Thomas Hardy

“Ah, are you digging on my grave

Between us now and here—

How great my grief, my joys how few,

I found her out there

I have lived with shades so long,

I look into my glass,

I need not go

I rose up as my custom is

I said to Love,

In vision I roamed the flashing Firmament,

My spirit will not haunt the mound

Regret not me;

She charged me with having said this and that

When I set out for Lyonnesse,

You did not come,

South of the Line, inland from far Durban,

As “legal representative”

The day is turning ghost,

Your troubles shrink not, though I feel them less

He lay awake, with a harassed air,

Beeny did not quiver,

Why go to Saint-Juliot? What’s Juliot to me?

From the slow march and muffled drum

In Casterbridge there stood a noble pile,

As evening shaped I found me on a moor

When you slowly emerged from the den of Time,

Attentive eyes, fantastic heed,

I mark the months in liveries dank and dry,

In this fair niche above the unslumbering sea,

In years defaced and lost,

She wore a new “terra-cotta” dress,

Through vaults of pain,

On Monday night I closed my door,

She sits in the tawny vapour

Hereto I come to interview a ghost;

Knight, a true sister-love

Come again to the place

I marked her ruined hues,

A shaded lamp and a waving blind,

The chimes called midnight, just at interlune,

There is a house with ivied walls,

When you paced forth, to wait maternity,

If hours be years the twain are blest,

Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea,

They sit and smoke on the esplanade,

When we as strangers sought

As I drive to the junction of lane and highway,

The ten hours’ light is abating,

The kettle descants in a cozy drone,

“My bride is not coming, alas!” says the groom,

“I stood at the back of the shop, my dear,

Last year I called this world of gain-givings

O the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea,

Looking forward to the spring

I dream that the dearest I ever knew

While rain, with eve in partnership,

Around the house the flakes fly faster,

“Sixpence a week,” says the girl to her lover,

“O Lord, why grievest Thou?—

Here’s one in whom Nature feared—faint at such vying—

Sirmio, thou dearest dear of strands

That night your great guns, unawares,

Wintertime nighs;

While the far farewell music thins and fails,

Beneath a knap where flown

There dwells a mighty pair—

Here, where Vespasian’s legions struck the sands,

Everybody else, then, going,

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

Child, were I king, I’d yield my royal rule,

O epic-famed, god-haunted Central Sea,

I towered far, and lo! I stood within

I saw a slowly-stepping train—

Had you wept; had you but neared me with a frail uncertain ray,

If but some vengeful god would call to me

She sought the Studios, beckoning to her side

’Twas a death-bed summons, and forth I went

The two were silent in a sunless church,

Upon a noon I pilgrimed through

Upon a poet’s page I wrote

“No—not where I shall make my own;

Con the dead page as ’twere live love: press on!

That love’s dull smart distressed my heart

I saw a dead man’s finer part

I come across from Mellstock while the moon wastes weaker

The years have gathered grayly

Pale beech and pine-tree blue,

“And now to God the Father,” he ends,

I shall rot here, with those whom in their day

Plunging and labouring on in a tide of visions,

“What do you see in that time-touched stone,

“You see those mothers squabbling there?”

A plain tilt-bonnet on her head

“O lonely workman, standing there

“O that mastering tune?” And up in the bed

I traced the Circus whose gray stones incline

“But hear. If you stay, and the child be born,

“Would it had been the man of our wish!”

“Man, you too, aren’t you, one of these rough followers of the criminal?

He enters, and mute on the edge of a chair

How she would have loved

A spirit seems to pass,

“Old Norbert with the flat blue cap—

Before we part to alien thoughts and aims,

Is it worth while, dear, now,

I play my sweet old airs—

When the hamlet hailed a birth

“O memory, where is now my youth,

What of the faith and fire within us

We passed where flag and flower

I traversed a dominion

“Alive?”—And I leapt in my wonder,

When I look forth at dawning, pool,

We stood by a pond that winter day,

Whence comes Solace?—Not from seeing

My ardours for emprize nigh lost

“I’ll tell—being past all praying for—

“My stick!” he says, and turns in the lane

They stand confronting, the coffin between,

Nobody says: Ah, that is the place

Snow-bound in woodland, a mournful word,

Clouds spout upon her

Though I waste watches framing words to fetter

These numbered cliffs and gnarls of masonry

I sat in the Muses’ Hall at the mid of the day,

Who, then, was Cestius,

We walked where Victor Jove was shrined awhile,

“Why, Sergeant, stray on the Ivel Way,

Dead shalt thou lie; and nought

Through snowy woods and shady

Along the way

Here goes a man of seventy-four,

They bear him to his resting-place—

When you shall see me in the toils of Time,

Perhaps, long hence, when I have passed away,

I will be faithful to thee; aye, I will!

This love puts all humanity from me;

Somewhere afield here something lies

I scanned her picture dreaming,

O sweet To-morrow!—

At last! In sight of home again,

“It is not death that harrows us,” they lipped,

Slip back, Time!

“No smoke spreads out of this chimney-pot,

I would that folk forgot me quite,

The new-vamped Abbey shaped apace

In a ferny byway

Much wonder I—here long low-laid—

When of tender mind and body

Brother Bulleys, let us sing

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

“Men know but little more than we,

Three captains went to Indian wars,

Why do you harbour that great cheval-glass

The church flings forth a battled shade

“The quay recedes. Hurrah! Ahead we go! . . .

It bends far over Yell’ham Plain,

In a solitude of the sea

For long the cruel wish I knew

At Westminster, hid from the light of day,

“Soul! Shall I see thy face,” she said,

To Jenny came a gentle youth

I leant upon a coppice gate

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest

I opened my shutter at sunrise,

Sinking down by the gate I discern the thin moon,

I wandered to a crude coast

A dream of mine flew over the mead

“A woman never agreed to it!” said my knowing friend to me.

If ever joy leave

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

We two kept house, the Past and I,

Why did you give no hint that night

O it was sad enough, weak enough, mad enough—

He does not think that I haunt here nightly:

That from this bright believing band

I say, “She was as good as fair,”

I longed to love a full-boughed beech

Yes; your up-dated modern page—

It was a wet wan hour in spring,

“O Time, whence comes the Mother’s moody look amid her labours,

Why should this flower delay so long

“O passenger, pray list and catch

Some say the spot is banned; that the pillar Cross-and-Hand

Under a daisied bank

I have risen again,

“What are you still, still thinking,”

When mid-autumn’s moan shook the night-time,

He paused on the sill of a door ajar

“More than half my life long

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

Queer are the ways of a man I know:

I look upon the map that hangs by me—

Shall we conceal the Case, or tell it—

They are not those who used to feed us

Between the folding sea-downs,

Let us off and search, and find a place

Since Reverend Doctors now declare

By Rome’s dim relics there walks a man,

“O ’Melia, my dear, this does everything crown!

“I have a Love I love too well

“If ever I walk to church to wed,

Aloof, as if a thing of mood and whim;

Winter is white on turf and tree,

Here is the ancient floor,

When Lawyers strive to heal a breach,

In days when men had joy of war,

When wilt thou wake, O Mother, wake and see—

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

The thick lids of Night closed upon me

“I mean to build a hall anon,

O my trade it is the rarest one,

“Poor wanderer,” said the leaden sky,

Once more the cauldron of the sun

As newer comers crowd the fore,

He bends his travel-tarnished feet

In his early days he was quite surprised

“O he’s suffering—maybe dying—and I not there to aid,

Change and chancefulness in my flowering youthtime,

The sun said, watching my watering-pot

I heard a small sad sound,

I tore your letter into strips

Its roots are bristling in the air

There were two youths of equal age,

Just at the corner of the wall

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,

You did not walk with me

I wayed by star and planet shine

By Mellstock Lodge and Avenue

“Love, while you were away there came to me—

“Why do you stand in the dripping rye,

“See, here’s the workbox, little wife,

How do you know that the pilgrim track

Not a line of her writing have I,

Now that my page upcloses, doomed, maybe,

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

Breathe not, hid Heart: cease silently,

Sunned in the South, and here to-day;

O life with the sad seared face,

Dear Lizbie Browne,

Whether to sally and see thee, girl of my dreams,

Show thee as I thought thee

“It is a foolish thing,” said I,

“Whenever I plunge my arm, like this,

When, soul in soul reflected,

Moments the mightiest pass uncalendared,

We trenched, we trumpeted and drummed,

There are some heights in Wessex, shaped as if by a kindly hand

Where we made the fire,

Rook.—Throughout the field I find no grain;

It was your way, my dear,

Never a careworn wife but shows,

Here by the moorway you returned,

Thirty-two years since, up against the sun,

Long have I framed weak phantasies of Thee,