A New Art Blog

begins on

MONDAY 20th NOVEMBER

ART FROM THE VICTORIAN ERA

artfromthevictorianera-mychoice.blogspot.com

and then will be updated every day

-o0o-

This poem concludes the series.

All my blogs have now come to end.

-o=0=o-

JOHN AND JANE

I

He sees the world as a boisterous place

Where all things bear a laughing face,

And humorous scenes go hourly on,

Does John.

II

They find the world a pleasant place

Where all is ecstasy and grace,

Where a light has risen that cannot wane,

Do John and Jane.

III

They see as a palace their cottage-place,

Containing a pearl of the human race,

A hero, maybe, hereafter styled,

Do John and Jane with a baby-child.

IV

They rate the world as a gruesome place,

Where fair looks fade to a skull's grimace, -

As a pilgrimage they would fain get done -

Do John and Jane with their worthless son.

John and Jane

-o=0=o-

THE RAMBLER

I do not see the hills around,

Nor mark the tints the copses wear;

I do not note the grassy ground

And constellated daisies there.

I hear not the contralto note

Of cuckoos hid on either hand,

The whirr that shakes the nighthawk's throat

When eve's brown awning hoods the land.

Some say each songster, tree, and mead -

All eloquent of love divine -

Receives their constant careful heed:

Such keen appraisement is not mine.

The tones around me that I hear,

The aspects, meanings, shapes I see,

Are those far back ones missed when near,

And now perceived too late by me!

-o0o-

GROWTH IN MAY

I enter a daisy-and-buttercup land,

   And thence thread a jungle of grass:

Hurdles and stiles scarce visible stand

   Above the lush stems as I pass.

Hedges peer over, and try to be seen,

   And seem to reveal a dim sense

That amid such ambitious and elbow-high green

   They make a mean show as a fence.

Elsewhere the mead is possessed of the neats,

   That range not greatly above

The rich rank thicket which brushes their teats,

   And HER gown, as she waits for her Love.

158

-o0o-

THE BEAUTY

O do not praise my beauty more,

In such word-wild degree,

And say I am one all eyes adore;

For these things harass me!

But do for ever softly say:

"From now unto the end

Come weal, come wanzing, come what may,

Dear, I will be your friend."

I hate my beauty in the glass:

My beauty is not I:

I wear it: none cares whether, alas,

Its wearer live or die!

The inner I O care for, then,

Yea, me and what I am,

And shall be at the gray hour when

My cheek begins to clam.

-o0o-

A WIFE IN LONDON

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.

-o0o-

AFTERWARDS

When the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay, 

And the May month flaps its glad green leaves

like wings, 

Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the

neighbours say, 

"He was a man who used to notice such things"?

If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid's

soundless blink, 

The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades

to alight 

Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer

may think, 

"To him this must have been a familiar sight." 

If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm, 

When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn, 

One may say, "He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm, 

But he could do little for them; and now he is gone." 

If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door, 

Watching the full-starred heavens that

winter sees, 

Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,

"He was one who had an eye for such mysteries"? 

And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom, 

And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings, 

Till they rise again, as they were a new

bell's boom, 

"He hears it not now, but used to notice

such things"?

JUST TREES

A new series which will be known by the full title of the blog

JUST TREES BUT LOVELY TO LOOK AT

begins on Saturday 21st October and will include extra features.

-o0o-

I FOUND HER OUT THERE

I found her out there

On a slope few see,

That falls westwardly

To the sharp-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,

Whence she often would gaze

At Dundagel's far head,

While the dipping blaze

Dyed her face fire-red;

And would sigh at the tale

Of sunk Lyonnesse,

While a wind-tugged tress

Flapped her cheek like a flail;

Or listen at whiles

With a thought-bound brow

To the murmuring miles

She is far from now.

Yet her shade, maybe,

Will glide 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. 

154

-o0o-

LOGS ON THE HEARTH

A Memory of a Sister

The fire advances along the log

      Of the tree we felled,

Which bloomed and bore striped apples by the peck

   Till its last hour of bearing knelled.

   The fork that first my hand would reach

      And then my foot

In climbings upward inch by inch, lies now

   Sawn, sapless, darkening with soot.

   Where the bark chars is where, one year,

      It was pruned, and bled -

Then overgrew the wound.  But now, at last,

   Its growings all have stagnated.

   My fellow-climber rises dim

      From her chilly grave -

Just as she was, her foot near mine on the bending limb,

   Laughing, her young brown hand awave.

153

-o0o-

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!

You were she who abode

By those red-veined rocks far West,

You were the swan-necked one who rode

Along the beetling 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!

 152

Next Post here - THURSDAY

-o0o-

AT RUSHY-POND

On the frigid face of the heath-hemmed pond 

There shaped the half-grown moon: 

Winged whiffs from the north with a husky croon 

Blew over and beyond. 

And the wind flapped the moon in its float on the pool, 

And stretched it to oval form; 

Then corkscrewed it like a wriggling worm; 

Then wanned it weariful. 

And I cared not for conning the sky above 

Where hung the substant thing, 

For my thought was earthward sojourning 

On the scene I had vision of. 

Since there it was once, in a secret year, 

I had called a woman to me 

From across this water, ardently - 

And practised to keep her near; 

Till the last weak love-words had been said, 

And ended was her time, 

And blurred the bloomage of her prime, 

And white the earlier red. 

And the troubled orb in the pond's sad shine 

Was her very wraith, as scanned 

When she withdrew thence, mirrored, and 

Her days dropped out of mine.

151

NEXT POST - TUESDAY

-o0o-

THE FROZEN GREENHOUSE

"There was a frost

Last night!" she said,

"And the stove was forgot

When we went to bed,

And the greenhouse plants

Are frozen dead!"

By the breakfast blaze

Blank-faced spoke she,

Her scared young look

Seeming to be

The very symbol

Of tragedy.

The frost is fiercer

Than then to-day,

As I pass the place

Of her once dismay,

But the greenhouse stands

Warm, tight, and gay,

While she who grieved

At the sad lot

Of her pretty plants -

Cold, iced, forgot -

Herself is colder,

And knows it not.

150

THE POETRY OF THOMAS HARDY

will be updated on

TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS

-o0o-

THE INTERLOPER

"And I saw the figure and visage of Madness seeking for a home."

There are three folk driving in a quaint old chaise,

And the cliff-side track looks green and fair;

I view them talking in quiet glee

As they drop down towards the puffins' lair

By the roughest of ways;

But another with the three rides on, I see,

Whom I like not to be there!

No: it's not anybody you think of. Next

A dwelling appears by a slow sweet stream

Where two sit happy and half in the dark:

They read, helped out by a frail-wick'd gleam,

Some rhythmic text;

But one sits with them whom they don't mark,

One I'm wishing could not be there.

No: not whom you knew and name. And now

I discern gay diners in a mansion-place,

And the guests dropping wit - pert, prim, or choice,

And the hostess's tender and laughing face,

And the host's bland brow;

I cannot help hearing a hollow voice,

And I'd fain not hear it there.

No: it's not from the stranger you met once. Ah,

Yet a goodlier scene than that succeeds;

People on a lawn - quite a crowd of them. Yes,

And they chatter and ramble as fancy leads;

And they say, "Hurrah!"

To a blithe speech made; save one, mirthless,

Who ought not to be there.

Nay: it's not the pale Form your imagings raise,

That waits on us all at a destined time,

It is not the Fourth Figure the Furnace showed,

O that it were such a shape sublime;

In these latter days!

It is that under which best lives corrode;

Would, would it could not be there!

149

--o0o-

NEXT POST TUESDAY

From Monday 2nd onwards 
THE POETRY OF THOMAS HARDY
will be updated twice a week on
TUESDAYS AND THURSDAYS

-o0o-

SHE AT HIS FUNERAL 

They bear him to his resting-place -

In slow procession sweeping by; 

I follow at a stranger’s space; 

His kindred they, his sweetheart I. 

Unchanged my gown of garish dye,

Though sable-sad is their attire; 

But they stand round with griefless eye, 

Whilst my regret consumes like fire! 

148

Please note that my current blogs are all affected by changes this week

-o0o-

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! 

147

-o0o-

IN THE NUPTIAL CHAMBER

"O that mastering tune?" And up in the bed

Like a lace-robed phantom springs the bride;

"And why?" asks the man she had that day wed,

With a start, as the band plays on outside.

"It's the townsfolks' cheery compliment

Because of our marriage, my Innocent."

"O but you don't know! 'Tis the passionate air

To which my old Love waltzed with me,

And I swore as we spun that none should share

My home, my kisses, till death, save he!

And he dominates me and thrills me through,

And it's he I embrace while embracing you!"

146

-o0o-

THE CURATE'S KINDNESS 

A Workhouse Irony

I thought they'd be strangers aroun' me,

But she's to be there!

Let me jump out o' waggon and go back and drown me

At Pummery or Ten-Hatches Weir.

I thought: "Well, I've come to the Union -

The workhouse at last -

After honest hard work all the week, and Communion

O' Zundays, these fifty years past.

"'Tis hard; but," I thought, "never mind it:

There's gain in the end:

And when I get used to the place I shall find it

A home, and may find there a friend.

"Life there will be better than t'other.

For peace is assured.

THE MEN IN ONE WING AND THEIR WIVES IN ANOTHER

Is strictly the rule of the Board."

Just then one young Pa'son arriving

Steps up out of breath

To the side o' the waggon wherein we were driving

To Union; and calls out and saith:

"Old folks, that harsh order is altered,

Be not sick of heart!

The Guardians they poohed and they pished and they paltered

When urged not to keep you apart.

"'It is wrong,' I maintained, 'to divide them,

Near forty years wed.'

'Very well, sir. We promise, then, they shall abide them

In one wing together,' they said."

Then I sank - knew 'twas quite a foredone thing

That misery should be

To the end! . . . To get freed of her there was the one thing

Had made the change welcome to me.

To go there was ending but badly;

'Twas shame and 'twas pain;

"But anyhow," thought I, "thereby I shall gladly

Get free of this forty years' chain."

I thought they'd be strangers aroun' me,

But she's to be there!

Let me jump out o' waggon and go back and drown me

At Pummery or Ten-Hatches Weir.

145

-o0o-

LYING AWAKE

You, Morningtide Star, now are steady-eyed, over the east,

I know it as if I saw you;

You, Beeches, engrave on the sky your thin twigs, even the least;

Had I paper and pencil I'd draw you.

You, Meadow, are white with your counterpane cover of dew,

I see it as if I were there;

You, Churchyard, are lightening faint from the shade of the yew,

The names creeping out everywhere.

144

-o0o-

                                                 

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 great gaunt 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.”     

143

-o0o-    

UNREALISED

Down comes the winter rain -

Spoils my hat and bow -

Runs into the poll of me;

But mother won't know.

We've been out and caught a cold,

Knee-deep in snow;

Such a lucky thing it is

That mother won't know!

Rosy lost herself last night -

Couldn't tell where to go.

Yes - it rather frightened her,

But mother didn't know.

Somebody made Willy drunk

At the Christmas show:

O 'twas fun! It's well for him

That mother won't know!

Howsoever wild we are,

Late at school or slow,

Mother won't be cross with us,

Mother won't know.

How we cried the day she died!

Neighbours whispering low . . .

But we now do what we will -

Mother won't know.

142

-o0o-

GEOGRAPHICAL KNOWLEDGE
in memory of Christiana C.

That person was Mrs Christiana Coward, who had been the village postmistress at Lower Bockhampton near Dorchester when Hardy was growing up in the neighbouring village of Higher Bockhmpton, although the memory recounted here must have been of a time after Hardy had reached adulthood.

Where Blackmoor was, the road that led

To Bath, she could not show,

Nor point the sky that overspread

Towns ten miles off or so.

But that Calcutta stood this way,

Cape Horn there figured fell,

That here was Boston, here Bombay,

She could declare full well.

Less known to her the track athwart

Froom Mead or Yell'ham Wood

Than how to make some Austral port

In seas of surly mood.

She saw the glint of Guinea's shore

Behind the plum-tree nigh,

Heard old unruly Biscay's roar

In the weir's purl hard by . . .

"My son's a sailor, and he knows

All seas and many lands,

And when he's home he points and shows

Each country where it stands.

"He's now just there - by Gib's high rock -

And when he gets, you see,

To Portsmouth here, behind the clock,

Then he'll come back to me!"

141

-o0o-

THE GLIMPSE

She sped through the door

And, following in haste,

And stirred to the core,

I entered hot-faced;

But I could not find her,

No sign was behind her.

"Where is she?" I said:

- "Who?" they asked that sat there;

"Not a soul's come in sight."

- "A maid with red hair."

- "Ah." They paled. "She is dead.

People see her at night,

But you are the first

On whom she has burst

In the keen common light."

It was ages ago,

When I was quite strong:

I have waited since, - O,

I have waited so long!

- Yea, I set me to own

The house, where now lone

I dwell in void rooms

Booming hollow as tombs!

But I never come near her,

Though nightly I hear her.

And my cheek has grown thin

And my hair has grown grey

With this waiting therein;

But she still keeps away!

140

-o0o-

AT A WATERING PLACE

They sit and smoke on the esplanade,

The man and his friend, and regard the bay

Where the far chalk cliffs, to the left displayed,

Smile sallowly in the decline of day.

And saunterers pass with laugh and jest -

A handsome couple among the rest.

‘That smart proud pair,’ says the man to his friend,

‘Are to marry next week. . . . How little he thinks

That dozens of days and nights on end

I have stroked her neck, unhooked the links

Of her sleeve to get at her upper arm. . . .

Well, bliss is in ignorance: what's the harm!’

139

-o0o-

THE NIGHT OF TRAFALGAR

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 the bones of

  thousands are,

We knew not what the day had done for us at Trafalgar.

       Had done,

       Had done,

      For us at Trafalgar!

'Pull hard, and make the north, or down we go!' One says,

    says he.

We pulled; and bedtime brought the storm; but snug at home

  slept we.

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!

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!

138

-o0o-

AN AUGUST MIDNIGHT

A shaded lamp and a waving blind,

And the beat of a clock from a distant floor:

On this scene enter - winged, horned, and spined -

A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore;

While 'mid my page there idly stands

A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands . . .

Thus meet we five, in this still place,

At this point of time, at this point in space.

- My guests besmear my new-penned line,

Or bang at the lamp and fall supine.

"God's humblest, they!" I muse. Yet why?

They know Earth-secrets that know not I. 

137

-o0o-

THE STRANGE HOUSE

I hear the piano playing--

   Just as a ghost might play."

"--O, but what are you saying?

   There's no piano to-day;

Their old one was sold and broken;

   Years past it went amiss."

"--I heard it, or shouldn't have spoken:

      A strange house, this!

"I catch some undertone here,

   From some one out of sight."

"--Impossible; we are alone here,

   And shall be through the night."

"--The parlour-door--what stirred it?"

   "--No one:  no soul's in range."

"--But, anyhow, I heard it,

      And it seems strange!

"Seek my own room I cannot--

   A figure is on the stair!"

"--What figure?  Nay, I scan not

   Any one lingering there.

A bough outside is waving,

   And that's its shade by the moon."

"--Well, all is strange!  I am craving

      Strength to leave soon."

"--Ah, maybe you've some vision

   Of showings beyond our sphere;

Some sight, sense, intuition

   Of what once happened here?

The house is old; they've hinted

   It once held two love-thralls,

And they may have imprinted

      Their dreams on its walls?

"They were--I think 'twas told me--

   Queer in their works and ways;

The teller would often hold me

   With weird tales of those days.

Some folk can not abide here,

   But we--we do not care

Who loved, laughed, wept, or died here,

      Knew joy, or despair."

136

-o0o-

-

SIDE BY SIDE

So there sat they,

The estranged two,

Thrust in one pew

By chance that day;

Placed so, breath-nigh,

Each comer unwitting

Who was to be sitting

In touch close by.

Thus side by side

Blindly alighted,

They seemed united

As groom and bride,

Who'd not communed

For many years -

Lives from twain spheres

With hearts distuned.

Her fringes brushed

His garment's hem

As the harmonies rushed

Through each of them:

Her lips could be heard

In the creed and psalms,

And their fingers neared

At the giving of alms.

And women and men,

The matins ended,

By looks commended

Them, joined again.

Quickly said she,

"Don't undeceive them -

Better thus leave them:"

"Quite so," said he.

Slight words! the last

Between them said,

Those two, once wed,

Who had not stood fast.

Diverse their ways

From the western door,

To meet no more

In their span of days.

135

PICTURES TO PLEASE
WAS UPDATED YESTERDAY

-o0o-

AT THE DRAPER'S

'I stood at the back of the shop, my dear,
But you did not perceive me.
Well, when they deliver what you were shown
I shall know nothing of it, believe me!'
And he coughed and coughed as she paled and said,
'O, I didn't see you come in there--
Why couldn't you speak?--'Well, I didn't. I left
That you should not notice I'd been there.
'You were viewing some lovely things. "Soon required
For a widow, of latest fashion;"
And I knew 'twould upset you to meet the man
Who had to be cold and ashen
And screwed in a box before they could dress you
"In the latest new note in mourning,"
As they defined it. So, not to distress you,
I left you to your adorning.'

134

The New Blog

PICTURES TO PLEASE

will be updated today

picturestoplease.blogspot.com

-o0o-

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.

133

-o0o-

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.

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.

Yet portion of that unknown plain

Will Hodge for ever be;

His homely Northern breast and brain

Grow to some Southern tree,

And strange-eyed constellations reign

His stars eternally. 

132

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