Chapter 1

Chapter 12,990 wordsPublic domain

[Picture: Book cover]

POEMS OF THE PAST AND THE PRESENT

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BY THOMAS HARDY

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MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON 1919

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“_Wessex Poems_”: _First Edition_, _Crown_ 8vo, 1898. _New Edition_ 1903. _First Pocket Edition June_ 1907. _Reprinted January_ 1909, 1913

“_Poems_, _Past and Present_”: _First edition_ 1901 (dated 1902) _Second Edition_ 1903. _First Pocket Edition June_ 1907 _Reprinted January_ 1908, 1913, 1918, 1919

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CONTENTS

PAGE V.R. 1819–1901 231 WAR POEMS— EMBARCATION 235 DEPARTURE 237 THE COLONEL’S SOLILOQUY 239 THE GOING OF THE BATTERY 242 AT THE WAR OFFICE 245 A CHRISTMAS GHOST-STORY 247 THE DEAD DRUMMER 249 A WIFE IN LONDON 251 THE SOULS OF THE SLAIN 253 SONG OF THE SOLDIERS’ WIVES 260 THE SICK GOD 263 POEMS OF PILGRIMAGE— GENOA AND THE MEDITERRANEAN 269 SHELLEY’S SKYLARK 272 IN THE OLD THEATRE, FIESOLE 274 ROME: ON THE PALATINE 276 ,, BUILDING A NEW STREET IN THE 278 ANCIENT QUARTER ,, THE VATICAN: SALA DELLE MUSE 280 ,, AT THE PYRAMID OF CESTIUS 283 LAUSANNE: IN GIBBON’S OLD GARDEN 286 ZERMATT: TO THE MATTERHORN 288 THE BRIDGE OF LODI 290 ON AN INVITATION TO THE UNITED 295 STATES MISCELLANEOUS POEMS— THE MOTHER MOURNS 299 “I SAID TO LOVE” 305 A COMMONPLACE DAY 307 AT A LUNAR ECLIPSE 310 THE LACKING SENSE 312 TO LIFE 316 DOOM AND SHE 318 THE PROBLEM 321 THE SUBALTERNS 323 THE SLEEP-WORKER 325 THE BULLFINCHES 327 GOD-FORGOTTEN 329 THE BEDRIDDEN PEASANT TO AN 333 UNKNOWING GOD BY THE EARTH’S CORPSE 336 MUTE OPINION 339 TO AN UNBORN PAUPER CHILD 341 TO FLOWERS FROM ITALY IN WINTER 344 ON A FINE MORNING 346 TO LIZBIE BROWNE 348 SONG OF HOPE 352 THE WELL-BELOVED 354 HER REPROACH 358 THE INCONSISTENT 360 A BROKEN APPOINTMENT 362 “BETWEEN US NOW” 364 “HOW GREAT MY GRIEF” 366 “I NEED NOT GO” 367 THE COQUETTE, AND AFTER 369 A SPOT 371 LONG PLIGHTED 373 THE WIDOW 375 AT A HASTY WEDDING 378 THE DREAM-FOLLOWER 379 HIS IMMORTALITY 380 THE TO-BE-FORGOTTEN 382 WIVES IN THE SERE 385 THE SUPERSEDED 387 AN AUGUST MIDNIGHT 389 THE CAGED THRUSH FREED AND HOME 391 AGAIN BIRDS AT WINTER NIGHTFALL 393 THE PUZZLED GAME-BIRDS 394 WINTER IN DURNOVER FIELD 395 THE LAST CHRYSANTHEMUM 397 THE DARKLING THRUSH 399 THE COMET AT YALBURY OR YELL’HAM 402 MAD JUDY 403 A WASTED ILLNESS 405 A MAN 408 THE DAME OF ATHELHALL 412 THE SEASONS OF HER YEAR 416 THE MILKMAID 418 THE LEVELLED CHURCHYARD 420 THE RUINED MAID 422 THE RESPECTABLE BURGHER ON “THE 425 HIGHER CRITICISM” ARCHITECTURAL MASKS 428 THE TENANT-FOR-LIFE 430 THE KING’S EXPERIMENT 432 THE TREE: AN OLD MAN’S STORY 435 HER LATE HUSBAND 439 THE SELF-UNSEEING 441 DE PROFUNDIS I. 443 DE PROFUNDIS II. 445 DE PROFUNDIS III. 448 THE CHURCH-BUILDER 451 THE LOST PYX: A MEDIÆVAL LEGEND 457 TESS’S LAMENT 462 THE SUPPLANTER: A TALE 465 IMITATIONS, ETC.— SAPPHIC FRAGMENT 473 CATULLUS: XXXI 474 AFTER SCHILLER 476 SONG: FROM HEINE 477 FROM VICTOR HUGO 479 CARDINAL BEMBO’S EPITAPH ON RAPHAEL 480 RETROSPECT— “I HAVE LIVED WITH SHADES” 483 MEMORY AND I 486 ἈΓΝΩΣΤΩι ΘΕΩι. 489

V.R. 1819–1901 A REVERIE

MOMENTS the mightiest pass uncalendared, And when the Absolute In backward Time outgave the deedful word Whereby all life is stirred: “Let one be born and throned whose mould shall constitute The norm of every royal-reckoned attribute,” No mortal knew or heard. But in due days the purposed Life outshone— Serene, sagacious, free; —Her waxing seasons bloomed with deeds well done, And the world’s heart was won . . . Yet may the deed of hers most bright in eyes to be Lie hid from ours—as in the All-One’s thought lay she— Till ripening years have run.

SUNDAY NIGHT, 27_th_ _January_ 1901.

WAR POEMS

EMBARCATION (_Southampton Docks_: _October_, 1899)

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 deckward 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.

DEPARTURE (_Southampton Docks_: _October_, 1899)

WHILE the far farewell music thins and fails, And the broad bottoms rip the bearing brine— All smalling 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 striving 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 play in each proud land, And patriotism, grown Godlike, scorn to stand Bondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas?”

THE COLONEL’S SOLILOQUY (_Southampton Docks_: _October_, 1899)

“THE quay recedes. Hurrah! Ahead we go! . . . It’s true I’ve been accustomed now to home, And joints get rusty, and one’s limbs may grow More fit to rest than roam.

“But I can stand as yet fair stress and strain; There’s not a little steel beneath the rust; My years mount somewhat, but here’s to’t again! And if I fall, I must.

“God knows that for myself I’ve scanty care; Past scrimmages have proved as much to all; In Eastern lands and South I’ve had my share Both of the blade and ball.

“And where those villains ripped me in the flitch With their old iron in my early time, I’m apt at change of wind to feel a twitch, Or at a change of clime.

“And what my mirror shows me in the morning Has more of blotch and wrinkle than of bloom; My eyes, too, heretofore all glasses scorning, Have just a touch of rheum . . .

“Now sounds ‘The Girl I’ve left behind me,’—Ah, The years, the ardours, wakened by that tune! Time was when, with the crowd’s farewell ‘Hurrah!’ ’Twould lift me to the moon.

“But now it’s late to leave behind me one Who if, poor soul, her man goes underground, Will not recover as she might have done In days when hopes abound.

“She’s waving from the wharfside, palely grieving, As down we draw . . . Her tears make little show, Yet now she suffers more than at my leaving Some twenty years ago.

“I pray those left at home will care for her! I shall come back; I have before; though when The Girl you leave behind you is a grandmother, Things may not be as then.”

THE GOING OF THE BATTERY WIVES’ LAMENT (_November_ 2, 1899)

O IT was sad enough, weak enough, mad enough— Light in their loving as soldiers can be— First to risk choosing them, leave alone losing them Now, in far battle, beyond the South Sea! . . .

—Rain came down drenchingly; but we unblenchingly Trudged on beside them through mirk and through mire, They stepping steadily—only too readily!— Scarce as if stepping brought parting-time nigher.

III

Great guns were gleaming there, living things seeming there, Cloaked in their tar-cloths, upmouthed to the night; Wheels wet and yellow from axle to felloe, Throats blank of sound, but prophetic to sight.

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.

Sharp were those sighs of ours, blinded 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.

VII

—Yet, voices haunting us, daunting us, taunting 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.

AT THE WAR OFFICE, LONDON (_Affixing the Lists of Killed and Wounded_: _December_, 1899)

LAST year I called this world of gain-givings The darkest thinkable, and questioned sadly If my own land could heave its pulse less gladly, So charged it seemed with circumstance whence springs The tragedy of things.

Yet at that censured time no heart was rent Or feature blanched of parent, wife, or daughter By hourly blazoned sheets of listed slaughter; Death waited Nature’s wont; Peace smiled unshent From Ind to Occident.

A CHRISTMAS GHOST-STORY

SOUTH of the Line, inland from far Durban, A mouldering soldier lies—your countryman. Awry and doubled up are his gray bones, And on the breeze his puzzled phantom moans Nightly to clear Canopus: “I would know By whom and when the All-Earth-gladdening Law Of Peace, brought in by that Man Crucified, Was ruled to be inept, and set aside? And what of logic or of truth appears In tacking ‘Anno Domini’ to the years? Near twenty-hundred livened thus have hied, But tarries yet the Cause for which He died.”

_Christmas-eve_, 1899.

THE DEAD DRUMMER

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.

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.

III

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.

A WIFE IN LONDON (_December_, 1899)

I THE TRAGEDY

SHE sits in the tawny vapour That the City lanes have uprolled, Behind whose webby fold on fold Like a waning taper The street-lamp glimmers cold.

A messenger’s knock cracks smartly, Flashed news is in her hand Of meaning it dazes to understand Though shaped so shortly: _He—has fallen—in the far South Land_ . . .

II THE IRONY

’Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker, The postman nears and goes: A letter is brought whose lines disclose By the firelight flicker His hand, whom the worm now knows:

Fresh—firm—penned in highest feather— Page-full of his hoped return, And of home-planned jaunts by brake and burn In the summer weather, And of new love that they would learn.

THE SOULS OF THE SLAIN

The thick lids of Night closed upon me Alone at the Bill Of the Isle by the Race {253}— Many-caverned, bald, wrinkled of face— And with darkness and silence the spirit was on me To brood and be still.

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.

III

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, And in softness and smoothness well-nigh beyond hearing Of corporal things.

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, farsighted 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.

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, O my men?” Said they, “Aye! We bear homeward and hearthward To list to our fame!”

VII

“I’ve flown there before you,” he said then: “Your households are well; But—your kin linger less On your glory arid 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.

“A father broods: ‘Would I had set him To some humble trade, And so slacked his high fire, And his passionate martial desire; Had told him no stories to woo him and whet him To this due crusade!”

“And, General, how hold out our sweethearts, 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.”

“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 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,

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 fathomless regions Of myriads forgot.

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.

SONG OF THE SOLDIERS’ WIVES

AT last! In sight of home again, Of home again; No more to range and roam again As at that bygone time? No more to go away from us And stay from us?— Dawn, hold not long the day from us, But quicken it to prime!

Now all the town shall ring to them, Shall ring to them, And we who love them cling to them And clasp them joyfully; And cry, “O much we’ll do for you Anew for you, Dear Loves!—aye, draw and hew for you, Come back from oversea.”

III

Some told us we should meet no more, Should meet no more; Should wait, and wish, but greet no more Your faces round our fires; That, in a while, uncharily And drearily Men gave their lives—even wearily, Like those whom living tires.

And now you are nearing home again, Dears, home again; No more, may be, to roam again As at that bygone time, Which took you far away from us To stay from us; Dawn, hold not long the day from us, But quicken it to prime!

THE SICK GOD

IN days when men had joy of war, A God of Battles sped each mortal jar; The peoples pledged him heart and hand, From Israel’s land to isles afar.

His crimson form, with clang and chime, Flashed on each murk and murderous meeting-time, And kings invoked, for rape and raid, His fearsome aid in rune and rhyme.

III

On bruise and blood-hole, scar and seam, On blade and bolt, he flung his fulgid beam: His haloes rayed the very gore, And corpses wore his glory-gleam.

Often an early King or Queen, And storied hero onward, knew his sheen; ’Twas glimpsed by Wolfe, by Ney anon, And Nelson on his blue demesne.

But new light spread. That god’s gold nimb And blazon have waned dimmer and more dim; Even his flushed form begins to fade, Till but a shade is left of him.

That modern meditation broke His spell, that penmen’s pleadings dealt a stroke, Say some; and some that crimes too dire Did much to mire his crimson cloak.

VII

Yea, seeds of crescive sympathy Were sown by those more excellent than he, Long known, though long contemned till then— The gods of men in amity.

VIII

Souls have grown seers, and thought out-brings The mournful many-sidedness of things With foes as friends, enfeebling ires And fury-fires by gaingivings!

He scarce impassions champions now; They do and dare, but tensely—pale of brow; And would they fain uplift the arm Of that faint form they know not how.

Yet wars arise, though zest grows cold; Wherefore, at whiles, as ’twere in ancient mould He looms, bepatched with paint and lath; But never hath he seemed the old!

Let men rejoice, let men deplore. The lurid Deity of heretofore Succumbs to one of saner nod; The Battle-god is god no more.

POEMS OF PILGRIMAGE

GENOA AND THE MEDITERRANEAN (March, 1887)

O EPIC-FAMED, god-haunted Central Sea, Heave careless of the deep wrong done to thee When from Torino’s track I saw thy face first flash on me.

And multimarbled Genova the Proud, Gleam all unconscious how, wide-lipped, up-browed, I first beheld thee clad—not as the Beauty but the Dowd.

Out from a deep-delved way my vision lit On housebacks pink, green, ochreous—where a slit Shoreward ’twixt row and row revealed the classic blue through it.

And thereacross waved fishwives’ high-hung smocks, Chrome kerchiefs, scarlet hose, darned underfrocks; Since when too oft my dreams of thee, O Queen, that frippery mocks:

Whereat I grieve, Superba! . . . Afterhours Within Palazzo Doria’s orange bowers Went far to mend these marrings of thy soul-subliming powers.