Chapter 4

“Eludes great Man’s sagacity No less than ours, O tribes in treen! Men know but little more than we How happy days are made to be.”

BIRDS AT WINTER NIGHTFALL (TRIOLET)

AROUND the house the flakes fly faster, And all the berries now are gone From holly and cotoneaster Around the house. The flakes fly!—faster Shutting indoors that crumb-outcaster We used to see upon the lawn Around the house. The flakes fly faster, And all the berries now are gone!

MAX GATE.

THE PUZZLED GAME-BIRDS (TRIOLET)

THEY are not those who used to feed us When we were young—they cannot be— These shapes that now bereave and bleed us? They are not those who used to feed us,— For would they not fair terms concede us? —If hearts can house such treachery They are not those who used to feed us When we were young—they cannot be!

WINTER IN DURNOVER FIELD

SCENE.—A wide stretch of fallow ground recently sown with wheat, and frozen to iron hardness. Three large birds walking about thereon, and wistfully eyeing the surface. Wind keen from north-east: sky a dull grey.

(TRIOLET)

_Rook_.—Throughout the field I find no grain; The cruel frost encrusts the cornland! _Starling_.—Aye: patient pecking now is vain Throughout the field, I find . . . _Rook_.—No grain! _Pigeon_.—Nor will be, comrade, till it rain, Or genial thawings loose the lorn land Throughout the field. _Rook_.—I find no grain: The cruel frost encrusts the cornland!

THE LAST CHRYSANTHEMUM

WHY should this flower delay so long To show its tremulous plumes? Now is the time of plaintive robin-song, When flowers are in their tombs.

Through the slow summer, when the sun Called to each frond and whorl That all he could for flowers was being done, Why did it not uncurl?

It must have felt that fervid call Although it took no heed, Waking but now, when leaves like corpses fall, And saps all retrocede.

Too late its beauty, lonely thing, The season’s shine is spent, Nothing remains for it but shivering In tempests turbulent.

Had it a reason for delay, Dreaming in witlessness That for a bloom so delicately gay Winter would stay its stress?

—I talk as if the thing were born With sense to work its mind; Yet it is but one mask of many worn By the Great Face behind.

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 from 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 outburst among The bleak twigs overhead In a full-hearted evensong Of joy illimited; 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 knew And I was unaware.

_December_ 1900.

THE COMET AT YALBURY OR YELL’HAM

I

IT bends far over Yell’ham Plain, And we, from Yell’ham Height, Stand and regard its fiery train, So soon to swim from sight.

II

It will return long years hence, when As now its strange swift shine Will fall on Yell’ham; but not then On that sweet form of thine.

MAD JUDY

WHEN the hamlet hailed a birth Judy used to cry: When she heard our christening mirth She would kneel and sigh. She was crazed, we knew, and we Humoured her infirmity.

When the daughters and the sons Gathered them to wed, And we like-intending ones Danced till dawn was red, She would rock and mutter, “More Comers to this stony shore!”

When old Headsman Death laid hands On a babe or twain, She would feast, and by her brands Sing her songs again. What she liked we let her do, Judy was insane, we knew.

A WASTED ILLNESS

THROUGH vaults of pain, Enribbed and wrought with groins of ghastliness, I passed, and garish spectres moved my brain To dire distress.

And hammerings, And quakes, and shoots, and stifling hotness, blent With webby waxing things and waning things As on I went.

“Where lies the end To this foul way?” I asked with weakening breath. Thereon ahead I saw a door extend— The door to death.

It loomed more clear: “At last!” I cried. “The all-delivering door!” And then, I knew not how, it grew less near Than theretofore.

And back slid I Along the galleries by which I came, And tediously the day returned, and sky, And life—the same.

And all was well: Old circumstance resumed its former show, And on my head the dews of comfort fell As ere my woe.

I roam anew, Scarce conscious of my late distress . . . And yet Those backward steps through pain I cannot view Without regret.

For that dire train Of waxing shapes and waning, passed before, And those grim aisles, must be traversed again To reach that door.

A MAN (IN MEMORY OF H. OF M.)

I

IN Casterbridge there stood a noble pile, Wrought with pilaster, bay, and balustrade In tactful times when shrewd Eliza swayed.— On burgher, squire, and clown It smiled the long street down for near a mile

II

But evil days beset that domicile; The stately beauties of its roof and wall Passed into sordid hands. Condemned to fall Were cornice, quoin, and cove, And all that art had wove in antique style.

III

Among the hired dismantlers entered there One till the moment of his task untold. When charged therewith he gazed, and answered bold: “Be needy I or no, I will not help lay low a house so fair!

IV

“Hunger is hard. But since the terms be such— No wage, or labour stained with the disgrace Of wrecking what our age cannot replace To save its tasteless soul— I’ll do without your dole. Life is not much!”

V

Dismissed with sneers he backed his tools and went, And wandered workless; for it seemed unwise To close with one who dared to criticize And carp on points of taste: To work where they were placed rude men were meant.

VI

Years whiled. He aged, sank, sickened, and was not: And it was said, “A man intractable And curst is gone.” None sighed to hear his knell, None sought his churchyard-place; His name, his rugged face, were soon forgot.

VII

The stones of that fair hall lie far and wide, And but a few recall its ancient mould; Yet when I pass the spot I long to hold As truth what fancy saith: “His protest lives where deathless things abide!”

THE DAME OF ATHELHALL

I

“SOUL! Shall I see thy face,” she said, “In one brief hour? And away with thee from a loveless bed To a far-off sun, to a vine-wrapt bower, And be thine own unseparated, And challenge the world’s white glower?”

II

She quickened her feet, and met him where They had predesigned: And they clasped, and mounted, and cleft the air Upon whirling wheels; till the will to bind Her life with his made the moments there Efface the years behind.

III

Miles slid, and the sight of the port upgrew As they sped on; When slipping its bond the bracelet flew From her fondled arm. Replaced anon, Its cameo of the abjured one drew Her musings thereupon.

IV

The gaud with his image once had been A gift from him: And so it was that its carving keen Refurbished memories wearing dim, Which set in her soul a throe of teen, And a tear on her lashes’ brim.

V

“I may not go!” she at length upspake, “Thoughts call me back— I would still lose all for your dear, dear sake; My heart is thine, friend! But my track I home to Athelhall must take To hinder household wrack!”

VI

He appealed. But they parted, weak and wan: And he left the shore; His ship diminished, was low, was gone; And she heard in the waves as the daytide wore, And read in the leer of the sun that shone, That they parted for evermore.

VII

She homed as she came, at the dip of eve On Athel Coomb Regaining the Hall she had sworn to leave . . . The house was soundless as a tomb, And she entered her chamber, there to grieve Lone, kneeling, in the gloom.

VIII

From the lawn without rose her husband’s voice To one his friend: “Another her Love, another my choice, Her going is good. Our conditions mend; In a change of mates we shall both rejoice; I hoped that it thus might end!

IX

“A quick divorce; she will make him hers, And I wed mine. So Time rights all things in long, long years— Or rather she, by her bold design! I admire a woman no balk deters: She has blessed my life, in fine.

X

“I shall build new rooms for my new true bride, Let the bygone be: By now, no doubt, she has crossed the tide With the man to her mind. Far happier she In some warm vineland by his side Than ever she was with me.”

THE SEASONS OF HER YEAR

I

WINTER is white on turf and tree, And birds are fled; But summer songsters pipe to me, And petals spread, For what I dreamt of secretly His lips have said!

II

O ’tis a fine May morn, they say, And blooms have blown; But wild and wintry is my day, My birds make moan; For he who vowed leaves me to pay Alone—alone!

THE MILKMAID

UNDER a daisied bank There stands a rich red ruminating cow, And hard against her flank A cotton-hooded milkmaid bends her brow.

The flowery river-ooze Upheaves and falls; the milk purrs in the pail; Few pilgrims but would choose The peace of such a life in such a vale.

The maid breathes words—to vent, It seems, her sense of Nature’s scenery, Of whose life, sentiment, And essence, very part itself is she.

She bends a glance of pain, And, at a moment, lets escape a tear; Is it that passing train, Whose alien whirr offends her country ear?—

Nay! Phyllis does not dwell On visual and familiar things like these; What moves her is the spell Of inner themes and inner poetries:

Could but by Sunday morn Her gay new gown come, meads might dry to dun, Trains shriek till ears were torn, If Fred would not prefer that Other One.

THE LEVELLED CHURCHYARD

“O PASSENGER, pray list and catch Our sighs and piteous groans, Half stifled in this jumbled patch Of wrenched memorial stones!

“We late-lamented, resting here, Are mixed to human jam, And each to each exclaims in fear, ‘I know not which I am!’

“The wicked people have annexed The verses on the good; A roaring drunkard sports the text Teetotal Tommy should!

“Where we are huddled none can trace, And if our names remain, They pave some path or p-ing place Where we have never lain!

“There’s not a modest maiden elf But dreads the final Trumpet, Lest half of her should rise herself, And half some local strumpet!

“From restorations of Thy fane, From smoothings of Thy sward, From zealous Churchmen’s pick and plane Deliver us O Lord! Amen!”

1882.

THE RUINED MAID

“O ’Melia, my dear, this does everything crown! Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town? And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?”— “O didn’t you know I’d been ruined?” said she.

—“You left us in tatters, without shoes or socks, Tired of digging potatoes, and spudding up docks; And now you’ve gay bracelets and bright feathers three!”— “Yes: that’s how we dress when we’re ruined,” said she.

—“At home in the barton you said ‘thee’ and ‘thou,’ And ‘thik oon,’ and ‘theäs oon,’ and ‘t’other’; but now Your talking quite fits ’ee for high compa-ny!”— “Some polish is gained with one’s ruin,” said she.

—“Your hands were like paws then, your face blue and bleak, But now I’m bewitched by your delicate cheek, And your little gloves fit as on any la-dy!”— “We never do work when we’re ruined,” said she.

—“You used to call home-life a hag-ridden dream, And you’d sigh, and you’d sock; but at present you seem To know not of megrims or melancho-ly!”— “True. There’s an advantage in ruin,” said she.

—“I wish I had feathers, a fine sweeping gown, And a delicate face, and could strut about Town!”— “My dear—a raw country girl, such as you be, Isn’t equal to that. You ain’t ruined,” said she.

WESTBOURNE PARK VILLAS, 1866.

THE RESPECTABLE BURGHER ON “THE HIGHER CRITICISM”

SINCE Reverend Doctors now declare That clerks and people must prepare To doubt if Adam ever were; To hold the flood a local scare; To argue, though the stolid stare, That everything had happened ere The prophets to its happening sware; That David was no giant-slayer, Nor one to call a God-obeyer In certain details we could spare, But rather was a debonair Shrewd bandit, skilled as banjo-player: That Solomon sang the fleshly Fair, And gave the Church no thought whate’er; That Esther with her royal wear, And Mordecai, the son of Jair, And Joshua’s triumphs, Job’s despair, And Balaam’s ass’s bitter blare; Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace-flare, And Daniel and the den affair, And other stories rich and rare, Were writ to make old doctrine wear Something of a romantic air: That the Nain widow’s only heir, And Lazarus with cadaverous glare (As done in oils by Piombo’s care) Did not return from Sheol’s lair: That Jael set a fiendish snare, That Pontius Pilate acted square, That never a sword cut Malchus’ ear And (but for shame I must forbear) That — — did not reappear! . . . —Since thus they hint, nor turn a hair, All churchgoing will I forswear, And sit on Sundays in my chair, And read that moderate man Voltaire.

ARCHITECTURAL MASKS

I

THERE is a house with ivied walls, And mullioned windows worn and old, And the long dwellers in those halls Have souls that know but sordid calls, And daily dote on gold.

II

In blazing brick and plated show Not far away a “villa” gleams, And here a family few may know, With book and pencil, viol and bow, Lead inner lives of dreams.

III

The philosophic passers say, “See that old mansion mossed and fair, Poetic souls therein are they: And O that gaudy box! Away, You vulgar people there.”

THE TENANT-FOR-LIFE

THE sun said, watching my watering-pot “Some morn you’ll pass away; These flowers and plants I parch up hot— Who’ll water them that day?

“Those banks and beds whose shape your eye Has planned in line so true, New hands will change, unreasoning why Such shape seemed best to you.

“Within your house will strangers sit, And wonder how first it came; They’ll talk of their schemes for improving it, And will not mention your name.

“They’ll care not how, or when, or at what You sighed, laughed, suffered here, Though you feel more in an hour of the spot Than they will feel in a year

“As I look on at you here, now, Shall I look on at these; But as to our old times, avow No knowledge—hold my peace! . . .

“O friend, it matters not, I say; Bethink ye, I have shined On nobler ones than you, and they Are dead men out of mind!”

THE KING’S EXPERIMENT

IT was a wet wan hour in spring, And Nature met King Doom beside a lane, Wherein Hodge trudged, all blithely ballading The Mother’s smiling reign.

“Why warbles he that skies are fair And coombs alight,” she cried, “and fallows gay, When I have placed no sunshine in the air Or glow on earth to-day?”

“’Tis in the comedy of things That such should be,” returned the one of Doom; “Charge now the scene with brightest blazonings, And he shall call them gloom.”

She gave the word: the sun outbroke, All Froomside shone, the hedgebirds raised a song; And later Hodge, upon the midday stroke, Returned the lane along,

Low murmuring: “O this bitter scene, And thrice accurst horizon hung with gloom! How deadly like this sky, these fields, these treen, To trappings of the tomb!”

The Beldame then: “The fool and blind! Such mad perverseness who may apprehend?”— “Nay; there’s no madness in it; thou shalt find Thy law there,” said her friend.

“When Hodge went forth ’twas to his Love, To make her, ere this eve, his wedded prize, And Earth, despite the heaviness above, Was bright as Paradise.

“But I sent on my messenger, With cunning arrows poisonous and keen, To take forthwith her laughing life from her, And dull her little een,

“And white her cheek, and still her breath, Ere her too buoyant Hodge had reached her side; So, when he came, he clasped her but in death, And never as his bride.

“And there’s the humour, as I said; Thy dreary dawn he saw as gleaming gold, And in thy glistening green and radiant red Funereal gloom and cold.”

THE TREE AN OLD MAN’S STORY

I

Its roots are bristling in the air Like some mad Earth-god’s spiny hair; The loud south-wester’s swell and yell Smote it at midnight, and it fell. Thus ends the tree Where Some One sat with me.

II

Its boughs, which none but darers trod, A child may step on from the sod, And twigs that earliest met the dawn Are lit the last upon the lawn. Cart off the tree Beneath whose trunk sat we!

III

Yes, there we sat: she cooed content, And bats ringed round, and daylight went; The gnarl, our seat, is wrenched and sunk, Prone that queer pocket in the trunk Where lay the key To her pale mystery.

IV

“Years back, within this pocket-hole I found, my Love, a hurried scrawl Meant not for me,” at length said I; “I glanced thereat, and let it lie: The words were three— ‘_Beloved_, _I agree_.’

V

“Who placed it here; to what request It gave assent, I never guessed. Some prayer of some hot heart, no doubt, To some coy maiden hereabout, Just as, maybe, With you, Sweet Heart, and me.”

VI

She waited, till with quickened breath She spoke, as one who banisheth Reserves that lovecraft heeds so well, To ease some mighty wish to tell: “’Twas I,” said she, “Who wrote thus clinchingly.

VII

“My lover’s wife—aye, wife!—knew nought Of what we felt, and bore, and thought . . . He’d said: ‘_I wed with thee or die_: _She stands between_, ’_tis true_. _But why_? _Do thou agree_, _And—she shalt cease to be_.’

VIII

“How I held back, how love supreme Involved me madly in his scheme Why should I say? . . . I wrote assent (You found it hid) to his intent . . . She—_died_ . . . But he Came not to wed with me.

IX

“O shrink not, Love!—Had these eyes seen But once thine own, such had not been! But we were strangers . . . Thus the plot Cleared passion’s path.—Why came he not To wed with me? . . . He wived the gibbet-tree.”

X

—Under that oak of heretofore Sat Sweetheart mine with me no more: By many a Fiord, and Strom, and Fleuve Have I since wandered . . . Soon, for love, Distraught went she— ’Twas said for love of me.

HER LATE HUSBAND (KING’S-HINTOCK, 182–.)

“No—not where I shall make my own; But dig his grave just by The woman’s with the initialed stone— As near as he can lie— After whose death he seemed to ail, Though none considered why.

“And when I also claim a nook, And your feet tread me in, Bestow me, under my old name, Among my kith and kin, That strangers gazing may not dream I did a husband win.”

“Widow, your wish shall be obeyed; Though, thought I, certainly You’d lay him where your folk are laid, And your grave, too, will be, As custom hath it; you to right, And on the left hand he.”

“Aye, sexton; such the Hintock rule, And none has said it nay; But now it haps a native here Eschews that ancient way . . . And it may be, some Christmas night, When angels walk, they’ll say:

“‘O strange interment! Civilized lands Afford few types thereof; Here is a man who takes his rest Beside his very Love, Beside the one who was his wife In our sight up above!’”

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!

DE PROFUNDIS

I

“Percussus sum sicut foenum, et aruit cor meum.”

—_Ps._ ci

WINTERTIME nighs; But my bereavement-pain It cannot bring again: Twice no one dies.

Flower-petals flee; But, since it once hath been, No more that severing scene Can harrow me.

Birds faint in dread: I shall not lose old strength In the lone frost’s black length: Strength long since fled!

Leaves freeze to dun; But friends can not turn cold This season as of old For him with none.

Tempests may scath; But love can not make smart Again this year his heart Who no heart hath.

Black is night’s cope; But death will not appal One who, past doubtings all, Waits in unhope.

II

“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 say, All’s well with us: ruers have nought to rue! And what the potent say so oft, can it fail to be somewhat true? Breezily go they, breezily come; their dust smokes around their career, Till I think I am one horn out of due time, who has no calling here.

Their dawns bring lusty joys, it seems; their eves exultance 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 to whose ears the low-voiced Best seems stilled 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.

III

“Heu mihi, quia incolatus meus prolongatus est! Habitavi cum habitantibus Cedar; multum incola fuit aninia mea.”—_Ps._ cxix.