills where morning rains have hissed;

The eyeless countenance of the mist

Pallidly rising when the summer droughts are done.

I have seen the lightning-blade, the leaping star,

The cauldrons of the sea in storm,

Have felt the earthquake’s lifting arm,

And trodden where abysmal fires and snow-cones are.

I learn to prophesy the hid eclipse,

The coming of eccentric orbs;

To mete the dust the sky absorbs,

To weigh the sun, and fix the hour each planet dips.

I witness fellow earth-men surge and strive;

Assemblies meet, and throb, and part;

Death’s soothing finger, sorrow’s smart;

—All the vast various moils that mean a world alive.

But that I fain would wot of shuns my sense—

Those sights of which old prophets tell,

Those signs the general word so well,

Vouchsafed to their unheed, denied my long suspense.

In graveyard green, behind his monument

To glimpse a phantom parent, friend,

Wearing his smile, and “Not the end!”

Outbreathing softly: that were blest enlightenment;

Or, if a dead Love’s lips, whom dreams reveal

When midnight imps of King Decay

Delve sly to solve me back to clay,

Should leave some print to prove her spirit-kisses real;

Or, when Earth’s Frail lie bleeding of her Strong,

If some Recorder, as in Writ,

Near to the weary scene should flit

And drop one plume as pledge that Heaven inscrolls the wrong.

—There are who, rapt to heights of trancéd trust,

These tokens claim to feel and see,

Read radiant hints of times to be—

Of heart to heart returning after dust to dust.

Such scope is granted not to lives like mine . . .

I have lain in dead men’s beds, have walked

The tombs of those with whom I’d talked,

Called many a gone and goodly one to shape a sign,

And panted for response.  But none replies;

No warnings loom, nor whisperings

To open out my limitings,

And Nescience mutely muses: When a man falls he lies.

MY CICELY

(17–)

“ALIVE?”—And I leapt in my wonder,

Was faint of my joyance,

And grasses and grove shone in garments

Of glory to me.

“She lives, in a plenteous well-being,

To-day as aforehand;

The dead bore the name—though a rare one—

The name that bore she.”

She lived . . . I, afar in the city

Of frenzy-led factions,

Had squandered green years and maturer

In bowing the knee

To Baals illusive and specious,

Till chance had there voiced me

That one I loved vainly in nonage

Had ceased her to be.

The passion the planets had scowled on,

And change had let dwindle,

Her death-rumour smartly relifted

To full apogee.

I mounted a steed in the dawning

With acheful remembrance,

And made for the ancient West Highway

To far Exonb’ry.

Passing heaths, and the House of Long Sieging,

I neared the thin steeple

That tops the fair fane of Poore’s olden

Episcopal see;

And, changing anew my onbearer,

I traversed the downland

Whereon the bleak hill-graves of Chieftains

Bulge barren of tree;

And still sadly onward I followed

That Highway the Icen,

Which trails its pale riband down Wessex

O’er lynchet and lea.

Along through the Stour-bordered Forum,

Where Legions had wayfared,

And where the slow river upglasses

Its green canopy,

And by Weatherbury Castle, and thencefrom

Through Casterbridge held I

Still on, to entomb her my vision

Saw stretched pallidly.

No highwayman’s trot blew the night-wind

To me so life-weary,

But only the creak of the gibbets

Or waggoners’ jee.

Triple-ramparted Maidon gloomed grayly

Above me from southward,

And north the hill-fortress of Eggar,

And square Pummerie.

The Nine-Pillared Cromlech, the Bride-streams,

The Axe, and the Otter

I passed, to the gate of the city

Where Exe scents the sea;

Till, spent, in the graveacre pausing,

I learnt ’twas not my Love

To whom Mother Church had just murmured

A last lullaby.

—“Then, where dwells the Canon’s kinswoman,

My friend of aforetime?”—

(’Twas hard to repress my heart-heavings

And new ecstasy.)

“She wedded.”—“Ah!”—“Wedded beneath her—

She keeps the stage-hostel

Ten miles hence, beside the great Highway—

The famed Lions-Three.

“Her spouse was her lackey—no option

’Twixt wedlock and worse things;

A lapse over-sad for a lady

Of her pedigree!”

I shuddered, said nothing, and wandered

To shades of green laurel:

Too ghastly had grown those first tidings

So brightsome of blee!

For, on my ride hither, I’d halted

Awhile at the Lions,

And her—her whose name had once opened

My heart as a key—

I’d looked on, unknowing, and witnessed

Her jests with the tapsters,

Her liquor-fired face, her thick accents

In naming her fee.

“O God, why this seeming derision!”

I cried in my anguish:

“O once Loved, O fair Unforgotten—

That Thing—meant it thee!

“Inurned and at peace, lost but sainted,

Were grief I could compass;

Depraved—’tis for Christ’s poor dependent

A cruel decree!”

I backed on the Highway; but passed not

The hostel.  Within there

Too mocking to Love’s re-expression

Was Time’s repartee!

Uptracking where Legions had wayfared,

By cromlechs unstoried,

And lynchets, and sepultured Chieftains,

In self-colloquy,

A feeling stirred in me and strengthened

That she was not my Love,

But she of the garth, who lay rapt in

Her long reverie.

And thence till to-day I persuade me

That this was the true one;

That Death stole intact her young dearness

And innocency.

Frail-witted, illuded they call me;

I may be.  ’Tis better

To dream than to own the debasement

Of sweet Cicely.

Moreover I rate it unseemly

To hold that kind Heaven

Could work such device—to her ruin

And my misery.

So, lest I disturb my choice vision,

I shun the West Highway,

Even now, when the knaps ring with rhythms

From blackbird and bee;

And feel that with slumber half-conscious

She rests in the church-hay,

Her spirit unsoiled as in youth-time

When lovers were we.

HER IMMORTALITY

UPON a noon I pilgrimed through

A pasture, mile by mile,

Unto the place where I last saw

My dead Love’s living smile.

And sorrowing I lay me down

Upon the heated sod:

It seemed as if my body pressed

The very ground she trod.

I lay, and thought; and in a trance

She came and stood me by—

The same, even to the marvellous ray

That used to light her eye.

“You draw me, and I come to you,

My faithful one,” she said,

In voice that had the moving tone

It bore ere breath had fled.

She said: “’Tis seven years since I died:

Few now remember me;

My husband clasps another bride;

My children’s love has she.

“My brethren, sisters, and my friends

Care not to meet my sprite:

Who prized me most I did not know

Till I passed down from sight.”

I said: “My days are lonely here;

I need thy smile alway:

I’ll use this night my ball or blade,

And join thee ere the day.”

A tremor stirred her tender lips,

Which parted to dissuade:

“That cannot be, O friend,” she cried;

“Think, I am but a Shade!

“A Shade but in its mindful ones

Has immortality;

By living, me you keep alive,

By dying you slay me.

“In you resides my single power

Of sweet continuance here;

On your fidelity I count

Through many a coming year.”

—I started through me at her plight,

So suddenly confessed:

Dismissing late distaste for life,

I craved its bleak unrest.

“I will not die, my One of all!—

To lengthen out thy days

I’ll guard me from minutest harms

That may invest my ways!”

She smiled and went.  Since then she comes

Oft when her birth-moon climbs,

Or at the seasons’ ingresses

Or anniversary times;

But grows my grief.  When I surcease,

Through whom alone lives she,

Ceases my Love, her words, her ways,

Never again to be!

THE IVY-WIFE

I LONGED to love a full-boughed beech

And be as high as he:

I stretched an arm within his reach,

And signalled unity.

But with his drip he forced a breach,

And tried to poison me.

I gave the grasp of partnership

To one of other race—

A plane: he barked him strip by strip

From upper bough to base;

And me therewith; for gone my grip,

My arms could not enlace.

In new affection next I strove

To coll an ash I saw,

And he in trust received my love;

Till with my soft green claw

I cramped and bound him as I wove . . .

Such was my love: ha-ha!

By this I gained his strength and height

Without his rivalry.

But in my triumph I lost sight

Of afterhaps.  Soon he,

Being bark-bound, flagged, snapped, fell outright,

And in his fall felled me!

A MEETING WITH DESPAIR

AS evening shaped I found me on a moor

Which sight could scarce sustain:

The black lean land, of featureless contour,

Was like a tract in pain.

“This scene, like my own life,” I said, “is one

Where many glooms abide;

Toned by its fortune to a deadly dun—

Lightless on every side.

I glanced aloft and halted, pleasure-caught

To see the contrast there:

The ray-lit clouds gleamed glory; and I thought,

“There’s solace everywhere!”

Then bitter self-reproaches as I stood

I dealt me silently

As one perverse—misrepresenting Good

In graceless mutiny.

Against the horizon’s dim-discernèd wheel

A form rose, strange of mould:

That he was hideous, hopeless, I could feel

Rather than could behold.

“’Tis a dead spot, where even the light lies spent

To darkness!” croaked the Thing.

“Not if you look aloft!” said I, intent

On my new reasoning.

“Yea—but await awhile!” he cried.  “Ho-ho!—

Look now aloft and see!”

I looked.  There, too, sat night: Heaven’s radiant show

Had gone.  Then chuckled he.

UNKNOWING

WHEN, soul in soul reflected,

We breathed an æthered air,

When we neglected

All things elsewhere,

And left the friendly friendless

To keep our love aglow,

We deemed it endless . . .

—We did not know!

When, by mad passion goaded,

We planned to hie away,

But, unforeboded,

The storm-shafts gray

So heavily down-pattered

That none could forthward go,

Our lives seemed shattered . . .

—We did not know!

When I found you, helpless lying,

And you waived my deep misprise,

And swore me, dying,

In phantom-guise

To wing to me when grieving,

And touch away my woe,

We kissed, believing . . .

—We did not know!

But though, your powers outreckoning,

You hold you dead and dumb,

Or scorn my beckoning,

And will not come;

And I say, “’Twere mood ungainly

To store her memory so:”

I say it vainly—

I feel and know!

FRIENDS BEYOND

WILLIAM DEWY, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,

Robert’s kin, and John’s, and Ned’s,

And the Squire, and Lady Susan, lie in Mellstock churchyard now!

“Gone,” I call them, gone for good, that group of local hearts and heads;

Yet at mothy curfew-tide,

And at midnight when the noon-heat breathes it back from walls and leads,

They’ve a way of whispering to me—fellow-wight who yet abide—

In the muted, measured note

Of a ripple under archways, or a lone cave’s stillicide:

“We have triumphed: this achievement turns the bane to antidote,

Unsuccesses to success,

—Many thought-worn eves and morrows to a morrow free of thought.

“No more need we corn and clothing, feel of old terrestrial stress;

Chill detraction stirs no sigh;

Fear of death has even bygone us: death gave all that we possess.”

W. D.—“Ye mid burn the wold bass-viol that I set such vallie by.”

Squire.—“You may hold the manse in fee,

You may wed my spouse, my children’s memory of me may decry.”

Lady.—“You may have my rich brocades, my laces; take each household key;

Ransack coffer, desk, bureau;

Quiz the few poor treasures hid there, con the letters kept by me.”

Far.—“Ye mid zell my favourite heifer, ye mid let the charlock grow,

Foul the grinterns, give up thrift.”

Wife.—“If ye break my best blue china, children, I shan’t care or ho.”

All. —“We’ve no wish to hear the tidings, how the people’s fortunes shift;

What your daily doings are;

Who are wedded, born, divided; if your lives beat slow or swift.

“Curious not the least are we if our intents you make or mar,

If you quire to our old tune,

If the City stage still passes, if the weirs still roar afar.”

—Thus, with very gods’ composure, freed those crosses late and soon

Which, in life, the Trine allow

(Why, none witteth), and ignoring all that haps beneath the moon,

William Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,

Robert’s kin, and John’s, and Ned’s,

And the Squire, and Lady Susan, murmur mildly to me now.

TO OUTER NATURE

SHOW thee as I thought thee

When I early sought thee,

Omen-scouting,

All undoubting

Love alone had wrought thee—

Wrought thee for my pleasure,

Planned thee as a measure

For expounding

And resounding

Glad things that men treasure.

O for but a moment

Of that old endowment—

Light to gaily

See thy daily

Irisèd embowment!

But such re-adorning

Time forbids with scorning—

Makes me see things

Cease to be things

They were in my morning.

Fad’st thou, glow-forsaken,

Darkness-overtaken!

Thy first sweetness,

Radiance, meetness,

None shall re-awaken.

Why not sempiternal

Thou and I?  Our vernal

Brightness keeping,

Time outleaping;

Passed the hodiernal!

THOUGHTS OF PHENA

AT NEWS OF HER DEATH

NOT a line of her writing have I,

Not a thread of her hair,

No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby

I may picture her there;

And in vain do I urge my unsight

To conceive my lost prize

At her close, whom I knew when her dreams were upbrimming with light,

And with laughter her eyes.

What scenes spread around her last days,

Sad, shining, or dim?

Did her gifts and compassions enray and enarch her sweet ways

With an aureate nimb?

Or did life-light decline from her years,

And mischances control

Her full day-star; unease, or regret, or forebodings, or fears

Disennoble her soul?

Thus I do but the phantom retain

Of the maiden of yore

As my relic; yet haply the best of her—fined in my brain

It maybe the more

That no line of her writing have I,

Nor a thread of her hair,

No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby

I may picture her there.

March 1890.

MIDDLE-AGE ENTHUSIASMS

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;

And, kindling, laughed at life and care,

Although we knew no laugh lay there.

We walked where shy birds stood

Watching us, wonder-dumb;

Their friendship met our mood;

We cried: “We’ll often come:

We’ll come morn, noon, eve, everywhen!”

—We doubted we should come again.

We joyed to see strange sheens

Leap from quaint leaves in shade;

A secret light of greens

They’d for their pleasure made.

We said: “We’ll set such sorts as these!”

—We knew with night the wish would cease.

“So sweet the place,” we said,

“Its tacit tales so dear,

Our thoughts, when breath has sped,

Will meet and mingle here!” . . .

“Words!” mused we.  “Passed the mortal door,

Our thoughts will reach this nook no more.”

IN A WOOD

See “THE WOODLANDERS”

PALE beech and pine-tree blue,

Set in one clay,

Bough to bough cannot you

Bide out your day?

When the rains skim and skip,

Why mar sweet comradeship,

Blighting with poison-drip

Neighbourly spray?

Heart-halt and spirit-lame,

City-opprest,

Unto this wood I came

As to a nest;

Dreaming that sylvan peace

Offered the harrowed ease—

Nature a soft release

From men’s unrest.

But, having entered in,

Great growths and small

Show them to men akin—

Combatants all!

Sycamore shoulders oak,

Bines the slim sapling yoke,

Ivy-spun halters choke

Elms stout and tall.

Touches from ash, O wych,

Sting you like scorn!

You, too, brave hollies, twitch

Sidelong from thorn.

Even the rank poplars bear

Illy a rival’s air,

Cankering in black despair

If overborne.

Since, then, no grace I find

Taught me of trees,

Turn I back to my kind,

Worthy as these.

There at least smiles abound,

There discourse trills around,

There, now and then, are found

Life-loyalties.

1887: 1896.

TO A LADY

OFFENDED BY A BOOK OF THE WRITER’S

NOW that my page upcloses, doomed, maybe,

Never to press thy cosy cushions more,

Or wake thy ready Yeas as heretofore,

Or stir thy gentle vows of faith in me:

Knowing thy natural receptivity,

I figure that, as flambeaux banish eve,

My sombre image, warped by insidious heave

Of those less forthright, must lose place in thee.

So be it.  I have borne such.  Let thy dreams

Of me and mine diminish day by day,

And yield their space to shine of smugger things;

Till I shape to thee but in fitful gleams,

And then in far and feeble visitings,

And then surcease.  Truth will be truth alway.

TO AN ORPHAN CHILD

A WHIMSEY

AH, child, thou art but half thy darling mother’s;

Hers couldst thou wholly be,

My light in thee would outglow all in others;

She would relive to me.

But niggard Nature’s trick of birth

Bars, lest she overjoy,

Renewal of the loved on earth

Save with alloy.

The Dame has no regard, alas, my maiden,

For love and loss like mine—

No sympathy with mind-sight memory-laden;

Only with fickle eyne.

To her mechanic artistry

My dreams are all unknown,

And why I wish that thou couldst be

But One’s alone!

NATURE’S QUESTIONING

WHEN I look forth at dawning, pool,

Field, flock, and lonely tree,

All seem to gaze at me

Like chastened children sitting silent in a school;

Their faces dulled, constrained, and worn,

As though the master’s ways

Through the long teaching days

Their first terrestrial zest had chilled and overborne.

And on them stirs, in lippings mere

(As if once clear in call,

But now scarce breathed at all)—

“We wonder, ever wonder, why we find us here!

“Has some Vast Imbecility,

Mighty to build and blend,

But impotent to tend,

Framed us in jest, and left us now to hazardry?

“Or come we of an Automaton

Unconscious of our pains? . . .

Or are we live remains

Of Godhead dying downwards, brain and eye now gone?

“Or is it that some high Plan betides,

As yet not understood,

Of Evil stormed by Good,

We the Forlorn Hope over which Achievement strides?”

Thus things around.  No answerer I . . .

Meanwhile the winds, and rains,

And Earth’s old glooms and pains

Are still the same, and gladdest Life Death neighbours nigh.

THE IMPERCIPIENT

(AT A CATHEDRAL SERVICE)

THAT from this bright believing band

An outcast I should be,

That faiths by which my comrades stand

Seem fantasies to me,

And mirage-mists their Shining Land,

Is a drear destiny.

Why thus my soul should be consigned

To infelicity,

Why always I must feel as blind

To sights my brethren see,

Why joys they’ve found I cannot find,

Abides a mystery.

Since heart of mine knows not that ease

Which they know; since it be

That He who breathes All’s Well to these

Breathes no All’s-Well to me,

My lack might move their sympathies

And Christian charity!

I am like a gazer who should mark

An inland company

Standing upfingered, with, “Hark! hark!

The glorious distant sea!”

And feel, “Alas, ’tis but yon dark

And wind-swept pine to me!”

Yet I would bear my shortcomings

With meet tranquillity,

But for the charge that blessed things

I’d liefer have unbe.

O, doth a bird deprived of wings

Go earth-bound wilfully!

* * * * *

Enough.  As yet disquiet clings

About us.  Rest shall we.

AT AN INN

WHEN we as strangers sought

Their catering care,

Veiled smiles bespoke their thought

Of what we were.

They warmed as they opined

Us more than friends—

That we had all resigned

For love’s dear ends.

And that swift sympathy

With living love

Which quicks the world—maybe

The spheres above,

Made them our ministers,

Moved them to say,

“Ah, God, that bliss like theirs

Would flush our day!”

And we were left alone

As Love’s own pair;

Yet never the love-light shone

Between us there!

But that which chilled the breath

Of afternoon,

And palsied unto death

The pane-fly’s tune.

The kiss their zeal foretold,

And now deemed come,

Came not: within his hold

Love lingered-numb.

Why cast he on our port

A bloom not ours?

Why shaped us for his sport

In after-hours?

As we seemed we were not

That day afar,

And now we seem not what

We aching are.

O severing sea and land,

O laws of men,

Ere death, once let us stand

As we stood then!

THE SLOW NATURE

(AN INCIDENT OF FROOM VALLEY)

“THY husband—poor, poor Heart!—is dead—

Dead, out by Moreford Rise;

A bull escaped the barton-shed,

Gored him, and there he lies!”

—“Ha, ha—go away!  ’Tis a tale, methink,

Thou joker Kit!” laughed she.

“I’ve known thee many a year, Kit Twink,

And ever hast thou fooled me!”

—“But, Mistress Damon—I can swear

Thy goodman John is dead!

And soon th’lt hear their feet who bear

His body to his bed.”

So unwontedly sad was the merry man’s face—

That face which had long deceived—

That she gazed and gazed; and then could trace

The truth there; and she believed.

She laid a hand on the dresser-ledge,

And scanned far Egdon-side;

And stood; and you heard the wind-swept sedge

And the rippling Froom; till she cried:

“O my chamber’s untidied, unmade my bed

Though the day has begun to wear!

‘What a slovenly hussif!’ it will be said,

When they all go up my stair!”

She disappeared; and the joker stood

Depressed by his neighbour’s doom,

And amazed that a wife struck to widowhood

Thought first of her unkempt room.

But a fortnight thence she could take no food,

And she pined in a slow decay;

While Kit soon lost his mournful mood

And laughed in his ancient way.

1894.

IN A EWELEAZE NEAR WEATHERBURY

THE years have gathered grayly

Since I danced upon this leaze

With one who kindled gaily

Love’s fitful ecstasies!

But despite the term as teacher,

I remain what I was then

In each essential feature

Of the fantasies of men.

Yet I note the little chisel

Of never-napping Time,

Defacing ghast and grizzel

The blazon of my prime.

When at night he thinks me sleeping,

I feel him boring sly

Within my bones, and heaping

Quaintest pains for by-and-by.

Still, I’d go the world with Beauty,

I would laugh with her and sing,

I would shun divinest duty

To resume her worshipping.

But she’d scorn my brave endeavour,

She would not balm the breeze

By murmuring “Thine for ever!”

As she did upon this leaze.

1890.

ADDITIONS

THE FIRE AT TRANTER SWEATLEY’S

THEY had long met o’ Zundays—her true love and she—

And at junketings, maypoles, and flings;

But she bode wi’ a thirtover uncle, and he

Swore by noon and by night that her goodman should be

Naibour Sweatley—a gaffer oft weak at the knee

From taking o’ sommat more cheerful than tea—

Who tranted, and moved people’s things.

She cried, “O pray pity me!”  Nought would he hear;

Then with wild rainy eyes she obeyed.

She chid when her Love was for clinking off wi’ her.

The pa’son was told, as the season drew near

To throw over pu’pit the names of the peäir

As fitting one flesh to be made.

The wedding-day dawned and the morning drew on;

The couple stood bridegroom and bride;

The evening was passed, and when midnight had gone

The folks horned out, “God save the King,” and anon

The two home-along gloomily hied.

The lover Tim Tankens mourned heart-sick and drear

To be thus of his darling deprived:

He roamed in the dark ath’art field, mound, and mere,

And, a’most without knowing it, found himself near

The house of the tranter, and now of his Dear,

Where the lantern-light showed ’em arrived.

The bride sought her cham’er so calm and so pale

That a Northern had thought her resigned;

But to eyes that had seen her in tide-times of weal,

Like the white cloud o’ smoke, the red battle-field’s vail,

That look spak’ of havoc behind.

The bridegroom yet laitered a beaker to drain,

Then reeled to the linhay for more,

When the candle-snoff kindled some chaff from his grain—

Flames spread, and red vlankers, wi’ might and wi’ main,

And round beams, thatch, and chimley-tun roar.

Young Tim away yond, rafted up by the light,

Through brimble and underwood tears,

Till he comes to the orchet, when crooping thereright

In the lewth of a codlin-tree, bivering wi’ fright,

Wi’ on’y her night-rail to screen her from sight,

His lonesome young Barbree appears.

Her cwold little figure half-naked he views

Played about by the frolicsome breeze,

Her light-tripping totties, her ten little tooes,

All bare and besprinkled wi’ Fall’s chilly dews,

While her great gallied eyes, through her hair hanging loose,

Sheened as stars through a tardle o’ trees.

She eyed en; and, as when a weir-hatch is drawn,

Her tears, penned by terror afore,

With a rushing of sobs in a shower were strawn,

Till her power to pour ’em seemed wasted and gone

From the heft o’ misfortune she bore.

“O Tim, my own Tim I must call ’ee—I will!

All the world ha’ turned round on me so!

Can you help her who loved ’ee, though acting so ill?

Can you pity her misery—feel for her still?

When worse than her body so quivering and chill

Is her heart in its winter o’ woe!

“I think I mid almost ha’ borne it,” she said,

“Had my griefs one by one come to hand;

But O, to be slave to thik husbird for bread,

And then, upon top o’ that, driven to wed,

And then, upon top o’ that, burnt out o’ bed,

Is more than my nater can stand!”

Tim’s soul like a lion ’ithin en outsprung—

(Tim had a great soul when his feelings were wrung)—

“Feel for ’ee, dear Barbree?” he cried;

And his warm working-jacket about her he flung,

Made a back, horsed her up, till behind him she clung

Like a chiel on a gipsy, her figure uphung

By the sleeves that around her he tied.

Over piggeries, and mixens, and apples, and hay,

They lumpered straight into the night;

And finding bylong where a halter-path lay,

At dawn reached Tim’s house, on’y seen on their way

By a naibour or two who were up wi’ the day;

But they gathered no clue to the sight.

Then tender Tim Tankens he searched here and there

For some garment to clothe her fair skin;

But though he had breeches and waistcoats to spare,

He had nothing quite seemly for Barbree to wear,

Who, half shrammed to death, stood and cried on a chair

At the caddle she found herself in.

There was one thing to do, and that one thing he did,

He lent her some clouts of his own,

And she took ’em perforce; and while in ’em she slid,

Tim turned to the winder, as modesty bid,

Thinking, “O that the picter my duty keeps hid

To the sight o’ my eyes mid be shown!”

In the tallet he stowed her; there huddied she lay,

Shortening sleeves, legs, and tails to her limbs;

But most o’ the time in a mortal bad way,

Well knowing that there’d be the divel to pay

If ’twere found that, instead o’ the elements’ prey,

She was living in lodgings at Tim’s.

“Where’s the tranter?” said men and boys; “where can er be?”

“Where’s the tranter?” said Barbree alone.

“Where on e’th is the tranter?” said everybod-y:

They sifted the dust of his perished roof-tree,

And all they could find was a bone.

Then the uncle cried, “Lord, pray have mercy on me!”

And in terror began to repent.

But before ’twas complete, and till sure she was free,

Barbree drew up her loft-ladder, tight turned her key—

Tim bringing up breakfast and dinner and tea—

Till the news of her hiding got vent.

Then followed the custom-kept rout, shout, and flare

Of a skimmington-ride through the naibourhood, ere

Folk had proof o’ wold Sweatley’s decay.

Whereupon decent people all stood in a stare,

Saying Tim and his lodger should risk it, and pair:

So he took her to church.  An’ some laughing lads there

Cried to Tim, “After Sweatley!”  She said, “I declare

I stand as a maiden to-day!”

Written 1866; printed 1875.

HEIRESS AND ARCHITECT

FOR A. W. B.

SHE sought the Studios, beckoning to her side

An arch-designer, for she planned to build.

He was of wise contrivance, deeply skilled

In every intervolve of high and wide—

Well fit to be her guide.

“Whatever it be,”

Responded he,

With cold, clear voice, and cold, clear view,

“In true accord with prudent fashionings

For such vicissitudes as living brings,

And thwarting not the law of stable things,

That will I do.”

“Shape me,” she said, “high halls with tracery

And open ogive-work, that scent and hue

Of buds, and travelling bees, may come in through,

The note of birds, and singings of the sea,

For these are much to me.”

“An idle whim!”

Broke forth from him

Whom nought could warm to gallantries:

“Cede all these buds and birds, the zephyr’s call,

And scents, and hues, and things that falter all,

And choose as best the close and surly wall,

For winters freeze.”

“Then frame,” she cried, “wide fronts of crystal glass,

That I may show my laughter and my light—

Light like the sun’s by day, the stars’ by night—

Till rival heart-queens, envying, wail, ‘Alas,

Her glory!’ as they pass.”

“O maid misled!”

He sternly said,

Whose facile foresight pierced her dire;

“Where shall abide the soul when, sick of glee,

It shrinks, and hides, and prays no eye may see?

Those house them best who house for secrecy,

For you will tire.”

“A little chamber, then, with swan and dove

Ranged thickly, and engrailed with rare device

Of reds and purples, for a Paradise

Wherein my Love may greet me, I my Love,

When he shall know thereof?”

“This, too, is ill,”

He answered still,

The man who swayed her like a shade.

“An hour will come when sight of such sweet nook

Would bring a bitterness too sharp to brook,

When brighter eyes have won away his look;

For you will fade.”

Then said she faintly: “O, contrive some way—

Some narrow winding turret, quite mine own,

To reach a loft where I may grieve alone!

It is a slight thing; hence do not, I pray,

This last dear fancy slay!”

“Such winding ways

Fit not your days,”

Said he, the man of measuring eye;

“I must even fashion as my rule declares,

To wit: Give space (since life ends unawares)

To hale a coffined corpse adown the stairs;

For you will die.”

1867.

THE TWO MEN

THERE were two youths of equal age,

Wit, station, strength, and parentage;

They studied at the selfsame schools,

And shaped their thoughts by common rules.

One pondered on the life of man,

His hopes, his ending, and began

To rate the Market’s sordid war

As something scarce worth living for.

“I’ll brace to higher aims,” said he,

“I’ll further Truth and Purity;

Thereby to mend the mortal lot

And sweeten sorrow.  Thrive I not,

“Winning their hearts, my kind will give

Enough that I may lowly live,

And house my Love in some dim dell,

For pleasing them and theirs so well.”

Idly attired, with features wan,

In secret swift he laboured on:

Such press of power had brought much gold

Applied to things of meaner mould.

Sometimes he wished his aims had been

To gather gains like other men;

Then thanked his God he’d traced his track

Too far for wish to drag him back.

He lookèd from his loft one day

To where his slighted garden lay;

Nettles and hemlock hid each lawn,

And every flower was starved and gone.

He fainted in his heart, whereon

He rose, and sought his plighted one,

Resolved to loose her bond withal,

Lest she should perish in his fall.

He met her with a careless air,

As though he’d ceased to find her fair,

And said: “True love is dust to me;

I cannot kiss: I tire of thee!”

(That she might scorn him was he fain,

To put her sooner out of pain;

For incensed love breathes quick and dies,

When famished love a-lingering lies.)

Once done, his soul was so betossed,

It found no more the force it lost:

Hope was his only drink and food,

And hope extinct, decay ensued.

And, living long so closely penned,

He had not kept a single friend;

He dwindled thin as phantoms be,

And drooped to death in poverty . . .

Meantime his schoolmate had gone out

To join the fortune-finding rout;

He liked the winnings of the mart,

But wearied of the working part.

He turned to seek a privy lair,

Neglecting note of garb and hair,

And day by day reclined and thought

How he might live by doing nought.

“I plan a valued scheme,” he said

To some.  “But lend me of your bread,

And when the vast result looms nigh,

In profit you shall stand as I.”

Yet they took counsel to restrain

Their kindness till they saw the gain;

And, since his substance now had run,

He rose to do what might be done.

He went unto his Love by night,

And said: “My Love, I faint in fight:

Deserving as thou dost a crown,

My cares shall never drag thee down.”

(He had descried a maid whose line

Would hand her on much corn and wine,

And held her far in worth above

One who could only pray and love.)

But this Fair read him; whence he failed

To do the deed so blithely hailed;

He saw his projects wholly marred,

And gloom and want oppressed him hard;

Till, living to so mean an end,

Whereby he’d lost his every friend,

He perished in a pauper sty,

His mate the dying pauper nigh.

And moralists, reflecting, said,

As “dust to dust” in burial read

Was echoed from each coffin-lid,

“These men were like in all they did.”

1866.

LINES

Spoken by Miss ADA REHAN at the Lyceum Theatre, July 23, 1890, at a performance on behalf of Lady Jeune’s Holiday Fund for City Children.

BEFORE we part to alien thoughts and aims,

Permit the one brief word the occasion claims:

—When mumming and grave projects are allied,

Perhaps an Epilogue is justified.

Our under-purpose has, in truth, to-day

Commanded most our musings; least the play:

A purpose futile but for your good-will

Swiftly responsive to the cry of ill:

A purpose all too limited!—to aid

Frail human flowerets, sicklied by the shade,

In winning some short spell of upland breeze,

Or strengthening sunlight on the level leas.

Who has not marked, where the full cheek should be,

Incipient lines of lank flaccidity,

Lymphatic pallor where the pink should glow,

And where the throb of transport, pulses low?—

Most tragical of shapes from Pole to Line,

O wondering child, unwitting Time’s design,

Why should Art add to Nature’s quandary,

And worsen ill by thus immuring thee?

—That races do despite unto their own,

That Might supernal do indeed condone

Wrongs individual for the general ease,

Instance the proof in victims such as these.

Launched into thoroughfares too thronged before,

Mothered by those whose protest is “No more!”

Vitalized without option: who shall say

That did Life hang on choosing—Yea or Nay—

They had not scorned it with such penalty,

And nothingness implored of Destiny?

And yet behind the horizon smile serene

The down, the cornland, and the stretching green—

Space—the child’s heaven: scenes which at least ensure

Some palliative for ill they cannot cure.

Dear friends—now moved by this poor show of ours

To make your own long joy in buds and bowers

For one brief while the joy of infant eyes,

Changing their urban murk to paradise—

You have our thanks!—may your reward include

More than our thanks, far more: their gratitude.

“I LOOK INTO MY GLASS”

I LOOK into my glass,

And view my wasting skin,

And say, “Would God it came to pass

My heart had shrunk as thin!”

For then, I, undistrest

By hearts grown cold to me,

Could lonely wait my endless rest

With equanimity.

But Time, to make me grieve;

Part steals, lets part abide;

And shakes this fragile frame at eve

With throbbings of noontide.

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Table of Contents

WESSEX POEMS AND OTHER VERSES

PREFACE TO WESSEX POEMS

CONTENTS

THE TEMPORARY THE ALL

AMABEL

HAP

“IN VISION I ROAMED” TO —

AT A BRIDAL TO —

POSTPONEMENT

A CONFESSION TO A FRIEND IN TROUBLE

NEUTRAL TONES

SHE AT HIS FUNERAL

HER INITIALS

HER DILEMMA (IN — CHURCH)

REVULSION

SHE, TO HIM I

SHE, TO HIM II

SHE, TO HIM III

SHE, TO HIM IV

DITTY (E. L G.)

THE SERGEANT’S SONG (1803)

VALENCIENNES (1793)

SAN SEBASTIAN (August 1813)

THE STRANGER’S SONG

THE BURGHERS (17–)

LEIPZIG (1813)

THE PEASANT’S CONFESSION

THE ALARM (1803)

HER DEATH AND AFTER

THE DANCE AT THE PHŒNIX

THE CASTERBRIDGE CAPTAINS (KHYBER PASS, 1842)

A SIGN-SEEKER

MY CICELY (17–)

HER IMMORTALITY

THE IVY-WIFE

A MEETING WITH DESPAIR

UNKNOWING

FRIENDS BEYOND

TO OUTER NATURE

THOUGHTS OF PHENA AT NEWS OF HER DEATH

MIDDLE-AGE ENTHUSIASMS To M. H.

IN A WOOD See “THE WOODLANDERS”

TO A LADY OFFENDED BY A BOOK OF THE WRITER’S

TO AN ORPHAN CHILD A WHIMSEY

NATURE’S QUESTIONING

THE IMPERCIPIENT (AT A CATHEDRAL SERVICE)

AT AN INN

THE SLOW NATURE (AN INCIDENT OF FROOM VALLEY)

IN A EWELEAZE NEAR WEATHERBURY

ADDITIONS

THE FIRE AT TRANTER SWEATLEY’S

HEIRESS AND ARCHITECT For A. W. B.

THE TWO MEN

LINES

“I LOOK INTO MY GLASS”

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE