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! 

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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-

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.

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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.'

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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

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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. 

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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! 

131

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LIFE LAUGHS ONWARD

Rambling I looked for an old abode

Where, years back, one had lived I knew;

Its site a dwelling duly showed,

But it was new.

I went where, not so long ago,

The sod had riven two breasts asunder;

Daisies throve gaily there, as though

No grave were under.

I walked along a terrace where

Loud children gambolled in the sun;

The figure that had once sat there

Was missed by none.

Life laughed and moved on unsubdued,

I saw that Old succumbed to Young:

'Twas well. My too regretful mood

Died on my tongue.

130

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FETCHING HER

An hour before the dawn,

         My friend,

You lit your waiting bedside-lamp,

   Your breakfast-fire anon,

And outing into the dark and damp

   You saddled, and set on.

   Thuswise, before the day,

         My friend,

You sought her on her surfy shore,

   To fetch her thence away

Unto your own new-builded door

   For a staunch lifelong stay.

   You said:  "It seems to be,

         My friend,

That I were bringing to my place

   The pure brine breeze, the sea,

The mews - all her old sky and space,

   In bringing her with me!"

  - But time is prompt to expugn,

         My friend,

Such magic-minted conjurings:

   The brought breeze fainted soon,

And then the sense of seamews' wings,

   And the shore's sibilant tune.

   So, it had been more due,

         My friend,

Perhaps, had you not pulled this flower

   From the craggy nook it knew,

And set it in an alien bower;

   But left it where it grew!

129

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THE AGEING HOUSE

When the walls were red

  That now are seen

   To be overspread

    With a mouldy green,

     A fresh fair head

     Would often lean

    From the sunny casement

       And scan the scene,

   While blithely spoke the wind to the little sycamore tree.

      But storms have raged

       Those walls about,

       And the head has aged

        That once looked out;

        And zest is suaged

        And trust is doubt,

        And slow effacement

         Is rife throughout,

   While fiercely girds the wind at the long-limbed sycamore tree!

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JULIE-JANE 

Sing; how 'a would sing!

How 'a would raise the tune

When we rode in the wagon from harvesting

By the light o' the moon!

Dance; how 'a would dance!

If a fiddlestring did but sound

She would hold out her coats, give a slanting glance,

And go round and round.

Laugh; how 'a would laugh!

Her peony lips would part

As if none such a place for a lover to quaff

At the deeps of a heart.

Julie, O girl of joy,

Soon, soon that lover he came.

Ah, yes; and gave thee a baby-boy,

But never his name . . .

- Tolling for her, as you guess;

And the baby too . . . 'Tis well.

You knew her in maidhood likewise? - Yes,

That's her burial bell.

"I suppose," with a laugh, she said,

"I should blush that I'm not a wife;

But how can it matter, so soon to be dead,

What one does in life!"

When we sat making the mourning

By her death-bed side, said she,

"Dears, how can you keep from your lovers, adorning

In honour of me!"

Bubbling and brightsome eyed!

But now - O never again.

She chose her bearers before she died

From her fancy-men.

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IN THE RESTAURANT

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

It will pass as your husband's with the rest,

While, if we fly, the teeth of scorn

Will be gleaming at us from east to west;

And the child will come as a life despised;

I feel an elopement is ill-advised!"

"O you realize not what it is, my dear,

To a woman! Daily and hourly alarms

Lest the truth should out. How can I stay here,

And nightly take him into my arms!

Come to the child no name or fame,

Let us go, and face it, and bear the shame."

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I AM THE ONE.

I am the one whom ringdoves see

Through chinks in boughs

When they do not rouse

In sudden dread,

But stay on cooing, as if they said:

‘Oh; it's only he.’

I am the passer when up-eared hares,

Stirred as they eat

The new-sprung wheat,

Their munch resume

As if they thought; ‘He is one for whom

Nobody cares.’

Wet-eyed mourners glance at me

As in train they pass

Along the grass

To a hollowed spot,

And think: ‘No matter; he quizzes not

Our misery.’

I hear above: ‘We stars must lend

No fierce regard

To his gaze, so hard

Bent on us thus,—

Must scathe him not. He is one with us

Beginning and end.’

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AT THE ALTAR-RAIL

"My bride is not coming, alas!" says the groom,

And the telegram shakes in his hand. "I own

It was hurried! We met at a dancing-room

When I went to the Cattle-Show alone,

And then, next night, where the Fountain leaps,

And the Street of the Quarter-Circle sweeps.

"Ay, she won me to ask her to be my wife - 

'Twas foolish perhaps! - to forsake the ways

Of the flaring town for a farmer's life.

She agreed. And we fixed it. Now she says:

It's sweet of you, dear, to prepare me a nest,

But a swift, short, gay life suits me best.

What I really am you have never gleaned;

I had eaten the apple ere you were weaned."

-o0o-

FAINTHEART IN A RAILWAY TRAIN

At nine in the morning there passed a church,

At ten there passed me by the sea,

At twelve a town of smoke and smirch,

At two a forest of oak and birch,

And then, on a platform, she.

A radiant stranger, who saw not me,

I said, “Get out to her do I dare?”

But I kept my seat in my search for a plea,

And the wheels moved on. O could it but be

That I had alighted there! 

123

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A PRACTICAL WOMAN

“O who’ll get me a healthy child -

I should prefer a son -

Seven have I had in thirteen years,

Sickly every one!

“Three mope about as feeble shapes;

Weak; white; they’ll be no good.

One came deformed; an idiot next;

And two are crass as wood.

“I purpose one not only sound

In flesh, but bright in mind;

And duly for producing him

A means I’ve now to find.”

She went away. She disappeared,

Years, years. Then back she came;

In her hand was a blooming boy

Mentally and in frame.

“I found a father at last who’d suit

The purpose in my head,

And used him till he’s done his job,”

Was all thereon she said.  

122

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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 grey. 

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove 

Over tedious riddles of years ago; 

And some 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 cursed sun, and a tree, 

And a pond edged with greyish leaves. 

121

-o0o-

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 like theirs

Would flush our day!"

And we were left alone

As Love's own pair;

Yet never the love-light shone

Between us there!

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! 

120

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SHORTENING DAYS AT THE HOMESTEAD

The first fire since the summer is lit, and is smoking into the room:

The sun-rays thread it through, like woof-lines in a loom.

Sparrows spurt from the hedge, whom misgivings appal

That winter did not leave last year for ever, after all.

Like shock-headed urchins, spiny-haired,

Stand pollard willows, their twigs just bared.

Who is this coming with pondering pace,

Black and ruddy, with white embossed,

His eyes being black, and ruddy his face

And the marge of his hair like morning frost?

It's the cider-maker,

And apple-treeshaker,

And behind him on wheels, in readiness,

His mill, and tubs, and vat, and press.

119

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