= r- = - == DD S^^S ^^ 3 = ^= en ^= (-1 :^ 7 = -^-^ 1 — = 33 1 m 4 = 6 = ^^ o —1 ^^s -< 3 SELECTED POEMS OF JumfiiMa HARDY UNIV. OF CAUF. LIBRARY. LOS ANGEU6^ <«. (Bofien ^reaeurj ^eriee SELECTED POEMS OF THOMAS HARDY SELECTED POEMS OF THOMAS HARDY MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1922 COPYRIGHT PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN Ft'Tst Edition October 1916 Reprinted October 1916, 1917, 1922 PR Cop. 2. CONTENTS PART I POEMS CHIEFLY LYRICAL After the Visit to meet, or otherwise . The Difference On THE Departure Platform In a Cathedral City •'I SAY I'll seek her" . Song of Hope .... Before and after Summer . First Sight of her and after The Sun on the Bookcase . "When I set out for Lyonnesse At the Word "Farewell" . Ditty The Night of the Dance To LizBiE Browne . " Let me enjoy" The Ballad-singer . The Division . Yell'ham-Wood's Story V PAGE 3 5 7 8 lO II 12 14 IS i6 17 i8 20 22 23 26 27 28 29 203283 5 VI CONTENTS Her Initials . The Wound A Merrymaking in Question ** How GREAT MY GRIEF " At AN Inn A Broken Appointment . At News of a Woman's Death Middle-age Enthusiasms In a Eweleaze A Spot The Darkling Thrush The Temporary the All The Ghost of the Past The Self-unseeing . To Life Unknowing At his Funeral News for her Mother Lost Love . Where the Picnic was The Going "I found her out there Without Ceremony The Voice A Dream or no After a Journey Beeny Cliff At Castle Boterel . fj CONTENTS The Phantom Horsewoman On a Midsummer Eve ** My spirit will not haunt the The House of Hospitalities "Shut out that moon" . •' Regret not me" . In the Mind's Eye . Amabel .... ** I SAID TO Love " Reminiscences of a Dancing Man In a Wood He abjures Love The Dream-follower Wessex Heights To a Motherless Child '* I need not go" . Shelley's Skylark . Wives in the Sere = To an Unborn Pauper Child The Dead Man walking "I look into my glass" Exeunt omnes . mound vu PAGE 73 75 76 77 78 79 81 82 84 86 88 90 92 93 96 97 99 lOI 102 104 106 107 PART II POEMS NARRATIVE AND REFLECTIVE Paying Calls . Friends beyond III 1 12 VIU CONTENTS PAGE In Front of the Landscape . . • 115 The Convergence of the Twain . . .119 The Schreckhorn 122 George Meredith 123 A Singer asleep 124 In the Moonlight 127 A Church Romance 128 The Roman Road 129 The Oxen 130 She hears the Storm 131 After the last Breath .... 132 Night in the Old Home . . . . 134 The Dear 136 One we knew i37 Neutral Tones i39 To Him 140 Rome : The Vatican— Sala delle Muse . 141 Rome : At the Pyramid of Cestius . . 143 On an Invitation to the United States . 145 At a Lunar Eclipse 146 The Subalterns i47 The Sleep-worker 149 Beyond the last Lamp . . . . =150 The Face at the Casement . . . .152 The Dead Quire 155 The Pine-planters 161 The Burghers 163 The Coronation 167 CONTENTS A Commonplace Day Her Death and after . In Death divided In Tenebris .... *'I HAVE lived with ShaDES " A Poet PART III WAR POEMS, AND LYRICS FROM "THE DYNASTS" Embarkation » 187 Departure 188 The Going of the Battery .... 189 Drummer Hodge 191 The Man he killed 192 The Souls of the Slain . . . , 193 '• Men who march away " . . . . 199 Before marching, and after . . . 201 In Time of "The Breaking of Nations" . 203 From "The Dynasts" — The Night of Trafalgar . . . 204 Hussar's Song: "Budmouth Dears" . 206 "My Love's gone a-fighting" . . 208 The Eve of Waterloo .... 209 Chorus of the Pities . . . .211 Last Chorus 213 PART I POEMS CHIEFLY LYRICAL 15 IB AFTER THE VISIT (To F. E. D.) Come again to the place Where your presence was as a leaf that skims Down a drouthy way whose ascent bedims The bloom on the farer's face. Come again, with the feet That were light on the green as a thistledown ball, And those mute ministrations to one and to all Beyond a man's saying sweet. Until then the faint scent Of the bordering flowers swam unheeded away. And I marked not the charm in the changes of day As the cloud-colours came and went. Through the dark corridors Your walk was so soundless I did not know Your form from a phantom's of long ago Said to pass on the ancient floors, 3 4 AFTER THE VISIT Till you drew from the shade, And I saw the large luminous living eyes Regard me in fixed inquiring-wise As those of a soul that weighed, Scarce consciously, The eternal question of what Life was, And why we were there, and by whose strange laws That which mattered most could not be. TO MEET, OR OTHERWISE Whether to sally and see thee, girl of my dreams. Or whether to stay And see thee not ! How vast the difference seems Of Yea from Nay Just now. Yet this same sun will slant its beams At no far day On our two mounds, and then what will the difference weigh ! Yet I will see thee, maiden dear, and make The most I can Of what remains to us amid this brake Cimmerian Through which we grope, and from whose thorns we ache. While still we scan Round our frail faltering progress for some path or plan. By briefest meeting something sure is won ; It will have been : 6 TO MEET, OR OTHERWISE Nor God nor Demon can undo the done, Unsight the seen. Make muted music be as unbegun, Though things terrene Groan in their bondage till oblivion supervene. So, to the one long-sweeping symphony From times remote Till now, of human tenderness, shall we Supply one note, Small and untraced, yet that will ever be Somewhere afloat Amid the spheres, as part of sick Life's antidote. THE DIFFERENCE Sinking down by the gate I discern the thin moon, And a blackbird tries over old airs in the pine, But the moon is a sorry one, sad the bird's tune. For this spot is unknown to that Heartmate of mine. II Did my Heartmate but haunt here at times such as now, The song would be joyous and cheerful the moon ; But she will see never this gate, path, or bough, Nor I find a joy in the scene or the tune. ON THE DEPARTURE PLATFORM We kissed at the barrier ; and passing through She left me, and moment by moment got Smaller and smaller, until to my view She was but a spot ; A wee white spot of muslin fluff That down the diminishing platform bore Through hustling crowds of gentle and rough To the carriage door. Under the lamplight's fitful glowers, Behind dark groups from far and near Whose interests were apart from ours. She would disappear. Then show again, till I ceased to see That flexible form, that nebulous white ; And she who was more than my life to me Had vanished quite. . . . We have penned new plans since that fair fond day. And in season she will appear again — ■ 8 ON THE DEPARTURE PLATFORM 9 Perhaps in the same soft white array — But never as then ! — ** And why, young man, must eternally fly A joy you'll repeat, if you love her well ? " — O friend, nought happens twice thus ; why, I cannot tell ! IN A CATHEDRAL CITY These people have not heard your name ; No loungers in this placid place Have helped to bruit your beauty's fame. The grey Cathedral, towards whose face Bend feyes untold, has met not yours ; Your shade has never swept its base. Your form has never darked its doors, •INor have your faultless feet once thrown A pensive pit-pat on its floors. Along the street to maidens known Blithe lovers hum their tender airs. But in your praise voice not a tone. . . . — Since nought bespeaks you here, or bears As I, your imprint through and through Here might I rest, till my heart shares The spot's unconsciousness of you I Salisbury. 10 " I SAY I'LL SEEK HER " I SAY, " I'll seek her side Ere hindrance interposes " ; But eve in midnight closes, And here I still abide. Wiien darkness wears I see Her sad eyes in a vision ; They ask, " What indecision Detains you, Love, from me ? — " The creaking hinge is oiled, I have unbarred the backway, But you tread not the trackway ; And shall the thing be spoiled ? " Far cockcrows echo shrill. The shadows are abating. And I am waiting, waiting ; But O, you tarry still ! " II SONG OF HOPE O SWEET To-morrow ! — After to-day- There will away This sense of sorrow. Then let us borrow Hope, for a gleaming Soon will be streaming, Dimmed by no gray- No gray ! While the winds wing us Sighs from The Gone^ Nearer to dawn Minute-beats bring us ; When there will sing us Larks, of a glory Waiting our story Further anon — Anon ! Doff the black token, Don the red shoon. Right and retune Viol-strings broken ; 12 SONG OF HOPE Null the words spoken In speeches of rueing, The night cloud is hueing, To-morrow shines soon — Shines soon ! 13 BEFORE AND AFTER SUMMER Looking forward to the spring One puts up with anything. On this February day, Though the winds leap down the street Wintry scourgings seem but play, And these later shafts of sleet — Sharper pointed than the first — And these later snows — the worst — Are as a half-transparent blind Riddled by rays from sun behind. II Shadows of the October pine Reach into this room of mine : On the pine there swings a bird ; He is shadowed with the tree. Mutely perched he bills no word ; Blank as I am even is he. For those happy suns are past. Fore-discerned in winter last. When went by their pleasure,* then ? I, alas, perceived not when. J4 FIRST SIGHT OF HER AND AFTER A DAY is drawing to its fall I had not dreamed to see ; The first of many to enthrall My spirit, will it be ? Or is this eve the end of all Such new delight for me ? I journey home : the pattern grows Of moon-shades on the way : " Soon the first quarter, I suppose/^ Sky-glancing travellers say. I realize that it, for those. Has been a common day. 15 THE SUN ON THE BOOKCASE {Student's Love-song: 1870) Once more the cauldron of the sun Smears the bookcase with winy red, And here my page is, and there my bed, And the apple-tree shadows travel along Soon their intangible track will be run. And dusk grow strong And they have fled. Yes : now the boiling ball is gone. And I have wasted another day. . . . But wasted — wasted, do I say ? Is it a waste to have imaged one Beyond the hills there, who, anon. My great deeds done. Will be mine alway ? 16 ''WHEN I SET OUT FOR LYONNESSE" (1870) When I set out for Lyonnesse, A hundred miles away, The rime was on the spray, And starhght Ht my lonesomeness When I set out for Lyonnesse A hundred miles away. What would bechance at Lyonnesse While I should sojourn there No prophet durst declare. Nor did the wisest wizard guess What would bechance at Lyonnesse While I should sojourn there. When I came back from Lyonnesse With magic in my eyes, All marked with mute surmise My radiance rare and fathomless, WTien I came back from Lyonnesse With magic in my eyes ! 27 AT THE WORD "FAREWELL" She looked like a bird from a cloud On the clammy lawn, Moving alone, bare-browed. In the dim of dawn. The candles alight in the room For my parting meal Made all things withoutdoors loom Strange, ghostly, unreal. The hour itself was a ghost. And it seemed to me then As of chances the chance furthermost I should see her again. I beheld not where all was so fleet That a Plan of the past Which had ruled us from birthtime to meet Was accomplished at last. No prelude did I there perceive To a drama at all, Or foreshadow v/hat fortune might weave From beginnings so small. i8 AT THE WORD " FAREWELL " 19 But I rose as if quicked by a spur I was bound to obey. And stepped through the casement to her Still alone in the gray. " I am leaving 5^ou. . . . Farewell ! " I said As I followed her on By an alley bare boughs overspread : " I soon must be gone ! " Even then the scale might have been turned Against love by a feather, — But crimson one cheek of hers burned When we came in together. 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 ; 20 DITTY 21 (Such will 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 WTiat bondservants 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 NIGHT OF THE DANCE The cold moon hangs to the sky by its horn, And centres its gaze on me ; The stars, hke eyes in reverie, Their westering as for a while forborne. Quiz downward curiously. Old Robert hauls the backbrand in, The green logs steam and spit ; The half -awakened sparrows flit From the riddled thatch ; and owls begin To whoo from the gable-slit. Yes ; far and nigh things seem to know Sweet scenes are impending here ; That all is prepared ; that the hour is near For welcomes, fellowships, and flow Of sally, song, and cheer ; That spigots are pulled and viols strung ; That soon will arise the sound Of measures trod to tunes renowned ; That She will return in Love's low tongue My vows as we wheel around. 22 TO LIZBIE BROWNE Dear Lizbie Browne, Where are you now ? In sun, in rain ? — Or is your brow Past joy, past pain. Dear Lizbie Browne ? II Sweet Lizbie Browne, How you could smile. How you could sing ! — - How archly wile In glance-giving, Sweet Lizbie Browne I III And, Lizbie BrownC; W^io else had hair Bay-red as yours, 23 24 TO LIZBIE BROWNE Or flesh so fair Bred out of doors, Sweet Lizbie Browne ? IV When, Lizbie Browne, You had just begun To be endeared By stealth to one. You disappeared My Lizbie Bro\vne ! Ay, Lizbie Browne, So swift your hfe. And mine so slow. You were a wife Ere I could show Love, Lizbie Browne. VI Still, Lizbie Browne, You won, they said. The best of men When you were wed. Where went you then, O Lizbie Browne ? TO LIZBIE BROWNE 25 VII Dear Lizbie Browne, I should have thought, " Girls ripen fast," And coaxed and caught You ere you passed. Dear Lizbie Browne ! VIII But, Lizbie Browne, I let you slip ; Shaped not a sign ; Touched never your lip With lip of mine. Lost Lizbie Browne ! IX So, Lizbie Browne, When on a day Men speak of me As not, you'll say, " And who was he ? "- Yes, Lizbie Browne ! LET ME ENJOY " Let me enjoy the earth no less Because the all-enacting Might That fashioned forth its loveliness Had other aims than my delight. II About my path there flits a Fair, Who throws me not a word or sign ; I'll charm me with her ignoring air. And laud the lips not meant for mine. Ill From manuscripts of moving song Inspired by scenes and dreams unknown I'll pour out raptures that belong To others, as they were my own. IV And some day hence, toward Paradise And all its blest — if such should be — I will lift glad, afar-off eyes. Though it contain no place for me. 26 THE BALLAD-SINGER Sing, Ballad-singer, raise a hearty tune ; Make me forget that there was ever a one I walked with in the meek light of the moon When the day's work was done. Rhyme, Ballad -rhymer, start a country song ; Make me forget that she whom I loved well Swore she would love me dearly, love me long. Then — what I cannot tell ! Sing, Ballad-singer, from your little book ; Make me forget those heart-breaks, acliings, fears ; Make me forget her name, her sweet, sweet look — Make me forget her tears. 27 / THE DIVISION Rain on the windows, creaking doors. With blasts that besom the green, And I am here, and you are there. And a hundred miles between ! O were it but the weather. Dear, O were it but the miles That summed up all our severance. There might be room for smiles. But that thwart thing betwixt us twain. Which nothing cleaves or clears, Is more than distance. Dear, or rain, And longer than the years ! 1 8 9-. 28 YELL'HAM-WOOD'S STORY CoOMB-FiRTREES Say that Life is a moan. And Clyffe-hill Clump says " Yea ! " But Yell'ham says a thing of its own : It's not " Gray, gray Is Life alway ! " That Yell'ham says. Nor that Life is for ends unknown. It says that Life would signify A thwarted purposing : That we come to live, and are called to die. Yes, that's the thing In fall, in spring, That Yell'ham says : — " Life offers— to deny ! " 1902. 29 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 waned away I 1869. 30 THE WOUND I CLIMBED to the Crest, And, fog-festooned. The sun lay west Like a crimson wound : Like that wound of mine Of which none knew, For I'd given no sign That it pierced me through. 31 A MERRYMAKING IN QUESTION " I WILL get a new string for my fiddle. And call to the neighbours to come, And partners shall dance down the middle Until the old pewter-wares hum ; And we'll sip the mead, cyder, and rum ! '* From the night came the oddest of answers A hollow wind, like a bassoon, And headstones all ranged up as dancers, And cypresses droning a croon. And gurgoyles that mouthed to the tune. 32 " HOW GREAT MY GRIEF " (triolet) How great my grief, my joys how few, Since first it was my fate to know thee ! — Have the slow years not brought to view How great my grief, my joys how few, Nor memory shaped old times anew. Nor loving-kindness helped to show thee How great my grief, my joys how few. Since first it was my fate to know thee ? 33 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 hke theirs Would flush our day ! " And we were left alone As Love's own pair ; Yet never the love-light shone Between us there, 34 AT AN INN 35 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 ! A BROKEN APPOINTMENT You did not come, And marching Time drew on and wore me numb. — Yet less for loss of your dear presence there Than that I thus found lacking in your make That high compassion which can overbear Reluctance for pure loving-kindness' sake Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum, You did not come. You love not me. And love alone can lend you loyalty ; — I know and knew it. But, unto the store Of human deeds divine in all but name, Was it not worth a little hour or more To add yet this : Once, you, a woman, came To soothe a time-torn man ;• even though it be You love not me ? 36 AT NEWS OF A WOMAN'S 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 fore- bodings, or fears Disennoble her soul ? 37 38 AT NEWS OF A WOMAN'S DEATH Thus I do but the phantom retain Of the maiden of yore As my rehc ; yet haply the best of her — fined in my brain It may be the more That no hne 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 mom, noon, eve, every when ! " — 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. 39 40 MIDDLE-AGE ENTHUSIASMS 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 EWELEAZE 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. 41 A SPOT In years defaced and lost, Two sat here, transport-tossed. Lit by a living love The wilted world knew nothing of : Scared momently By gaingivings, Then hoping things That could not be. . . . ' Of love and us no trace Abides upon the place ; The sun and shadows wheel. Season and season sere-ward steal ; Foul days and fair Here, too, prevail. And gust and gale As everywhere. But lonely shepherd souls Wlio bask amid these knolls May catch a faery sound On sleepy noontides from the ground ; " O not again Till Earth outwears Shall love like theirs Suffuse this glen ! " 42 THE DARKLING THRUSH I LEANT upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-gray. And Winter's dregs made desolate The weakening eye of day. The tangled bine-stems scored the sky Like strings of broken lyres, And all mankind that haunted nigh Had sought their household fires. The land's sharp features seemed to be The Century's corpse outleant. His crypt the cloudy canopy, The wind his death-lament. The ancient pulse of germ and birth Was shrunken hard and dry. And every spirit upon earth Seemed fervourless as I. At once a voice arose among The bleak twigs overhead In a full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited ; 43 44 THE DARKLING THRUSH An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small. In blast-beruffled plume, Had chosen thus to fling his soul Upon the growing gloom. So little cause for carollings Of such ecstatic sound Was written on terrestrial things Afar or nigh around, That I could think there trembled through His happy good-night air Some blessed Hope, whereof he laiew And I was unaware. December 1900. THE TEMPORARY THE ALL (SAPPHICS) Change and chancefulness in my flowering youthtime Set me sun by sun near to one unchosen ; Wrought us fellowlike, and despite divergence, Fused us in friendship. " Cherish him can I w^hile the true one forth- come — 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, albeit 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. 45 46 THE TEMPORARY THE ALL " Then, high handiwork will 1 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 achieve- ment ; Sole the showance those of my onward earth- track — Never transcended ! THE GHOST OF THE PAST We two kept house, the Past and I, The Past and I ; Through all my tasks it hovered nigh Leaving me never alone. It was a spectral housekeeping Where fell no jarring tone. As strange, as still a housekeeping As ever has been known. As daily I went up the stair And down the stair, I did not mind the Bygone there — The Present once to me ; Its moving meek companionship I wished might ever be. There was in that companionsliip Something of ecstasy. It dwelt with me just as it was. Just as it was When first its prospects gave me pause In wayward wanderings, 47 48 THE GHOST OF THE PAST Before the years had torn old troths As they tear all sweet things, Before gaunt griefs had wrecked old troths And dulled old rapturings. And then its form began to fade, Began to fade, Its gentle echoes faintlier played At eves upon my ear Than when the autumn's look embrowned The lonely chambers here. When autumn's settling shades embrowned Nooks that it haunted near. And so with time my vision less, Yea, less and less Makes of that Past my housemistress. It dwindles in my eye ; It looms a far-off skeleton And not a comrade nigh, A flitting fitful skeleton Dimming as days draw by. THE SELF-UNSEEING Here is the ancient floor. Footworn and hollowed and thin. Here was the former door Where the dead feet walked in. She sat here in her chair, Smiling into the fire ; He who played stood there, Bowing it higher and higher. Childlike, I danced in a dream ; Blessings emblazoned that day ; Everything glowed with a gleam ; Yet we were looking away ! 49 E TO LIFE Life with the sad seared face, I weary of seeing thee, And thy draggled cloak, and thy hobbling pace, And thy too-forced pleasantry ! 1 know, what thou would 'st tell Of Death, Time, Destiny — I have known it long, and know, too, well What it all means for me. But canst thou not array Thyself in rare disguise. And feign like truth, for one mad day. That Earth is Paradise ? I'll tune me to the mood, And mumm with thee till eve ; And maybe what as interlude I feign, I shall believe ! 50 UNKNOWING When, soul in soul reflected, We breathed an eethered 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 panting passion-goaded. We planned to hie away. But, unforeboded. All the long day Wild storms so pierced and pattered That none could up and go, Our lives seemed shattered . . . — We did not know ! When I found you, helpless lying. And you waived my long misprise, And swore me, dying, In phantom-guise 51 52 UNKNOWING To wing to me when grieving, And touch away my woe, We kissed, bcHeving . . . — We did not know ! But though, your powers out-reckoning. You tarry dead and dumb. Or scorn my beckoning. And will not come ; And I say, " Why thus inanely Brood on her memory so : " I say it vainly — * I feel and know I 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-. 53 NEWS FOR HER MOTHER One mile more is Wliere your door is Mother mine ! — Harvest's coming. Mills are strumming, Apples fine. And the cyder made to-year will be as wine. II Yet, not viewing N What's a-doing Here around Is it thrills me, , And so fills me That I bound Like a ball or leaf or lamb along the ground. Ill Tremble not now At your lot now Silly soul i 54 NEWS FOR HER MOTHER 55 Hosts have sped them Quick to wed them. Great and small, Since the first two sighing half-hearts made a whole. IV Yet I wonder, Will it sunder Her from me ? Will she guess that I said " Yes,"— that His I'd be. Ere I thought she might not see him as I see ! Old brown gable. Granary, stable, Here you are ! O my mother, Can another Ever bar Mine from thy heart, make thy nearness seem afar ? LOST LOVE I PLAY my sweet old airs™ The airs he knew When our love was true- But he does not balk His determined walk, And passes up the stairs. I sing my songs once more, And presently hear His footstep near As if it would stay ; But he goes his way, And shuts a distant door. So I wait for another mom And another night In this soul-sick blight : And I wonder much As I sit, why such A woman as I was born ! 56 WHERE THE PICNIC WAS Where we made the fire In the summer-time Of branch and briar On the hill to the sea I slowly climb Through winter mire. And scan and trace The forsaken place Quite readily. Now a cold wind blows. And the grass is gray. But the spot still shows As a burnt circle — aye. And stick-ends, charred, Still strew the sward Whereon I stand. Last relic of the band Who came that day I Yes, I am here Just as last year, 57 58 WHERE THE PICNIC WAS And the sea breathes brine From its strange straight line Up hither, the same As when we four came. — But two have wandered far From this grassy rise Into urban roar Where no picnics are, And one — has shut her eyes For evermore. THE GOING Why did you give no hint that night That quickly after the morrow's dawn, And calmly, as if indifferent quite, You would close your term here, up and be gone Where I could not follow With wing of swallow To gain one glimpse of you ever anon ! Never to bid good-bye, Or lip me the softest call. Or utter a wish for a word, while I Saw morning harden upon the*^wall, Unmoved, unknowing That your great going Had place that moment, and altered all. Why do you make me leave the house And think for a breath it is you I see At the end of the alley of bending boughs Where so often at dusk you used to be ; Till in darkening dankness The yawning blankness Of the perspective sickens me ! 59 6o THE GOING You were she who abode By those red -veined rocks far West, You were the swan-necked one who rode Along the beethng Beeny Crest, And, reining nigh me. Would muse and eye me, While Life unrolled us its very best. Why, then, latterly did we not speak. Did we not think of those days long dead. And ere your vanishing strive to seek That time's renewal ? We might have said, " In this bright spring weather We'll visit together Those places that once we visited." Well, well ! All's past amend. Unchangeable. It must go. I seem but a dead man held on end To sink down ^ soon. . . . O you could not know That such swift fleeing No soul foreseeing — Not even I — would undo me so ! December 19 12. <* I FOUND HER OUT THERE I FOUND her out there On a slope few see. That falls westwardly To the salt-edged air, Where the ocean breaks On the purple strand. And the hurricane shakes The solid land. I brought her here, And have laid her to rest In a noiseless nest No sea beats near. She will never be stirred In her loamy cell By the waves long heard And loved so well. So she does not sleep By those haunted heights The Atlantic smites And the blind gales sweep, 6i >» 52 *'l FOUND HER OUT THERE" Whence she often would gaze At Dundagel's famed head. While the dipping blaze Dyed her face fire-red ; And would sigh at the tale Of sunk Lyonnesse, As a wind-tugged tress Flapped her cheek like a flail j Or listen at whiles With a thought-bound brow To the murmuring miles She is far from now. Yet her shade, maybe. Will creep underground Till it catch the sound Of that western sea As it swells and sobs Where she once domiciled^ And joy in its throbs With the heart of a child . December 19 12. WITHOUT CEREMONY It was your way, my dear, To be gone without a word When callers, friends, or kin Had left, and I hastened in To rejoin you, as I inferred. And when you'd a mind to career Off anywhere — say to town — You were all on a sudden gone Before I had thought thereon. Or noticed your trunks were down. So, now that you disappear For ever in that swift style. Your meaning seems to me Just as it used to be : " Good-bye is not worth while 1 " 63 THE VOICE Woman much missed, how you cail to me, call to me. Saying that now you are not as you were When you had changed from the one who was all to me, But as at first, when our day was fair. Can it be you that I hear ? Let me view you, then. Standing as when I drew near to the town Where you would wait for me : yes, as I knew you then. Even to the original air-blue gown ! Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness Travelling across the wet mead to me here. You being ever consigned to existlessness. Heard no more again far or near ? Thus I ; faltering forward. Leaves around me falling, Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward And the woman calling. December 19 12. 64 A DREAM OR NO Why go to Saint-Juliot ? What's Juliot to me ? Some strange necromancy But charmed me to fancy That much of my hfe claims the spot as its key. Yes. I have had dreams of that place in the West, And a maiden abiding Thereat as in hiding ; Fair-eyed and white-shouldered, broad-browed and brown -tressed. And of how, coastward bound on a night long ago, There lonely I found her. The sea-birds around her. And other than nigh things uncaring to know. So sweet her life there (in my thought has it seemed) That quickly she drew me To take her unto me. And lodge her long years with me. Such have I dreamed. 65 F 66 A DREAM OR NO But nought of that maid from Saint-Juliot I see ; Can she ever have been here, And shed her Hfe's sheen here. The woman I thought a long housemate with me ? Does there even a place like Saint-Juliot exist ? Or a Vallency Valley With stream and leafed alley, Or Beeny, or Bos with its flounce flinging mist ? February 19 13 AFTER A JOURNEY Hereto I come to view a voiceless ghost ; Wliither, O whither will its whim now draw me ? Up the cliff, down, till I'm lonely, lost, And the unseen waters' ejaculations awe me. Where you will next be there's no knowing, Facing round about me everywhere. With your nut-coloured hair. And gray eyes, and rose -flush coming and going. Yes : I have re-entered your olden haunts at last ; Through the years, through the dead scenes I have tracked you ; What have you now found to say of our past — Viewed across the dark space wherein I have lacked you ? Summer gave us sweets, but autumn wrought division ? Things were not lastly as firstly well With us twain, you tell ? But all's closed now, despite Time's derision. 67 68 AFTER A JOURNEY I see what you are doing : you are leading me on To the spots we knew when we haunted here together, The waterfall, above which the mist-bow shone At the then fair hour in the then fair weather, And the cave just under, with a voice still so hollow That it seems to call out to me from forty years ago. When you were all aglow, And not the thin ghost that I now frailly follow ! Ignorant of what there is flitting here to see, The waked birds preen and the seals flop lazily, Soon you will have. Dear, to vanish from me. For the stars close their shutters and the dawn whitens hazily. Trust me, I mind not, though Life lours. The bringing me here ; nay, bring me here again ! I am just the same as when Our days were a joy, and our paths through flowers. Pentargan Bay. BEENY CLIFF March 1870 — March 19 13 O THE opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea. And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free — The woman whom I loved so, and who loyally- loved me. II The pale mews plained below us, and the waves seemed far away In a nether sky, engrossed in saying their cease- less babbling say. As we laughed light-heartedly aloft on that clear- sunned March day. Ill A little cloud then cloaked us, and there flew an irised rain, And the Atlantic dyed its levels with a dull mis- featured stain. And then the sun burst out again, and purples prinked the main. 69 70 BEENY CLIFF IV — Still in all its chasmal beauty bulks old Beeny to the sky, And shall she and I not go there once again now March is nigh, And the sweet things said in that March say anew there by and by ? What if still in chasmal beauty looms that wild weird western shore, The woman now is — elsewhere — whom the ambling pony bore. And nor knows nor cares for Beeny, and will laugh there nevermore. AT CASTLE BOTEREL As I drive to the junction of lane and highway, And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette, I look behind at the fading byway, And see on its slope, now glistening wet, Distinctly yet Myself and a giriish form benighted In dry March weather. We climb the road Beside a chaise. We had just alighted To ease the sturdy pony's load When he sighed and slowed. What we did as we climbed, and what we talked of Matters not much, nor to what it led, — Something that life will not be balked of Without rude reason till hope is dead. And feehng fled. It filled but a minute. But was there ever A time of such quality, since or before. In that hill's story ? To one mind never. Though it has been climbed, foot-swift, foot- sore, By thousands more. 71 72 AT CASTLE BOTEREL Primaeval rocks form the road's steep border, And much have they faced there, first and last. Of the transitory in Earth's long order ; But what they record in colour and cast Is — that we two passed. And to me, though Time's unflinching rigour, In mindless rote, has ruled from sight The substance now, one phantom figure Remains on the slope, as when that night Saw us alight. I look and see it there, shrinking, shrinking, I look back at it amid the rain For the very last time ; for my sand is sinking. And I shall traverse old love's domain Never again. March 19 13. THE PHANTOM HORSEWOMAN Queer are the ways of a man I know : He comes and stands In a careworn craze, And looks at the sands And the seaward haze With moveless hands And face and gaze, Then turns to go . . . And what does he see when he gazes so ? II They say he sees as an instant thing More clear than to-day, A sweet soft scene That once was in play By that briny green ; Yes, notes alway Warm, real, and keen. What his back years bring — A phantom of his own figuring. 73 74 THE PHANTOM HORSEWOMAN III Of this vision of his they might say more Not only there Does he see this sight, But everywhere In his brain — day, night. As if on the air It were drawn rose-bright — Yea, far from that shore Does he carry tliis vision of heretofore : IV A ghost-girl-rider. And though, toil-tried. He withers daily, Time touches her not, But she still rides gaily In his rapt thought On that shagged and shaly Atlantic spot, And as when first eyed Draws rein and sings to the swing of the tide. 1913. ON A MIDSUMMER EVE I IDLY cut a parsley stalk And blew therein towards the moon ; I had not thought what ghosts would walk With shivering footsteps to my tune. I went, and knelt, and scooped my hand As if to drink, into the brook. And a faint figure seemed to stand Above me, with the bygone look. I lipped rough rhymes of chance, not choice, I thought not what my words might be ; There came into my ear a voice That turned a tenderer verse for me. 75 " MY SPIRIT WILL NOT HAUNT THE MOUND " My spirit will not haunt the mound Above my breast, But travel, memory-possessed, To where my tremulous being found Life largest, best. My phantom-footed shape will go When nightfall grays Hither and thither along the ways I and another used to know In backward days. And there you'll find me, if a jot You still should care For me, and for my curious air ; If otherwise, then I shall not. For you, be there. 76 THE HOUSE OF HOSPITALITIES Here we broached the Christmas barrel, Pushed up the charred log-ends ; Here we sang the Christmas carol. And called in friends. Time has tired me since we met here When the folk now dead were young, Since the viands were outset here And quaint songs sung. And the worm has bored the viol That used to lead the tune, Rust eaten out the dial That struck night's noon. Now no Christmas brings in neighbours, And the New Year comes unlit ; Where we sang the mole now labours, And spiders knit. Yet at midnight if here walking, When the moon sheets wall and tree, I see forms of old time talking. Who smile on me. 77 " SHUT OUT THAT MOON " Close up the casement, draw the bUnd, Shut out that steaUng moon. She wears too much the look she wore Before our lutes were strewn With years-deep dust, and names we read ' On a white stone were hewn. Step not forth on the dew-dashed lawn To view the Lady's Chair, Immense Orion's glittering form, The Less and Greater Bear : Stay in; to such sights we were drawn When faded ones were fair. Brush not the bough for midnight scents That come forth lingeringly, And wake the same sweet sentiments They breathed to you and me When living seemed a laugh, and love All it was said to be. Within the common lamp-lit room Prison my eyes and thought ; Let dingy details crudely loom. Mechanic speech be wrought : Too fragrant was Life's early bloom. Too tart the fruit it brought ! 1904. 78 " REGRET NOT ME "" Regret not me ; Beneath the sunny tree I lie uncaring, slumbering peacefully. Swift as the light I flew my faery flight ; Ecstatically I moved, and feared no night. I did not know That heydays fade and go, But deemed that what was would be always so. I skipped at mom Between the yellowing com, Thinking it good and glorious to be bom. I ran at eves Among the piled-up sheaves, Dreaming, " I grieve not, therefore nothing grieves." ISlow soon wiU come The apple, pear^ and plum, And hinds will sing, and autumn insects hum. 79 8o " REGRET NOT ME " Again you will fare To cyder-makings rare, And junketings ; but I shall not be there. Yet gaily sing Until the pewter ring Those songs we sang when we went gipsying ! And lightly dance Some triple-timed romance In coupled figures, and forget mischance ; And mourn not me Beneath the yellowing tree ; For I shall mind not, slumbering peacefully. IN THE MIND'S EYE That was once her casement. And the taper nigh, Shining from within there, Beckoned, " Here am II" Now, as then, I see her Moving at the pane ; Ah ; 'tis but her phantom Borne within my brain ! — Foremost in my vision Everywhere goes she ; Change dissolves the landscapes. She abides with me. Shape so sweet and shy. Dear, Who can say thee nay ? Never once do I, Dear, Wish thy ghost away. 8j 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 no decrease ; All find in dorp or dell An Amabel. 82 AMABEL 83 — 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 ! ' " 1866. 16 Westbourne Park Villas. " I SAID TO LOVE " I SAID to Love, " It is not now as in old days When men adored thee and thy ways All else above ; Named thee the Boy, the Bright, the One Who spread a heaven beneath the sun," I said to Love. I said to him, " We now know more of thee than then ; We were but weak in judgment when. With hearts abrim, We clamoured thee that thou would 'st please Inflict on us thine agonies," I said to him. I said to Love, " Thou art not young, thou art not fair. No elfin darts, no cherub air. Nor swan, nor dove Are thine ; but features pitiless. And iron daggers of distress," I said to Love. 84 " I SAID TO LOVE " 85 " Depart then, Love 1 . . . — Man's race shall perish, threatenest thou, Without thy kindling coupling-vow ? The age to come the man of now Know nothing of ? — We fear not such a threat from thee ; We are too old in apathy ! Mankind shall cease. — So let it be," I said to Love. REMINISCENCES OF A DANCING MAN Who now remembers Almack's balls — Willis's sometime named — In those two smooth-floored upper halls For faded ones so famed ? Where as we trod to trilling sound The fancied phantoms stood around. Or joined us in the maze, Of the powdered Dears from Georgian years. Whose dust lay in sightless sealed-up biers. The fairest of former days. II Who now remembers gay Cremome, And all its jaunty jills. And those wild whirling figures born Of Jullien's grand quadrilles ? With hats on head and morning coats There footed to his prancing notes Our partner-girls and we ; And the gas-jets winked, and the lustres clinked, And the platform throbbed as with arms en- linked We moved to the minstrelsy. 86 REMINISCENCES 87 III Who now recalls those crowded rooms Of old yclept 'VThe Argyle," Where to the deep Drum-polka's booms We hopped in standard style ? Whither have danced those damsels now 1 Is Death the partner who doth moue Their wormy chaps and bare ? Do their spectres spin hke sparks within The smoky halls of the Prince of Sin To a thunderous JuUien air ? IN A WOOD Pale beech and pine so blue. Set in one clay. Bough to bough cannot you Live 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 ! 88 IN A WOOD 89 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 Lothly a rival's air. Cankering in blank 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. HE ABJURES LOA^ At last I put off love. For twice ten years The daysman of my thought. And hope, and doing ; Being ashamed thereof, And faint of fears And desolations, wrought In his pursuing, Since first in youthtime those Disquietings That heart-enslavement brings To hale and hoary, Became my housefellows. And, fool and blind, I turned from kith and kind To give liim glory. I was as children be Who have no care ; I did not think or sigh, I did not sicken ; But lo. Love beckoned me. And I was bare, 90 HE ABJURES LOVE 91 And poor, and starved, and dry. And fever-stricken. Too many times ablaze With fatuous fires, Enkindled by his wiles To new embraces, Did I, by wilful ways And baseless ires, Return the anxious smiles Of friendly faces. No more will now rate I The common rare. The midnight drizzle dew. The gray hour golden, The wind a yearning cry, The faulty fair. Things dreamt, of comelier hue Than things beholden ! . . . — I speak as one who plumbs Life's dim profound. One who at length can sound Clear views and certain. But — after love what comes ? A scene that lours, A few sad vacant hours, And then, the Curtain. 1883. THE DREAM-FOLLOWER A DREAM of mine flew over the mead To the halls where my old Love reigns ; And it drew me on to follow its lead : And I stood at her window-panes ; And I saw but a thing of flesh and bone Speeding on to its cleft in the clay ; And my dream was scared, and expired on a moan. And I whitely hastened away. 92 WESSEX HEIGHTS < (1896) There are some heights in Wessex, shaped as if hy a kindly hand For thinking, dreaming, dying on, and at crises when I stand, Say, on Ingpen Beacon eastward, or on Wylls- Neck westwardly, I seem where I was before my birth, and after death may be. In the lowlands I have no comrade, not even . the lone man's friend — Her who suffereth long and is kind ; accepts what he is too weak to mend : Down there they are dubious and askance ; there nobody thinks as I, But mind-chains do not clank where one's next neighbour is the sky. In the towns I am tracked by phantoms having weird detective ways — Shadows of beings who fellowed with myself of earlier days : 93 94 WESSEX HEIGHTS They hang about at places, and they say harsh heavy things — Men with a frigid sneer, and women with tart disparagings. Down there I seem to be false to myself, my simple self that was. And is not now, and I see him watching, wondering what crass cause Can have merged him into such a strange continuator as this. Who yet has something in common with him- self, my chrysalis. I cannot go to the great grey Plain ; there's a figure against the moon. Nobody sees it but I, and it makes my breast beat out of tune ; I cannot go to the tall-spired town, being barred by the forms now passed For everybody but me, in whose long vision they stand there fast. There's a ghost at Yell'ham Bottom chiding loud at the fall of the night. There's a ghost in Froom-side Vale, thin-lipped and vague, in a shroud of white. There is one in the railway-train whenever I do not want it near, I see its profile against the pane, saying what I would not hear. WESSEX HEIGHTS 95 As for one rare fair woman, I am now but a thought of hers, I enter her mind and another thought succeeds me that she prefers ; Yet my love for her in its fulness she herself even did not know ; Well, time cures hearts of tenderness, and now I can let her go. So I am found on Ingpen Beacon, or on Wylls- Neck to the west, Or else on homely Bulbarrow, or Uttle Pilsdon Crest, Where men have never cared to haunt, nor women have walked with me. And ghosts then keep their distance ; and I know some liberty. TO A MOTHERLESS CHILD 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 ! 96 *' I NEED NOT GO '* I NEED not go Through sieet and snow To where I know She waits for me ; She will tarry me there Till I find it fair. And have time to spare From company. When I've overgot The world somewhat, When things cost not Such stress and strain. Is soon enough By cypress sough To tell my Love I am come again. And if some day, When none cries nay, I still delay To seek her side, 97 98 "I NEED NOT GO" (Though ample measure Of fitting leisure Await my pleasure) She will not chide. What — not upbraid me That I delayed me, Nor ask what stayed me So long ? Ah, no ! — New cares may claim me. New loves inflame me, She will not blame me. But suffer it so. SHELLEY'S SKYLARK {The neighbourhood of Leghorn : March 1887) Somewhere afield here something hes In Earth's obhvious eyeless trust That moved a poet to prophecies — A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust : The dust of the lark that Shelley heard. And made immortal through times to be ; — Though it only lived hke another bird, And knew not its immortality : Lived its meek life ; then, one day, fell — A little ball of feather and bone ; And how it perished, when piped farewell. And where it wastes, are alike unknown. Maybe it rests in the loam I view. Maybe it throbs in a myrtle's green, Maybe it sleeps in the coming hue Of a grape on the slopes of yon inland scene. Go find it, faeries, go and find That tiny pinch of priceless dust, 99 loo SHELLEY'S SKYLARK And bring a casket silver-lined, And framed of gold that gems encrust ; And we will lay it safe therein, And consecrate it to endless time ; For it inspired a bard to win Ecstatic heights in thought and rhyme. WIVES IN THE SERE Never a careworn wife but shows. If a joy suffuse her, Something beautiful to those Patient to peruse her, Some one charm the world unknows, Precious to a muser. Haply what, ere years were foes. Moved her mate to choose her. II But, be it a hint of rose That an instant hues her. Or some early light or pose Wherewith thought renews her- Seen by him at full, ere woes Practised to abuse her — Sparely comes it, swiftly goes, Time again subdues her. lOI TO AN UNBORN PAUPER CHILD Breathe not, hid Heart : cease silently. And though thy birth-hour beckons thee. Sleep the long sleep : The Doomsters heap Travails and teens around us here, And Time-wraiths turn our songsingings to fear. II Hark, how the peoples surge and sigh. And laughters fail, and greetings die : Hopes dwindle ; yea. Faiths waste away, Affections and enthusiasms numb ; Thou canst not mend these things if thou dost come. Ill Had I the ear of wombed souls Ere their terrestrial chart unrolls. And thou wert free To cease, or be. Then would I tell thee all I know. And put it to thee : Wilt thou take Life so ? I02 TO AN UNBORN PAUPER CHILD 103 IV Vain vow ! No hint of mine may hence To theeward fly : to thy locked sense Explain none can Life's pending plan : Thou wilt thy ignorant entry make Though skies spout fire and blood and nations quake. Fain would I, dear, find some shut plot ■ Of earth's wide wold for thee, where not One tear, one qualm. Should break the calm. But I am weak as thou and bare ; No man can change the common lot to rare. VI Must come and bide. And such are we — Unreasoning, sanguine, visionary — That I can hope Health, love, friends, scope In full for thee ; can dream thou 'It find Joys seldom yet attained by humankind ! THE DEAD MAN WALKING They hail me as one living, But don't they know That I have died of late years, Untombed although ? I am but a shape that stands here, A pulseless mould, A pale past picture, screening Ashes gone cold. Not at a minute's warning, Not in a loud hour. For me ceased Time's enchantments In hall and bower. There was no tragic transit. No catch of breath, When silent seasons inched me On to this death. ... — ^A Troubadour-youth I rambled With Life for lyre. The beats of being raging In me like fire. 104 THE DEAD MAN WALKING 105 But when I practised eyeing The goal of men, It iced me, and I perished A little then. When passed my friend, my kinsfolk Through the Last Door, And left me standing bleakly, I died yet more ; And when my Love's heart kindled In hate of me. Wherefore I knew not, died I One more degree. And if when I died fully I cannot say, And changed into the corpse-thing I am to-day ; Yet is it that, though whiling The time somehow In walking, talking, smihng, I live not now. " 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. 106 EXEUNT OMNES Everybody else, then, going, And I still left where the fair was ? . . . Much have I seen of neighbour loungers Making a lusty showing. Each now past all knowing. II There is an air of blankness In the street and the littered spaces ; Thoroughfare, steeple, bridge and highway- Wizen themselves to lankness ; Kennels dribble dankness. Ill Folk all fade. And whither, As I wait alone where the fair was ? Into the clammy and numbing night-fog Whence they entered hither. Soon one more goes thither. June 2, 19 13. 107 PART II POEMS NARRATIVE AND REFLECTIVE 109 PAYING CALLS I WENT by footpath and by stile Beyond where bustle ends, Strayed here a mile and there a mile, And called upon some friends. On certain ones I had not seen For years past did I call, And then on others who had been The oldest friends of all. It was the time of midsummer When they had used to roam ; But now, though tempting was the air, I found them all at home. I spoke to one and other of them By mound and stone and tree Of things we had done ere days were dmij But they spoke not to me. Ill FRIENDS BEYOND William Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Led- low 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 stiUicide : " 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. 112 FRIENDS BEYOND 113 " 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 old bass-viol that I set such value by." Squire — " You may hold the manse in fee, You may wed my spouse, may let my children's memory of me die." 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. 114 FRIENDS BEYOND 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 Led- low late at plough, Robert's kin, and John's, and Ned's, And the Squire, and Lady Susan, murmur mildly to me now. IN FRONT OF THE LANDSCAPE Plunging and labouring on in a tide of visions. Dolorous and dear, Forward I pushed my way as amid waste waters Stretching around, Through whose eddies there glimmered the customed landscape Yonder and near Blotted to feeble mist. And the coomb and the upland Coppice-crowned, Ancient chalk-pit, milestone, rills in the grass- flat Stroked by the light. Seemed but a ghost-like gauze, and no sub- stantial Meadow or mound. What were the infinite spectacles featuring fore- most Under my sight, 115 ii6 IN FRONT OF THE LANDSCAPE Hindering me to discern my paced advancement, Lengthening to miles ; What were the re-creations killing the daytime As by the night ? O they were speechful faces, gazing insistent, Some as with smiles. Some as with slow - born tears that brinily trundled Over the wrecked Cheeks that were fair in their flush-time, ash now with anguish, Harrowed by wiles. Yes, I could see them, feel them, hear them, address them — Halo-bedecked — And, alas, onwards, shaken by fierce unreason. Rigid in hate. Smitten by years -long wryness born of mis- prision. Dreaded, suspect. Then there would breast me shining sights, sweet seasons Further in date ; Instruments of strings with the tenderest passion Vibrant, beside Lamps long extinguished, robes, cheeks, eyes with the earth's crust Now corporate. IN FRONT OF THE LANDSCAPE 117 Also there rose a headland of hoary aspect Gnawed by the tide, Frilled by the nimb of the morning as two friends stood there Guilelessly glad — Wherefore they knew not — touched by the fringe of an ecstasy Scantly descried. Later images too did the day unfurl me. Shadowed and sad, Clay cadavers of those who had shared in the dramas, Laid now at ease. Passions all spent, chiefest the one of the broad brow Sepulture-clad. So did beset me scenes, miscalled of the bygone. Over the leaze. Past the clump, and down to where lay the beheld ones ; — Yea, as the rhyme Sung by the sea - swell, so in their pleading dumbness Captured me these. For, their lost revisiting manifestations In their live time Much had Islighted, caring not for their purport, Seeing behind ii8 IN FRONT OF THE LANDSCAPE Things more coveted, reckoned the better worth caUing Sweet, sad, subhme. Thus do they now show hourly before the intenser Stare of the mind As they were ghosts avenging their shghts by my bypast Body-borne eyes, Show, too, with fuller translation than rested upon them As living kind. Hence wag the tongues of the passing people, saying In their surmise, " Ah — whose is this dull form that perambu- lates, seeing nought Round him that looms Whithersoever his footsteps turn in his farings, Save a few tombs ? " THE CONVERGENCE OF THE TWAIN {Lines on the loss of the " Titanic") In a solitude of the sea Deep from human vanity, And the Pride of Life that planned her, stUly couches she. II Steel chambers, late the pyres Of her salamandrine fires, Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres. Ill Over the mirrors meant To glass the opulent The sea-worm crawls — grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent. IV Jewels in joy designed To ravish the sensuous mind Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind. 119 I20 THE CONVERGENCE OF THE TWAIN Dim moon-eyed fishes near Gaze at the gilded gear And query : " What does this vaingloriousness down here ? I > VI Well : while was fashioning This creature of cleaving wing. The Immanent Will that stirs and urges every- thing VII Prepared a sinister mate For her — so gaily great — A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate. VIII And as the smart ship grew In stature, grace, and hue. In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too. IX Alien they seemed to be : No mortal eye could see The intimate welding of their later history. THE CONVERGENCE OF THE TWAIN 121 X Or sign that they were bent By paths coincident On being anon twin halves of one august event, XI Till the Spinner of the Years Said " Now ! " And each one hears, And consummation comes, and jars two hemi- spheres. THE SCHRECKHORN {With thoughts of Leslie Stephen: June 1897) Aloof, as if a thing of mood and whim ; Now that its spare and desolate figure gleams Upon my nearing vision, less it seems A looming Alp-height than a guise of him Who scaled its horn with ventured life and limb. Drawn on by vague imaginings, maybe, Of semblance to his personality In its quaint glooms, keen lights, and rugged trim. At his last change, when Life's dull coils un- wind. Will he, in old love, hitherward escape. And the eternal essence of his mind Enter this silent adamantine shape, And his low voicing haunt its slipping snows When dawn that calls the climber dyes them rose ? 122 GEORGE MEREDITH (1828-1909) Forty years back, when much had place That since has perished out of mind, I heard that voice and saw that face. He spoke as one afoot will wind A morning horn ere men awake ; His note was trenchant, turning kind. He was of those whose wit can shake And riddle to the very core The counterfeits that Time will break. . , Of late, when we two met once more. The luminous countenance and rare Shone just as forty years before. So that, when now all tongues declare His shape unseen by his green hill, I scarce believe he sits not there. No matter. Further and further still Through the world's vaporous vitiate air His words wing on — as live words will. May 1909. 123 A SINGER ASLEEP {Algernon Charles Swinburne, 1837-1909) In this fair niche above the unslumbering sea, That sentrys up and down all night, all day. From cove to promontory, from ness to bay. The Fates have fitly bidden that he should be Pillowed eternally. II — It was as though a garland of red roses Had fallen about the hood of some smug nun When irresponsibly dropped as from the sun. In fulth of numbers freaked with musical closes, Upon Victoria's formal middle time His leaves of rhythm and rhyme. Ill O that far morning of a summer day When, down a terraced street whose pave- ments lay 124 A SINGER ASLEEP 125 Glassing the sunshine into my bent eyes, I walked and read with a quick glad surprise New words, in classic guise, — IV The passionate pages of his earlier years, Fraught with hot sighs, sad laughters, kisses, tears ; Fresh-fluted notes, yet from a minstrel who Blew them not naively, but as one who knew Full well why thus he blew. I still can hear the brabble and the roar At those thy tunes, O still one, now passed through That fitful fire of tongues then entered new ! Their power is spent like spindrift on this shore ; Thine swells yet more and more. VI — His singing-mistress verily was no other Than she the Lesbian, she the music-mother Of all the tribe that feel in melodies ; Who leapt, love-anguished, from the Leucadian steep Into the rambling world-encircling deep Which hides her where none sees. 126 A SINGER ASLEEP VII And one can hold in thought that nightly here His phantom may draw down to the water's brim, And hers come up to meet it, as a dim Lone shine upon the heaving hydrosphere, And mariners wonder as they traverse near, Unknowing of her and him. VIII One dreams him sighing to her spectral form : " O teacher, where lies hid thy burning line ; Where are those songs, O poetess divine Whose very orts are love incarnadine ? " And her smile back : " Disciple true and warm, Sufficient now are thine." . . . IX So here, beneath the waking constellations. Where the waves peal their everlasting strains, And their dull subterrene reverberations Shake him when storms make mountains of their plains — Him once their peer in sad improvisations. And deft as wind to cleave their frothy manes — I leave him, while the daylight gleam declines Upon the capes and chines. BONCHURCH, I9IO. IN THE MOONLIGHT " O LONELY workman, standing there In a dream, why do you stare and stare At her grave, as no other grave there were ? " If your hopeless eyes so importune Her soul by the shine of this corpse-cold moon. Maybe you'll raise her phantom soon ! " " Why, fool, it is what I would rather see Than all the living folk there be ; But alas, there is no such joy for me ! " " Ah — she was one you loved, no doubt, Through good and evil, through rain and drought, And when she passed, all your sun went out ? " " Nay : she was the woman I did not love, Whom all the others were ranked above, Whom during her life I thought nothing of." 127 A CHURCH ROMANCE (Mellstock, circa 1835) She turned in the high pew, until her sight Swept the west gallery, and caught its row Of music-men with viol, book, and bow Against the sinking sad tower-window light. She turned again ; and in her pride's despite One strenuous viol's inspirer seemed to throw A message from his string to her below, Which said : "I claim thee as my own forth- right 1 " Thus their hearts' bond began, in due time signed. And long years thence, when Age had scared Romance, At some old attitude of his or glance That gallery-scene would break upon her mind. With him as minstrel, ardent, young, and trim. Bowing " New Sabbath " or " Mount Ephraim." 128 THE ROMAN ROAD The Roman Road runs straight and bare As the pale parting-hne in hair Across the heath. And thoughtful men Contrast its days of Now and Then, And delve, and measure, and compare ; Visioning on the vacant air Helmed legionaries, who proudly rear The Eagle, as they pace again The Roman Road. But no tall brass-helmed legionnaire Haunts it for me. Uprises there A mother's form upon my ken, Guiding my infant steps, as when We walked that ancient thoroughfare. The Roman Road. 129 K THE OXEN Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. " Now they are all on their knees," An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearthside ease. We pictured the meek mild creatures where They dwelt in their strawy pen, Nor did it occur to one of us there To doubt they were kneeling then. So fair a fancy few would weave In these years ! Yet, I feel, If some one said on Christmas Eve, " Come ; see the oxen kneel " In the lonely barton by yonder coomb Our childhood used to know," I should go with him in the gloom. Hoping it might be so. 130 SHE HEARS THE STORM There was a time in former years — While my roof-tree was his — When I should have been distressed by fears At such a night as this I I should have murmured anxiously, " The pricking rain strikes cold ; His road is bare of hedge or tree, And he is getting old." But now the fitful chimney-roar. The drone of Thorncombe trees, The Froom in flood upon the moor. The mud of Mellstock Leaze, The candle slanting sooty wick'd. The thuds upon the thatch, The eaves-drops on the window flicked. The clacking garden-hatch. And what they mean to wayfarers, I scarcely heed or mind ; He has won that storm-tight roof of hers Which Earth grants all her kind. 131 AFTER THE LAST BREATH (J. H. 1813-1904) There's no more to be done, or feared, or hoped ; None now need watch, speak low, and list, and tire ; No irksome crease outsmoothed, no pillow sloped Does she require. Blankly we gaze. We are free to go or stay ; Our morrow's anxious plans have missed their aim ; Whether we leave to-night or wait till day Counts as the same. The lettered vessels of medicaments Seem asking wherefore we have set them here ; Each palliative its silly face presents As useless gear. And yet we feel that something savours well ; We note a numb relief withheld before ; 132 AFTER THE LAST BREATH 133 Our well-beloved is prisoner in the cell Of Time no more. We see by littles now the deft achievement Whereby she has escaped the Wrongers all, In view of which our momentary bereavement Outshapes but small. 1904 NIGHT IN THE OLD HOME When the wasting embers redden the chimney- breast, And Life's bare pathway looms Hke a desert, track to me. And from hall and parlour the living have gone to their rest, My perished people who housed them here come back to me. They come and seat them around in their mouldy places. Now and then bending towards me a glance of wistfulness, A strange upbraiding smile upon all their faces, And in the bearing of each a passive tristfulness. " Do you uphold me, hngering and languishing here, A pale late plant of your once strong stock ? " I say to them ; " A thinker of crooked thoughts upon Life in the sere, And on That which consigns men to night after showing the day to them ? " 134 NIGHT IN THE OLD HOME 135 *' — O let be the Wherefore ! We fevered our years not thus : Take of Life what it grants, without question ! " they answer me seemingly. " Enjoy, suffer, wait : spread the table here freely like us. And, satisfied, placid, unf retting, watch Time Eway beamingly ! " THE DEAR I PLODDED to Fairmile Hill-top, where A maiden one fain would guard From every hazard and every care Advanced on the roadside sward. I wondered how succeeding suns Would shape her wayfarings, And wished some Power might take such ones Under its warding wings. The busy breeze came up the hill And smartened her cheek to red, And hazed her hair. Commiserate still, " Good -morning, my Dear \ " 1 said. She glanced from me to the far-off gray. And, with proud severity, " Good-morning to you — though I may say I am not your Dear," quoth she : " For I am the Dear of one not here — One far from his native land ! " — And she passed me by ; and I did not try To make her understand. 1901. 136 ONE WE KNEW (M. H. 1772-1857) She told how they used to form for the country dances — • "The Triumph," "The New-rigged Ship"— To the Hght of the guttering wax in the panelled manses, And in cots to the blink of a dip. She spoke of the wild " poussetting " and " allemanding " On carpet, on oak, and on sod ; And the two long rows of ladies and gentlemen standing, And the figures the couples trod. She showed us the spot where the maypole was yearly planted, And where the bandsmen stood While breeched and kerchiefed partners whirled, and panted To choose each other for good. She told of that far-back day when they learnt astounded Of the death of the King of France : 137 138 ONE WE KNEW Of the Terror ; and then of Bonaparte's un- bounded Ambition and arrogance. Of how his threats woke warHke preparations Along the southern strand, And how each night brought tremors and trepidations Lest morning should see him land. She said she had often heard the gibbet creaking As it swayed in the lightning flash, Had caught from the neighbouring town a small child's shrieking At the cart-tail under the lash. . . . With cap-framed face and long gaze into the embers — We seated around her knees — She would dwell on such dead themes, not as one who remembers. But rather as one who sees. She seemed one left behind of a band gone distant So far that no tongue could hail : Past things retold were to her as things existent. Things present but as a tale. May 20. 1902. 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 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. Westbourne Park Villas. 139 TO HIM Perhaps, long hence, when I have passed away, Some other's feature, accent, thought hke 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. Westbourne Park Villas. 140 ROME THE VATICAN — SALA DELLE MUSE (1887) I SAT in the Muses' Hall at the mid of the day, And it seemed to grow still, and the people to pass away. And the chiselled shapes to combine in a haze of sun, Till beside a Carrara column there gleamed forth One. She looked not this nor that of those beings divine, ^ But each and the whole — an essence of all the Nine ; With tentative foot she neared to my halting- place, A pensive smile on her sweet, small, marvellous face. " Regarded so long, we render thee sad ? " said she. ** Not you," sighed I, " but my own in- constancy ! 141 142 ROME ■v. I worship each and each ; in the morning one, And then, alas ! another at sink of sun. " To-day my soul clasps Form ; but where is my troth Of yesternight with Tune : can one cleave to both ? " — " Be not perturbed," said she. " Though apart in fame. As I and my sisters are one, those, too, are the same." — " But my love goes further — to Story, and Dance, and Hymn, The lover of all in a sun-sweep is fool to whim — Is swayed like a river- weed as the ripples run ! " — " Nay, wight, thou sway'st not. These are but phases of one ; " And that one is I ; and I am projected from thee. One that out of thy brain and heart thou causest to be — Extern to thee nothing. Grieve not, nor thy- self becall. Woo where thou wilt ; and rejoice thou canst love at all ! " ROME AT THE PYRAMID OF CESTIUS NEAR THE GRAVES OF SHELLEY AND KEATS (1887) Who, then, was Cestius, And what is he to me ? — Amid thick thoughts and memories multi- tudinous One thought alone brings he. I can recall no word Of anything he did ; For me he is a man who died and was interred To leave a pyramid Whose purpose was exprest Not with its first design. Nor till, far down in Time, beside it found their rest Two countrymen of mine. Cestius in life, maybe, Slew, breathed out tlireatening ; I know not. This I know : in death all silently He does a rarer thing, 143 144 ROME In beckoning pilgrim feet With marble finger high To where, by shadowy wall and history-haunted street, Those matchless singers he. — Say, then, he lived and died That stones which bear his name Should mark, through Time, where two im- mortal Shades abide ; It is an ample fame. ON AN INVITATION TO THE UNITED STATES My ardours for emprize nigh lost Since Life has bared its bones to me, I shrink to seek a modern coast Whose riper times have yet to be ; Where the new regions claim them free From that long drip of human tears Which peoples old in tragedy Have left upon the centuried years. II For, wonning in these ancient lands. Enchased and lettered as a tomb, And scored with prints of perished hands, And chronicled with dates of doom. Though my own Being bear no bloom I trace the lives such scenes enshrine, Give past exemplars present room. And their experience count as mine. 145 AT A LUNAR ECLIPSE Thy shadow. Earth, from Pole to Central Sea, Now steals along upon the Moon's meek shine In even monochrome and curving line Of imperturbable serenity. How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry With the torn troubled form I know as thine, That profile, placid as a brow divine. With continents of moil and misery ? And can immense Mortality but throw So small a shade, and Heaven's high human scheme Be hemmed within the coasts yon arc implies ? Is such the stellar gauge of earthly show. Nation at war with nation, brains that teem. Heroes, and women fairer than the skies ? 146 THE SUBALTERNS " Poor wanderer," said the leaden sky, " I fain would lighten thee. But there are laws in force on high Which say it must not be." II — " I would not freeze thee, shorn one," cried The North, " knew I but how To warm my breath, to slack my stride ; But I am ruled as thou." Ill — " To-morrow I attack thee, wight," Said Sickness. " Yet I swear I bear thy little ark no spite. But am bid enter there." IV — " Come hither, Son," I heard Death say ; " I did not will a grave M7 148 THE SUBALTERNS Should end thy pilgrimage to-day, But I, too, am a slave ! " We smiled upon each other then. And life to me had less Of that fell look it wore ere when They owned their passiveness. THE SLEEP- WORKER When wilt thou wake, O Mother, wake and see — As one who, held in trance, has laboured long By vacant rote and prepossession strong — The coils that thou hast wrought unwittingly ; Wlierein have place, unrealized by thee. Fair growths, foul cankers, right enmeshed with wrong. Strange orchestras of victim-shriek and song, And curious blends of ache and ecstasy ? — Should that day come, and show thy opened eyes All that Life's palpitating tissues feel. How wilt thou bear thyself in thy surprise ? — Wilt thou destroy, in one wild shock of shame. Thy whole high heaving firmamental frame. Or patiently adjust, amend, and heal ? 149 BEYOND THE LAST LAMP [Near Tooting Common) While rain, with eve in partnership, Descended darkly, drip, drip, drip, Beyond the last lone lamp I passed Walking slowly, whispering sadly. Two linked loiterers, wan, downcast : Some heavy thought constrained each face. And blinded them to time and place. II The pair seemed lovers, yet absorbed In mental scenes no longer orbed By love's young rays. Each countenance As it slowly, as it sadly Caught the lamplight's yellow glance. Held in suspense a misery At things which had been or might be. Ill When I retrod that watery way Some hours beyond the droop of day, 150 BEYOND THE LAST LAMP 151 Still I found pacing there the twain Just as slowly, just as sadly, Heedless of the night and rain. One could but wonder who they were And what wild woe detained them there. IV Though thirty years of blur and blot Have slid since I beheld that spot, And saw in curious converse there Moving slowly, moving sadly That mysterious tragic pair. Its olden look may linger on — All but the couple ; they have gone. Whither ? Who knows, indeed. . . . And j'-et To me, when nights are weird and wet. Without those comrades there at tryst Creeping slowly, creeping sadly. That lone lane does not exist. There they seem brooding on their pain. And will, while such a lane remain. THE FACE AT THE CASEMENT If ever joy leave An abiding sting of sorrow, So befell it on the morrow Of that May eve. . . . The travelled sun dropped To the north-west, low and lower. The pony's trot grew slower, Until we stopped. " This cosy house just by I must call at for a minute, A sick man lies within it Who soon will die. " He wished to marry me, So I am bound, when I drive near him., To inquire, if but to cheer him, How he may be." A message was sent in, And wordlessly we waited. Till some one came and stated The bulletin. 152 THE FACE AT THE CASEMENT 153 And that the sufferer said. For her call no words could thank her ; As his angel he must rank her Till life's spark fled. Slowly we drove away, When I turned my head, although not Called to ; why I turned I know not Even to this day. And lo, there in my view Pressed against an upper lattice Was a white face, gazing at us As we withdrew. And well did I divine It to be the man's there dying, Who but lately had been sighing For her pledged mine. Then I deigned a deed of hell ; It was done before I knew it ; Wliat devil made me do it I cannot tell ! Yes, while he gazed aboA'e, I put my arm about her That he might see, nor doubt her My plighted Love. The pale face vanished quick, As if blasted, from the casement. 154 THE FACE AT THE CASEMENT And my shame and self-abasement Began their prick. And they prick on, ceaselessly, For that stab in Love's fierce fashion Which, unfired by lover's passion, * Was foreign to me. She smiled at my caress, But why came the soft embowment Of her shoulder at that moment She did not guess. Long long years has he lain In thy garth, O sad Saint Cleather : What tears there, bared to weather, Wni cleanse that stain ! Love is long-suffering, brave, Sweet, prompt, precious as a jewel ; But O, too, Love is cruel, Cruel as the grave. THE DEAD QUIRE Beside the Mead of Memories, Where Church-way mounts to Moaning Hill, The sad man sighed his phantasies : He seems to sigh them still. II " 'Twas the Birth-tide Eve, and the hamleteers Made merry with ancient Mellstock zest, But the Mellstock quire of former years Had entered into rest. Ill " Old Dewy lay by the gaunt yew tree. And Reuben and Michael a pace behind. And Bowman with his family By the wall that the ivies bind. IV " The singers had followed one by one. Treble, and tenor, and thorough-bass ; And the worm that wasteth had begun To mine their mouldering place. 155 156 THE DEAD QUIRE " For two-score years, ere Christ-day light, Mellstock had throbbed to strains from these But now there echoed on the night No Christmas harmonies. VI " Tliree meadows off, at a dormered inn, The youth had gathered in high carouse. And, ranged on settles, some therein Had drunk them to a drowse. VII " Loud, lively, reckless, some had grown, Each dandling on his jigging knee Eliza, Dolly, Nance, or Joan — Livers in levity. VIII " The taper flames and hearthfire shine Grew smoke-hazed to a lurid light, And songs on subjects not divine Were warbled forth that night. IX " Yet many were sons and grandsons here Of those who, on such eves gone by. At that still hour had throated clear Their anthems to the sky. THE DEAD QUIRE 157 X " The clock belled midnight ; and ere long One shouted, ' Now 'tis Christmas morn ; Here's to our women old and young, And to John Barleycorn ! ' XI " They drink the toast, and shout again : The pewter-ware rings back the boom. And for a breath-while follows then A silence in the room. XII " When nigh without, as in old days. The ancient quire of voice and string Seemed singing words of prayer and praise As they had used to sing. XIII " While shepherds watch' d their flocks by night, - Thus swells the long familiar sound In many a quaint symphonic flight To, Glory shone around. XIV *' The sons defined their fathers' tones, The widow his whom she had wed. And others in the minor moans The viols of the dead. 158 THE DEAD QUIRE XV " Something supernal has the sound As verse by verse the strain proceeds. And stilly staring on the ground Each roysterer holds and heeds. XVI " Towards its chorded closing bar Plaintively, thinly, waned the hymn. Yet lingered, like the notes afar Of banded seraphim. XVII " With brows abashed, and reverent tread, The hearkeners sought the tavern door : But nothing, save wan moonlight, spread The empty highway o'er. XVIII " While on their hearing fixed and tense The aerial music seemed to sink. As it were gently moving thence Along the river brink. XIX " Then did the Quick pursue the Dead By crystal Froom that crinkles there ; And still the viewless quire ahead Voiced the old holy air. THE DEAD QUIRE 159 XX " By Bank-walk wicket, brightly bleached. It passed, and 'twixt the hedges twain, Dogged by the living ; till it reached The bottom of Church Lane. XXI " There, at the turning, it was heard Drawing to where the churchyard lay : But when they followed thitherward It smalled, and died away. XXII " Each headstone of the quire, each mound, Confronted them beneath the moon ; But no more floated therearound That ancient Birth-night tune. XXIII " There Dewy lay by the gaunt yew tree. There Reuben and IMichael, a pace behind. And Bowman with his family By the wall that the ivies bind. . . , XXIV " As from a dream each sobered son Awoke, and musing reached his door : 'Twas said that of them all, not one Sat in a tavern more." i6o THE DEAD QUIRE XXV — The sad man ceased ; and ceased to heed His Hstener, and crossed the leaze From Moaning Hill towards the mead — The Mead of Memories. 1897. THE PINE-PLANTERS (In The Woodlanders) From the bundle at hand here I take each tree, And set it to stand, here Always to be ; When, in a second. As if from fear Of Life unreckoned Beginning here. It starts a sighing Through day and night, Though wliile there lying 'Twas voiceless quite. li It will sigh in the morning. Will sigh at noon, At the winter's warning, In wafts of June ; i6i M l62 THE PINE-PLANTERS Grieving that never Kind Fate decreed It should for ever Remain a seed. And shun the welter Of things without, Unneeding shelter From storm and drought III Thus, all unknowing For whom or what We set it growing In this bleak spot. It still will grieve here Throughout its time. Unable to leave here, Or change its clime ; Or tell the story Of us to-day When, halt and hoary. We pass away. THE BURGHERS {Casterbridge : i7 — ) 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 worn 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 1 But alone. I can be strong." 163 i64 THE BURGHERS 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 on either 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 thus wise : "I may house THE BURGHERS 165 And I may husband her, yet what am I But hcensed tyrant to this bonded pair ? Says Charity, Do as ye would be done by." . . . Hurhng 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 my own. face 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 had piled her raiment rare Within the garde -robes, and her household purse. Her jewels, her 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. i66 THE BURGHERS " I'll take you to the doorway in the wall. And then adieu," I told 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. THE CORONATION At Westminster, hid from the light of day, Many who once had shone as monarchs lay. Edward the Pious, and two Edwards more. The second Richard, Henrys three or four ; That is to say. those who were called the Third, Fifth, Seventh, and Eighth (the much self- widowered), And James the Scot, and near him Charles the Second, And, too, the second George could there be reckoned. Of women, Mary and Queen Elizabeth, And Anne, all silent in a musing death ; And William's Mary, and Mary, Queen of Scots, And consort - queens whose names oblivion blots ; And several more whose chronicle one sees Adorning ancient royal pedigrees. 167 1 68 THE CORONATION — ^Now, as they drowsed on, freed from Life's old thrall, And heedless, save of things exceptional, Said one : " What means this throbbing thudding sound That reaches to us here from overground ; " A sound of chisels, augers, planes, and saws. Infringing all ecclesiastic laws ? " And these tons- weight of timber on us pressed, Unfelt here since we entered into rest ? " Surely, at least to us, being corpses royal, A meet repose is owing by the loyal ? " " — Perhaps a scaffold ! " Mary Stuart sighed, " If such still be. It was that way I died." " — Od's ! Far more like," said he the many- wived, " That for a wedding 'tis this work's contrived. " Ha-ha ! I never would bow down to Rimmon, But I had a rare time with those six women ! " " Not all at once ? " gasped he who loved confession. " Nay, nay ! " said Hal. " That would have been transgression." THE CORONATION 169 " — They build a catafalque here, black and tall. Perhaps," mused Richard, " for some funeral ? " And Anne chimed in : " Ah, yes : it may be so! " " Nay ! " squeaked Eliza. " Little you seem to know — *' Clearly 'tis for some crowning here in state. As they crowned us at our long bygone date ; ** Though we'd no such a power of carpentry, But let the ancient architecture be ; " If I were up there where the parsons sit, In one of my gold robes, I'd see to it ! " ** But you are not," Charles chuckled. " You are here. And never will know the sun again, my dear ! " ** Yea," whispered those whom no one had addressed ; ** With slow, sad march, amid a folk distressed. We were brought here, to take our dusty rest. " And here, alas, in darkness laid below. We'll wait, and listen, and endure the show. . . , Clamour dogs kingship ; afterwards not so ! " 1911. A COMMONPLACE DAY The day is turning ghost. And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively, To join the anonymous host Of those that throng oblivion ; ceding his place, maybe, To one of like degree. I part the fire-gnawed logs. Rake forth the embers, spoil the busy flames, and lay the ends Upon the shining dogs ; Further and further from the nooks the twihght's stride extends. And beamless black impends. Nothing of tiniest worth Have I wrought, pondered, planned ; no one thing asking blame or praise, Since the pale corpse-like birth Of this diurnal unit, bearing blanks in all its rays — Dullest of dull-hued Days I 170 A COMMONPLACE DAY 171 Wanly upon the panes The rain sUdes, as have shd since mom my colourless thoughts ; and yet Here, while Day's presence wanes, And over him the sepulchre-lid is slowly lowered and set. He wakens my regret. Regret — though nothing dear That I wot of, was toward in the wide world at his prime. Or bloomed elsewhere than here. To die with his decease, and leave a memory sweet, sublime. Or mark him out in Time. . , , — Yet, maybe, in some soul. In some spot undiscerned on sea or land, some impulse rose, Or some intent upstole Of that enkindling ardency from whose maturer glows The world's amendment flows ; But which, benumbed at birth By momentary chance or wile, has missed its hope to be Embodied on the earth ; And undervoicings of this loss to man's futurity May wake regret in me. HER DEATH AND AFTER The summons was urgent, and forth I went By the way of the Western Wall, so drear On that winter night, and sought a gate — Where one, by Fate, Lay dying that I 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 v/hen 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 bedchamber above. 172 HER DEATH AND AFTER 173 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. " Just 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 I —Truth shall I tell ? Would the child were yours and mine 1 " As a wife I've been 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 ! " 174 HER DEATH AND AFTER — Wlien T 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 where the earthworks frowned 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. That the being whose soul my soul suffused Had a child ill-used, I helpless to interfere ! HER DEATH AND AFTER 175 One eve as I stood at my spot of thought In the white-stoned Garth with these brooding glooms, Her husband neared ; and to shun his nod By her hallowed sod I went from among the tombs To the Cirque of the Gladiators which faced — That haggard mark of Imperial Rome, Whose Pagan echoes mock the chime Of our Christian time From its hollows of turf and loam. The sun's gold touch was just displaced From the vast Arena where men once bled. 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 hving, when dead. So I've claim to ask Your right to task My patience by darkling 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." 176 HER DEATH AND AFTER A desperate stroke discerned I then — God pardon — or pardon not — the He ; 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 : HER DEATH AND AFTER 177 " 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 ! N IN DEATH DIVIDED I SHALL rot here, with those whom in their day You never knew. And aHen ones who, ere they chilled to clay. Met not my view. Will in your distant grave-place ever neighbour you. II No shade of pinnacle or tree or tower. While earth endures, Will fall on my mound and within the hour Steal on to yours ; One robin never haunt our two green covertures. Ill Some organ may resound on Sunday noons By where you lie, Some other thrill the panes with other tunes Where moulder I ; No selfsame chords compose our common lullaby. 178 IN DEATH DIVIDED 179 IV The simply-cut memorial at my head Perhaps may take A rustic form, and that above your bed A stately make ; No linking symbol show thereon for our tale's sake. And in the monotonous moils of strained, hard-run Humanity, The eternal tie which binds us twain in one No eye will see Stretching across the miles that sever you from me. IN TENEBRIS " Considerabam ad dexteram, et videbam ; et non erat qui cognosceret me. . . . Non est qui requirat animam meam." — Ps. cxli. When the clouds* swoln bosoms echo back the shouts of the many and strong That things are all as they best may be, save a few to be right ere long. And my eyes have not the vision in them to discern what to these is so clear, The blot seems straightway in me alone ; one better he were not here. The stout upstanders chime, All's well with us : ruers have nought to rue ! And what the potent so often say, can it fail to be somewhat true ? Breezily go they, breezily come ; their dust smokes around their career. Till I think I am one bom out of due time, who has no calling here. 1 80 IN TENEBRIS i8i Their dawns bring lusty joys, it seems ; their evenings all that is sweet ; Our times are blessed times, they cry : Life shapes it as is most meet, And nothing is much the matter ; there are many smiles to a tear ; Then what is the matter is I, I say. Why should such an one be here ? . . . Let him in whose ears the low-voiced Best is killed by the clash of the First, Who holds that if way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst, Who feels that delight is a delicate growth cramped by crookedness, custom, and fear. Get him up and be gone as one shaped awry ; he disturbs the order here. 1895-96. tt I HAVE LIVED WITH SHADES " I HAVE lived with Shades so long, So long have talked to them, Since from the forest's hem I sped to street and throng, That sometimes they In their dim style Will pause awhile To hear my say ; II And take me by the hand. And lead me through their rooms In the To-be, where Dooms Half-wove and shapeless stand : And show from there The dwindled dust And rot and rust Of things that were. Ill " Now turn," they said to me One day : " Look whence we came. And signify his name Who gazes thence at thee." — 182 I HAVE LIVED WITH SHADES 183 — " Nor name nor race Know I, or can," I said, " Of man So commonplace. IV " He moves me not at all ; I note no ray or jot Of rareness in his lot, Or star exceptional. Into the dim Dead throngs around He'll sink, nor sound Be left of him." " Yet," said they, " his frail speech, Hath accents pitched Hke thine — Thy mould and his define A likeness each to each — But go ! Deep pain Alas, would be His name to thee, And told in vain I " Feb. 2, 1899. A POET Attentive eyes, fantastic heed. Assessing minds, he does not need. Nor urgent writs to sup or dine. Nor pledges in the rosy wine. For loud acclaim he does not care By the august or rich or fair. Nor for smart pilgrims from afar, Curious on where his hauntings are. But soon or later, when you hear That he has doffed this wrinkled gear, Some evening, at the first star-ray. Come to his graveside, pause, and say : ** Whatever his message — glad or grim — Two bright-souled women clave to him " ; Stand and say that while day decays. It will be word enough of praise. July 19 14. 184 PART III WAR POEMS, AND LYRICS FROM "THE DYNASTS" 185 EMBARKATION {Southampton Docks) Here, where Vespasian's legions struck the sands, And Cerdic with his Saxons entered in, And Henry's army leapt afloat to win Convincing triumphs over neighbour lands. Vaster battalions press for further strands. To argue in the self-same bloody mode Which this late age of thought, and pact, and code. Still fails to mend. — Now deck ward tramp the bands. Yellow as autumn leaves, alive as spring ; And as each host draws out upon the sea Beyond which lies the tragical To-be, None dubious of the cause, none murmuring. Wives, sisters, parents, wave white hands and smile. As if they knew not that they weep the while. 187 DEPARTURE {Southampton Docks) While the far fareweL music thins and fails, And the broad bottoms rip the bearing brine — All smalhng slowly to the gray sea line — ■ And each significant red smoke-shaft pales, Keen sense of severance everywhere prevails. Which shapes the late long tramp of mounting men To seeming words that ask and ask again : " How long, O ruling Teutons, Slavs, and Gaels Must your wroth reasonings trade on lives like these, That are as puppets in a playing hand ? — When shall the saner softer polities Whereof we dream, have sway in each proud land. And patriotism, grown Godlike, scorn to stand Bondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas ? " i88 THE GOING OF THE BATTERY Rain came down drenchingly ; but we un- blenchingly Trudged on beside them through mirk and through mire, They stepping steadily — only too readily ! — Scarce as if stepping brought parting- time nigher. II Great guns were gleaming there, living things seeming there. Cloaked in their tar-cloths, upmouthed to the night ; Wlieels wet and yellow from axle to felloe. Throats blank of sound, but prophetic to sight. Ill Gas-glimmers drearily, blearily, eerily Lit our pale faces outstretched for one kiss. While we stood prest to them, with a last quest to them Not to court perils that honour could miss. 189 igo THE GOING OF THE BATTERY IV Sharp were those sighs of ours, bUnded these eyes of ours, When at last moved away under the arch All we loved. Aid for them each woman prayed for them. Treading back slowly the track of their march. Someone said : " Nevermore will they come : evermore Are they now lost to us." O it was wrong ! Though may be hard their ways, some Hand will guard their ways, Bear them through safely, in brief time or long. VI — Yet, voices haunting us, daunting us, taunt- ing us, Hint in the night-time when life beats are low Other and graver things . . . Hold we to braver things, Wait we, in trust, what Time's fulness shall show. DRUMMER HODGE They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest Uncoffined — just as found ; His landmark is a kopje-crest That breaks the veldt around ; And foreign constellations west Each night above his mound. II Young Hodge the Drummer never knew- Fresh from his Wessex home — The meaning of the broad Karoo, The Bush, the dusty loam. And why uprose to nightly view Strange stars amid the gloam. Ill Yet portion of that unknown plain Will Hodge for ever be ; His homely Northern breast and brain Grow up a Southern tree. And strange-eyed constellations reign His stars eternally. 191 THE MAN HE KILLED " Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn, We should have sat us down to wet Right many a nipperkin ! " But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place. " I shot him dead because — Because he was my foe, Just so : my foe of course he was ; That's clear enough ; although " He thought he'd 'list, perhaps, Off-hand like — just as I — Was out of work — had sold his traps — No other reason why. " Yes ; quaint and curious war is I You shoot a fellow down You'd treat if met where any bar is. Or help to half-a-crown." 1902. 192 THE SOULS OF THE SLAIN The thick lids of Night closed upon me Alone at the Bill Of the Isle by the Race i— Many-caverned, bald, wrinkled of face — And with darkness and silence the spirit was on me To brood and be still. II No wind fanned the flats of the ocean, Or promontory sides, Or the ooze by the strand, Or the bent-bearded slope of the land. Whose base took its rest amid everlong motion Of criss-crossing tides. Ill Soon from out of the Southward seemed nearing A whirr, as of wings Waved by mighty-vanned flies. Or by night-moths of measureless size, 1 The " Race" is the turbulent sea-area oS the Bill of Portland, where contrary tides meet. 193 O 194 THE SOULS OF THE SLAIN And in softness and smoothness well-nigh beyond hearing Of corporal things. IV And they bore to the bluff, and alighted — A dim-discerned train Of sprites without mould, Frameless souls none might touch or might hold- On the ledge by the turreted lantern, far-sighted By men of the main. And I heard them say " Home ! " and I knew them For souls of the felled On the earth's nether bord Under Capricorn, whither they'd warred, And I neared in my awe, and gave heedfulness to them With breathings inheld. VI Then, it seemed, there approached from the northward A senior soul-flame Of the like filmy hue : And he met them and spake : " Is it you, THE SOULS OF THE SLAIN 195 O my men ? " Said they, " Aye ! We bear homeward and hearthward To feast on our fame ! " VII " I've flown there before you," he said then : " Your households are well ; But — your kin linger less On your glory and war-mightiness Than on dearer things." — " Dearer ? " cried these from the dead then, " Of what do they tell ? " VIII " Some mothers muse sadly, and murmur Your doings as boys — Recall the quaint ways Of your babyhood's innocent days. Some pray that, ere dying, your faith had grown firmer, And higher your joys. IX " A father broods : ' Would I had set him To some humble trade, And so slacked his high fire. And his passionate martial desire ; 196 THE SOULS OF THE SLAIN Had told him no stories to woo him and whet him To this dire crusade ! ' " X " And, General, how hold out our sweet- hearts. Sworn loyal as doves ? " — " Many mourn ; many think It is not unattractive to prink Them in sables for heroes. Some fickle and fleet hearts Have found them new loves." XI " And our wives ? " quoth another resignedly, " Dwell they on our deeds ? " — " Deeds of home ; that live yet Fresh as new — deeds of fondness or fret ; Ancient words that were kindly expressed or unkindly. These, these have their heeds." XII — " Alas ! then it seems that our glory Weighs less in their thought Than our old homely acts. And the long-ago commonplace facts THE SOULS OF THE SLAIN 197 Of our lives — held by us as scarce part of our story. And rated as nought ! " XIII Then bitterly some : " Was it wise now To raise the tomb-door For such knowledge ? Away ! " But the rest : " Fame we prized till to-day ; Yet that hearts keep us green for old kindness we prize now A thousand times more ! " XIV Thus speaking, the trooped apparitions Began to disband And resolve them in two : Those whose record was lovely and true Bore to northward for home : those of bitter traditions Again left the land, XV And, towering to seaward in legions. They paused at a spot Overbending the Race — That engulphing, ghast, sinister place — Whither headlong they plunged, to the fathom- less regions Of myriads forgot. 198 THE SOULS OF THE SLAIN XVI And the spirits of those who were homing Passed on, rushingly, Like the Pentecost Wind ; And the whirr of their wayfaring thinned And surceased on the sky, and but left in the gloaming Sea-mutterings and me. December, 1899. " MEN WHO MARCH AWAY " (song of the soldiers) What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away Ere the barn-cocks say- Night is growing gray. Leaving all that here can win us ; What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away ? Is it a purbHnd prank, O think you, Friend with the musing eye, Who watch us stepping by With doubt and dolorous sigh ? Can much pondering so hoodwink you 1 Is it a purblind prank, O think you, Friend with the musing eye ? Nay. We well see what we are doing, Though some may not see — Dalliers as they be — England's need are we ; Her distress would leave us rueing : Nay. We well see what we are doing, Though some may not see 1 199 200 " MEN WHO IVIARCH AWAY In our heart of hearts beheving Victory crowns the just. And that braggarts must Surely bite the dust. Press we to the field ungrieving, In our heart of hearts believing Victory crowns the just. Hence the faith and fire within us Men who march away Ere the barn-cocks say Night is growing gray. Leaving all that here can win us ; Hence the faith and fire within us Men who march away. September 5, 1914. BEFORE MARCHING, AND AFTER (In Memoriam F. W. G.) Orion swung southward aslant Where the starved Egdon pine-trees had thinned. The Pleiads aloft seemed to pant With the heather that twitched in the wind ; But he looked on indifferent to sights such as these. Unswayed by love, friendship, home joy or home sorrow. And wondered to what he would march on the morrow. The crazed household clock with its whirr Rang midnight within as he stood, He heard the low sighing of her Who had striven from his birth for his good ; But he still only asked the spring starlight, the breeze. What great thing or small thing his history would borrow From that Game with Death he would play on the morrow. 20I 202 BEFORE MARCHING, AND AFTER When the heath wore the robe of late summer, And the fuchsia-bells, hot in the sun. Hung red by the door, a quick comer Brought tidings that marching was done For him who had joined in that game overseas Where Death stood to win ; though his memory would borrow A brightness therefrom not to die on the morrow. September, 1915. IN TIME OF " THE BREAKING OF NATIONS Only a man harrowing clods In a slow silent walk With an old horse that stumbles and nods Half asleep as they stalk. II Only thin smoke without flame From the heaps of couch grass : Yet this will go onward the same Though Dynasties pass. Ill Yonder a maid and her wight Come whispering by ; War's annals will cloud into night Ere their story die. 203 FROM "THE DYNASTS" THE NIGHT OF TRAFALGAR {Boatman's Song) In the wild October night-time, when the wind raved round the land, And the Back-sea met the Front-sea, and our doors were blocked with sand. And we heard the drub of Dead -man's Bay, where bones of thousands are. We knew not what the day had done for us at Trafalgar. Had done. Had done. For us at Trafalgar ! II " Pull hard, and make the Nothe, or down we go ! " one says, says he. We pulled ; and bedtime brought the storm ; but snug at home slept we. 204 THE NIGHT OF TRAFALGAR 205 Yet all the while our gallants after fighting through the day, Were beating up and down the dark, sou'-west of Cadiz Bay. The dark. The dark, Sou'-west of Cadiz Bay ! Ill The victors and the vanquished then the storm it tossed and tore. As hard they strove, those worn-out men, upon that surly shore ; Dead Nelson and his half-dead crew, his foes from near and far. Were rolled together on the deep that night at Trafalgar. The deep. The deep. That night at Trafalgar ! HUSSAR'S SONG " BUDMOUTH DEARS *' When we lay where Budmouth Beach is, O the girls were fresh as peaches With their tall and tossing figures and their eyes of blue and brown ! And our hearts would ache with longing As we paced from our sing-songing With a smart Clink ! Clink ! up the Esplanade and down. They distracted and delayed us By the pleasant pranks they played us, And what marvel, then, if troopers, even of regiments of renown, On whom flashed those eyes divine, O, Should forget the countersign, O, As we tore Clink ! Clink ! back to camp above the town. 206 HUSSAR'S SONG 207 III Do they miss us much, I wonder, Now that war has swept us sunder, And we roam from where the faces smile to where the faces frown ? And no more behold the features Of the fair fantastic creatures, And no more Clink ! Clink ! past the parlours of the town ? IV Shall we once again there meet them ? Falter fond attempts to greet them ? Will the gay sling-jacket glow again beside the muslin gown ? — Will they archly quiz and con us With a sideway glance upon us, While our spurs Clink ! Clink ! up the Esplanade and down ? " MY LOVE'S GONE A-FIGHTING *' {Country- girl's Song) My Love's gone a-fighting Where war-trumpets call. The wrongs o' men righting Wi' carbine and ball, And sabre for smiting, And charger, and all ! II Of whom does he think there Where war-trumpets call, To whom does he drink there, Wi' carbine and ball On battle's red brink there, And charger, and all ? Ill Her, whose voice he hears humming Where war-trumpets call, " I wait. Love, thy coming Wi' carbine and ball, And bandsmen a-drumming Thee, charger and all ! " 208 THE EVE OF WATERLOO (Chorus of Phantojns) The eyelids of eve fall together at last, And the forms so foreign to plain and tree Lie down as though native, and slumber fast. Sore are the thrills of misgiving we see In the artless green growths at this harlequinade, Distracting a vigil where calm should be ! The sod seems opprest, and the field afraid Of a Something to come, whereof these are the proofs, — Neither earthquake, nor storm, nor eclipse's shade. Yea, the coneys are scared by the thud of hoofs. And their white scuts flash at their vanishing heels. And swallows abandon the hamlet-roofs. The mole's tunnelled chambers are crushed by wheels, The lark's eggs scattered, their owners fled, And the hare's hid litter the sapper unseals. The snail draws in at the terrible tread, But in vain ; he is crushed by the felloe-rim ; The worm asks what can be overhead, 209 P 2IO THE EVE OF WATERLOO And wriggles deep from a scene so grim, And guesses him safe ; for he does not know What a foul red rain will be soaking him. Beaten about by the heel and toe Are butterflies, sick of the day's long rheum. To die of a worse than the weather-foe. Trodden and bruised to a miry tomb Are ears that have greened but will never be gold, And flowers in the bud that will never bloom. So the season's intent, ere its fruit unfold. Is frustrate, and mangled, and made succumb. Like a youth of promise struck stark and cold. And what of these who to-night have come ? — The young sleep sound ; but the weather awakes In the veterans, pains from the past that numb ; Old stabs of Ind, old Peninsular aches, Old Friedland chills, haunt their moist mud bed; Cramps from Austerlitz ; till their slumber breaks. And each soul sighs as he shifts his head On the loam he's to lease with the other dead From to-morrow's dew-fall till Time be sped. CHORUS OF THE PITIES {After the Battle) Semichorus I To Thee whose eye all Nature owns. Who hurlest Dynasts from their thrones,^ And Hftest those of low estate We sing, with Her men consecrate ! II Yea, Great and Good, Thee, Thee we hail, Wlio shak'st the strong, Wlio shield'st the frail. Who hadst not shaped such souls as we If tendermercy lacked in Thee ! Though times be when the mortal m.oan Seems unascending to Thy throne, Though seers do not as yet explain Why Suffering sobs to Thee in vain ; II We hold that Thy unscanted scope Affords a food for final Hope, * KaOelXe ATNASTA2 dirb dpbvwv,— Magnificat. 211 212 CHORUS OF THE PITIES That mild-eyed Prescience ponders nigh Life's loom, to lull it by and by. Therefore we quire to highest height The Wellwiller, the kindly Might That balances the Vast for weal, That purges as by wounds to heal. II The systemed suns the skies enscroU Obey Thee in their rhythmic roll. Ride radiantly at Thy command. Are darkened by Thy Masterhand I And these pale panting multitudes Seen surging here, their moils, their moods, All shall " fulfil their joy " in Thee, In Thee abide eternally I II Exultant adoration give The Alone, through Whom all living live. The Alone, in Whom all dying die, Whose means the End shall justify ! Amen. LAST CHORUS SeMICHORUS I OF THE YEARS Last as first the question rings Of the Will's long travailings ; Why the All-mover, Why the All-prover Ever urges on and measures out the droning tune of Things.^ II Heaving dumbly As we deem. Moulding numbly As in dream, Apprehending not how fare the sentient subjects of Its scheme. SeMICHORUS I OF THE PiTIES Nay ; — shall not Its blindness break ? Yea, must not Its heart awake, ^ Hot. Epis. i. 12. 213 214 LAST CHORUS Promptly tending To Its mending In a genial germing purpose, and for loving- kindness' sake ? II Should It never Curb or cure Aught whatever Those endure Whom It quickens, let them darkle to extinction swift and sure. Chorus But — a stirring thrills the air Like to sounds of joyance there That the rages Of the ages Shall be cancelled, and deliverance offered from the darts that were, Consciousness the Will informing, till It fashion all things fair ! Printed in Great Britain by R. & R. Clakk, Limited, Edinburgh. THE WORKS OF THOMAS HARDY Uniform Edition, Croivn 2,vo. Cloth extra. 6s. ngt each. Pocket Edition. Printed on India Paper. Fcap. Zvo. Limp Cloth, 4J. 6d. net ; Limp Leather, 6s. net each. The volumes tnarked * can also be obtained in the earlier edition of the Works. Crown Zvo. Gilt top. 6s. each. TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES. FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD. THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE. *A PAIR OF BLUE EYES. TWO ON A TOWER. THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE. THE WOODLANDERS. JUDE THE OBSCURE. THE TRUMPET-MAJOR. THE HAND OF ETHELBERTA. A LAODICEAN. *DESPERATE REMEDIES. WESSEX TALES. LIFE'S LITTLE IRONIES. *A GROUP OF NOBLE DAMES. UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. *THE WELL-BELOVED. A CHANGED MAN. WESSEX POEMS, and other Verses. POEMS OF THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. TIME'S LAUGHINGSTOCKS, and other Verses. SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCE : Lyrics and Reveries. With Miscellaneous Pieces. MOMENTS OF VISION, and Miscellaneous Verses. In tJie Uniform Edition the Poems are in two vols. In the Pocket Edition they form, one complete vol. THE DYNASTS. A Drama. In three Parts. Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d. net. COLLECTED POEMS. Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d. net. LATE LYRICS AND EARLIER, with many other Verses. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. net. MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd., LONDON. I WESSEX EDITION OF THE WORKS OF THOMAS HARDY In 22 vols. 8vo. Cloth Gilt. los. 6d. net each. With Preface, Notes, Frontispiece and Map in each vol. THE WESSEX NOVELS l.-NOVELS OF CHARACTER AND ENVIRONMENT 1. TESS OF THE D'URBERVILLES. 2. FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD. 3. JUDE THE OBSCURE. 4. THE RETURN OF THE NATIVE. 5. THE MAYOR OF CASTERBRIDGE. 6. THE WOODLANDERS. 7. UNDER THE GREENWOOD TREE. 8. LIFE'S LITTLE IRONIES. 9. WESSEX TALES. II.-ROMANCES AND FANTASIES 10. A PAIR OF BLUE EYES. 11. THE TRUMPET-MAJOR. 12. TWO ON A TOWER. 13. THE WELL-BELOVED. 14. A GROUP OF NOBLE DAMES. Ill.-NOVELS OF INGENUITY 15. DESPERATE REMEDIES. 16. THE HAND OF ETHELBERTA. 17. A LAODICEAN. IV.-MIXED NOVELS 18. A CHANGED MAN, THE WAITING SUPPER, and Other Tales, concluding with THE ROMANTIC ADVENTURES OF A MILKMAID. VERSE 1. WESSEX POEMS, AND POEMS OF THE PAST AND THE PRESENT. 2. THE DYNASTS, Parts I. and II. 3. THE DYNASTS, Part III., and TIME'S LAUGHING- STOCKS. 4. SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCE: Lyrics and Reveries. MOMENTS OF VISION and Miscellaneous Verses. MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd., LONDON. University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 305 De Neve Drive - Parking Lot 17 • Box 951388 LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90095-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. i^ONl-RENEWABLE iLL'Cfl OCT 4 2001 DUE 2 WKS FROM DATE RfeCElVED i.»T» < DNIV. Of CALIF. u¥fi«iiiY/L0l5 ANGELA UC SOUTHERN REGIONAL LJBRJj;/,, [.f^S AA 000 370146 3