Thomas Hardy

The trees are afraid to put forth buds, And there is timidity in the grass; The plots lie gray where gouged by spuds,

You did not come, And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb. - Yet less for loss of your dear presence there

That night, that night, That song, that song! Will such again be evened quite

Up and be doing, all who have a hand To lift, a back to bend. It must not be In times like these that vaguely linger we

South of the Line, inland from far Durban, A mouldering soldier lies - your countryman. Awry and doubled up are his gray bones,

(MELLSTOCK circa 1835) She turned in the high pew, until her sight Swept the west gallery, and caught its row

As "legal representative" I read a missive not my own, On new designs the senders give

The day is turning ghost, And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively, To join the anonymous host

Your troubles shrink not, though I feel them less Here, far away, than when I tarried near; I even smile old smiles with listlessness -

He lay awake, with a harassed air, And she, in her cloud of loose lank hair, Seemed trouble-tried

Beeny did not quiver, Juliot grew not gray, Thin Valency's river

Why go to Saint-Juliot? What's Juliot to me? I was but made fancy By some necromancy

"It shall be dark unto you, that ye shall not divine." Micah iii. 6. I asked the Lord: "Sire, is this true

And he is risen? Well, be it so . . . And still the pensive lands complain, And dead men wait as long ago,

(E. L. H. H. C. H.) Since every sound moves memories, How can I play you

I dwelt in the shade of a city, She far by the sea, With folk perhaps good, gracious, witty;

There is a house in a city street Some past ones made their own; Its floors were criss-crossed by their feet,

The rain smites more and more, The east wind snarls and sneezes; Through the joints of the quivering door

Who were the twain that trod this track So many times together Hither and back,

ON THE NIGHT OF HIS FUNERAL From the slow march and muffled drum And crowds distrest,

By a wall the stranger now calls his, Was born of old a particular kiss, Without forethought in its genesis;

I do not wish to win your vow To take me soon or late as bride, And lift me from the nook where now

(IN MEMORY OF H. OF M.) I In Casterbridge there stood a noble pile,

On that gray night of mournful drone, A part from aught to hear, to see, I dreamt not that from shires unknown

As evening shaped I found me on a moor Which sight could scarce sustain: The black lean land, of featureless contour,

"I will get a new string for my fiddle, And call to the neighbours to come, And partners shall dance down the middle

SCHERZANDO "So back you have come from the town, Nan, dear! And have you seen him there, or near -

I Phantasmal fears, And the flap of the flame,

I marked when the weather changed, And the panes began to quake, And the winds rose up and ranged,

When you slowly emerged from the den of Time, And gained percipience as you grew, And fleshed you fair out of shapeless slime,

Attentive eyes, fantastic heed, Assessing minds, he does not need, Nor urgent writs to sup or dine,

I see the ghost of a perished day; I know his face, and the feel of his dawn: 'Twas he who took me far away

I mark the months in liveries dank and dry, The noontides many-shaped and hued; I see the nightfall shades subtrude,

(Algernon Charles Swinburne, 1837-1909) I In this fair niche above the unslumbering sea,

"What do I catch upon the night-wind, husband? - What is it sounds in this house so eerily? It seems to be a woman's voice: each little while I hear it,

In years defaced and lost, Two sat here, transport-tossed, Lit by a living love

I bore a daughter flower-fair, In Pydel Vale, alas for me; I joyed to mother one so rare,

I saw it - pink and white - revealed Upon the white and green; The white and green was a daisied field,

(A Reminiscence) She wore a new "terra-cotta" dress, And we stayed, because of the pelting storm,

I From Wynyard's Gap the livelong day, The livelong day,

Yes; such it was; Just those two seasons unsought, Sweeping like summertide wind on our ways;

Through vaults of pain, Enribbed and wrought with groins of ghastliness, I passed, and garish spectres moved my brain

On Monday night I closed my door, And thought you were not as heretofore, And little cared if we met no more.

Nine drops of water bead the jessamine, And nine-and-ninety smear the stones and tiles: - 'Twas not so in that August full-rayed, fine

I pace along, the rain-shafts riddling me, Mile after mile out by the moorland way, And up the hill, and through the ewe-leaze gray

"War ends, and he's returning Early; yea, The evening next to-morrow's!" -

This is the story a man told me Of his life's one day of dreamery. A woman came into his room

(December, 1899) I - THE TRAGEDY She sits in the tawny vapour

Will's at the dance in the Club-room below, Where the tall liquor-cups foam; I on the pavement up here by the Bow,

How she held up the horses' heads, Firm-lipped, with steady rein, Down that grim steep the coastguard treads,

"Ah Madam; you've indeed come back here? 'Twas sad your husband's so swift death, And you away! You shouldn't have left him:

If he should live a thousand years He'd find it not again That scorn of him by men

I skimmed the strings; I sang quite low; I hoped she would not come or know That the house next door was the one now dittied,

A senseless school, where we must give Our lives that we may learn to live! A dolt is he who memorizes

Call off your eyes from care By some determined deftness; put forth joys Dear as excess without the core that cloys,

(April: 1905) "And wisdom and knowledge shall be the stability of thy times." - Isaiah xxxiii. 6. I looked and thought, "All is too gray and cold

I When moiling seems at cease In the vague void of night-time,

Hereto I come to interview a ghost; Whither, O whither will its whim now draw me? Up the cliff, down, till I'm lonely, lost,

The railway bore him through An earthen cutting out from a city: There was no scope for view,

Simple was I and was young; Kept no gallant tryst, I; Even from good words held my tongue,

Knight, a true sister-love This heart retains; Ask me no other love,

Black'on frowns east on Maidon, And westward to the sea, But on neither is his frown laden

The singers are gone from the Cornmarket-place With their broadsheets of rhymes, The street rings no longer in treble and bass

(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;

(To F. E. D.) Come again to the place Where your presence was as a leaf that skims

On afternoons of drowsy calm We stood in the panelled pew, Singing one-voiced a Tate-and-Brady psalm

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,

"Ah, are you digging on my grave My loved one? planting rue?" - "No: yesterday he went to wed

I marked her ruined hues, Her custom-straitened views, And asked, "Can there indwell

Where once we danced, where once sang, Gentlemen, The floors are sunken, cobwebs hang,

It was at the very date to which we have come, In the month of the matching name, When, at a like minute, the sun had upswum,

Seven millions stand Emaciate, in that ancient Delta-land:- We here, full-charged with our own maimed and dead,

I A shaded lamp and a waving blind, And the beat of a clock from a distant floor:

There trudges one to a merry-making With a sturdy swing, On whom the rain comes down.

Wit, weight, or wealth there was not In anything that was said, In anything that was done;

Recalling R. T. Who would have thought That, not having missed her

Now I am dead you sing to me The songs we used to know, But while I lived you had no wish

I There had been years of Passion scorching, cold, And much Despair, and Anger heaving high,

I met you first - ah, when did I first meet you? When I was full of wonder, and innocent, Standing meek-eyed with those of choric bent,

The chimes called midnight, just at interlune, And the daytime talk of the Roman investigations Was checked by silence, save for the husky tune

I There is a house with ivied walls, And mullioned windows worn and old,

As 'twere to-night, in the brief space Of a far eventime, My spirit rang achime

To - When you paced forth, to wait maternity, A dream of other offspring held my mind,

At a bygone Western country fair I saw a giant led by a dwarf With a red string like a long thin scarf;

If hours be years the twain are blest, For now they solace swift desire By bonds of every bond the best,

O poet, come you haunting here Where streets have stolen up all around, And never a nightingale pours one

Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea, Now steals along upon the Moon's meek shine In even monochrome and curving line

I went and stood outside myself, Spelled the dark sky And ship-lights nigh,

When we as strangers sought Their catering care, Veiled smiles bespoke their thought

As I drive to the junction of lane and highway, And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette, I look behind at the fading byway,

The ten hours' light is abating, And a late bird flies across, Where the pines, like waltzers waiting,

Had I but lived a hundred years ago I might have gone, as I have gone this year, By Warmwell Cross on to a Cove I know,

"That same first fiddler who leads the orchestra to-night Here fiddled four decades of years ago; He bears the same babe-like smile of self-centred delight,

How could I be aware, The opposite window eyeing As I lay listless there,

The bars are thick with drops that show As they gather themselves from the fog Like silver buttons ranged in a row,

I thought you a fire On Heron-Plantation Hill, Dealing out mischief the most dire

I sat at dinner in my prime, And glimpsed my face in the sideboard-glass, And started as if I had seen a crime,

I (OLD STYLE) Our songs went up and out the chimney, And roused the home-gone husbandmen;

A woman was playing, A man looking on; And the mould of her face,

"There is not much that I can do, For I've no money that's quite my own!" Spoke up the pitying child -

These summer landscapes clump, and copse, and croft - Woodland and meadowland here hung aloft, Gay with limp grass and leafery new and soft,

(Affixing the Lists of Killed and Wounded: December, 1899) I Last year I called this world of gain-givings

There floated the sounds of church-chiming, But no one was nigh, Till there came, as a break in the loneness,

She looked like a bird from a cloud On the clammy lawn, Moving alone, bare-browed

When night was lifting, And dawn had crept under its shade, Amid cold clouds drifting

Here by the baring bough Raking up leaves, Often I ponder how

Francois Hippolite Barthelemon, first-fiddler at Vauxhall Gardens, composed what was probably the most popular morning hymn-tune ever written. It was formerly sung, full-voiced, every Sunday in most

March 1870 March 1913 I O the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea,

I Looking forward to the spring One puts up with anything.

When I walked roseless tracks and wide, Ere dawned your date for meeting me, O why did you not cry Halloo

A time there was - as one may guess And as, indeed, earth's testimonies tell - Before the birth of consciousness,

(in Memoriam F. W. G.) Orion swung southward aslant Where the starved Egdon pine-trees had thinned,

In the black winter morning No light will be struck near my eyes While the clock in the stairway is warning

I dream that the dearest I ever knew Has died and been entombed. I am sure it's a dream that cannot be true,

We went a day's excursion to the stream, Basked by the bank, and bent to the ripple-gleam, And I did not know

Between us now and here - Two thrown together Who are not wont to wear

(Near Tooting Common) I While rain, with eve in partnership,

Around the house the flakes fly faster, And all the berries now are gone From holly and cotoneaster

Why go the east road now? . . . That way a youth went on a morrow After mirth, and he brought back sorrow

Not far from Mellstock - so tradition saith - Where barrows, bulging as they bosoms were Of Multimammia stretched supinely there,

I "O Lord, why grievest Thou? - Since Life has ceased to be

(Two who became a story) By the Runic Stone They sat, where the grass sloped down,

Here's one in whom Nature feared - faint at such vying - Eclipse while he lived, and decease at his dying.

(After passing Sirmione, April 1887.) Sirmio, thou dearest dear of strands That Neptune strokes in lake and sea,

That night your great guns, unawares, Shook all our coffins as we lay, And broke the chancel window-squares,

If there were in my kalendar No Emma, Florence, Mary, What would be my existence now -

How smartly the quarters of the hour march by That the jack-o'-clock never forgets; Ding-dong; and before I have traced a cusp's eye,

(Verses 1, 3, Key Major; Verse 2, Key Minor) Could I but will, Will to my bent,

They parted a pallid, trembling I pair, And rushing down the lane He left her lonely near me there;

"Instigator of the ruin - Whichsoever thou mayst be Of the masterful of Europe

"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

"Heu mihi, quia incolatus meus prolongatus est! Habitavi cum habitantibus Cedar; multum incola fuit aninia mea." - Ps. cxix. There have been times when I well might have passed and the ending have come -

"Percussus sum sicut foenum, et aruit cor meum." - Ps. ci Wintertime nighs;

(Southampton Docks: October, 1899) While the far farewell music thins and fails, And the broad bottoms rip the bearing brine -

(E. L G.) Beneath a knap where flown Nestlings play,

I There dwells a mighty pair - Slow, statuesque, intense -

I hear the bell-rope sawing, And the oil-less axle grind, As I sit alone here drawing

'Twere sweet to have a comrade here, Who'd vow to love this garreteer, By city people's snap and sneer

They sing their dearest songs - He, she, all of them - yea, Treble and tenor and bass,

(Southampton Docks: October, 1899) Here, where Vespasian's legions struck the sands, And Cerdic with his Saxons entered in,

You were here at his young beginning, You are not here at his aged end; Off he coaxed you from Life's mad spinning,

"O England, may God punish thee!" - Is it that Teuton genius flowers Only to breathe malignity

I Past the hills that peep Where the leaze is smiling,

I never cared for Life: Life cared for me, And hence I owed it some fidelity. It now says, "Cease; at length thou hast learnt to grind

I can see the towers In mind quite clear Not many hours'

"The house is bleak and cold Built so new for me! All the winds upon the wold

I Everybody else, then, going, And I still left where the fair was? . . .

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,

An hour before the dawn, My friend, You lit your waiting bedside-lamp,

If grief come early Joy comes late, If joy come early

A day is drawing to its fall I had not dreamed to see; The first of many to enthrall

For Life I had never cared greatly, As worth a man's while; Peradventures unsought,

These market-dames, mid-aged, with lips thin-drawn, And tissues sere, Are they the ones we loved in years agone,

Here are the tracks upon the sand Where stood last evening she and I - Pressed heart to heart and hand to hand;

At last I entered a long dark gallery, Catacomb-lined; and ranged at the side Were the bodies of men from far and wide

William Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough, Robert's kin, and John's, and Ned's, And the Squire, and Lady Susan, lie in Mellstock churchyard now!

I thought and thought of thy crass clanging town To folly, till convinced such dreams were ill, I held my heart in bond, and tethered down

Child, were I king, I'd yield my royal rule, My chariot, sceptre, vassal-service due, My crown, my porphyry-basined waters cool,

(March, 1887) O epic-famed, god-haunted Central Sea, Heave careless of the deep wrong done to thee

(A Memory Of Christiana C-) Where Blackmoor was, the road that led To Bath, she could not show,

1828-1909 Forty years back, when much had place That since has perished out of mind,

I saw him steal the light away That haunted in her eye: It went so gently none could say

I I saw a slowly-stepping train - Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar -

I towered far, and lo! I stood within The presence of the Lord Most High, Sent thither by the sons of earth, to win

I The moving sun-shapes on the spray, The sparkles where the brook was flowing,

Sweet cyder is a great thing, A great thing to me, Spinning down to Weymouth town

I enter a daisy-and-buttercup land, And thence thread a jungle of grass: Hurdles and stiles scarce visible stand

Had you wept; had you but neared me with a frail uncertain ray, Dewy as the face of the dawn, in your large and luminous eye, Then would have come back all the joys the tidings had slain that day,

If but some vengeful god would call to me From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing, Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,

"Are you awake, Comrades, this silent night? Well 'twere if all of our glossy gluey make

At last I put off love, For twice ten years The daysman of my thought,

There was a glorious time At an epoch of my prime; Mornings beryl-bespread,

In a heavy time I dogged myself Along a louring way, Till my leading self to my following self

This after-sunset is a sight for seeing, Cliff-heads of craggy cloud surrounding it. - And dwell you in that glory-show?

I should not have shown in the flesh, I ought to have gone as a ghost; It was awkward, unseemly almost,

No use hoping, or feeling vext, Tugged by a force above or under Like some fantocine, much I wonder

For A. W. B. She sought the Studios, beckoning to her side An arch-designer, for she planned to build.

"Secretum meum mihi" (FADED WOMAN'S SONG) There was a spell of leisure,

As some bland soul, to whom a debtor says "I'll now repay the amount I owe to you," In inward gladness feigns forgetfulness

'Twas a death-bed summons, and forth I went By the way of the Western Wall, so drear On that winter night, and sought a gate -

I lingered through the night to break of day, Nor once did sleep extend a wing to me, Intently busied with a vast array

(In - Church) The two were silent in a sunless church, Whose mildewed walls, uneven paving-stones,

I met her, as we had privily planned, Where passing feet beat busily: She whispered: "Father is at hand!

Upon a noon I pilgrimed through A pasture, mile by mile, Unto the place where I last saw

Upon a poet's page I wrote Of old two letters of her name; Part seemed she of the effulgent thought

(KING'S-HINTOCK, 182-.) "No - not where I shall make my own; But dig his grave just by

When I looked up at my love-birds That Sunday afternoon, There was in their tiny tune

Con the dead page as 'twere live love: press on! Cold wisdom's words will ease thy track for thee; Aye, go; cast off sweet ways, and leave me wan

That love's dull smart distressed my heart He shrewdly learnt to see, But that I was in love with a dead man

I sang that song on Sunday, To witch an idle while, I sang that song on Monday,

Dear, think not that they will forget you: If craftsmanly art should be mine I will build up a temple, and set you

I am the family face; Flesh perishes, I live on, Projecting trait and trace

[He travels southward, and looks around;] I journeyed from my native spot Across the south sea shine,

I I saw a dead man's finer part Shining within each faithful heart

I come across from Mellstock while the moon wastes weaker To behold where I lived with you for twenty years and more: I shall go in the gray, at the passing of the mail-train,

At the shiver of morning, a little before the false dawn, The moon was at the window-square, Deedily brooding in deformed decay -

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

I found her out there On a slope few see, That falls westwardly

I I have lived with shades so long, And talked to them so oft,

I knew a lady when the days Grew long, and evenings goldened; But I was not emboldened

I look in her face and say, "Sing as you used to sing About Love's blossoming";

I look into my glass, And view my wasting skin, And say, "Would God it came to pass

I looked up from my writing, And gave a start to see, As if rapt in my inditing,

I met a man when night was nigh, Who said, with shining face and eye Like Moses' after Sinai:-

I need not go Through sleet and snow To where I know

(She, alone) I rose and went to Rou'tor Town With gaiety and good heart,

I rose up as my custom is On the eve of All-Souls' day, And left my grave for an hour or so

I said and sang her excellence: They called it laud undue. (Have your way, my heart, O!)

I said to Love, "It is not now as in old days When men adored thee and thy ways

I say, "I'll seek her side Ere hindrance interposes;" But eve in midnight closes,

I sometimes think as here I sit Of things I have done, Which seemed in doing not unfit

I thought, my Heart, that you had healed Of those sore smartings of the past, And that the summers had oversealed

I travel as a phantom now, For people do not wish to see In flesh and blood so bare a bough

I was not he the man Who used to pilgrim to your gate, At whose smart step you grew elate,

I was the midmost of my world When first I frisked me free, For though within its circuit gleamed

I worked no wile to meet you, My sight was set elsewhere, I sheered about to shun you,

If it's ever spring again, Spring again, I shall go where went I when

If you had known When listening with her to the far-down moan Of the white-selvaged and empurpled sea,

She saw herself a lady With fifty frocks in wear, And rolling wheels, and rooms the best,

These people have not heard your name; No loungers in this placid place Have helped to bruit your beauty's fame.

The years have gathered grayly Since I danced upon this leaze With one who kindled gaily

I "You look like a widower," she said Through the folding-doors with a laugh from the bed,

I Here's the mould of a musical bird long passed from light, Which over the earth before man came was winging;

On a morning sick as the day of doom With the drizzling gray Of an English May,

That whisper takes the voice Of a Spirit's compassionings Close, but invisible,

See "THE WOODLANDERS" Pale beech and pine-tree blue, Set in one clay,

In the middle of the night Mother's spirit came and spoke to me, Looking weariful and white -

I I shall rot here, with those whom in their day You never knew,

Her house looked cold from the foggy lea, And the square of each window a dull black blur Where showed no stir:

"What do you see in that time-touched stone, When nothing is there But ashen blankness, although you give it

A plain tilt-bonnet on her head She took the path across the leaze. - Her spouse the vicar, gardening, said,

(M. H.) We waited for the sun To break its cloudy prison

That was once her casement, And the taper nigh, Shining from within there,

I told her when I left one day That whatsoever weight of care Might strain our love, Time's mere assault

(April, 1887) I traced the Circus whose gray stones incline Where Rome and dim Etruria interjoin,

"Man, you too, aren't you, one of these rough followers of the criminal? All hanging hereabout to gather how he's going to bear Examination in the hall." She flung disdainful glances on

"Qui deridetur ab amico suo sicut ego." - JOB. In the seventies I was bearing in my breast, Penned tight,

I lay in my bed and fiddled With a dreamland viol and bow, And the tunes flew back to my fingers

In the vaulted way, where the passage turned To the shadowy corner that none could see, You paused for our parting, - plaintively;

I Only a man harrowing clods In a slow silent walk

"Would that I'd not drawn breath here!" some one said, "To stalk upon this stage of evil deeds, Where purposelessly month by month proceeds

In vision I roamed the flashing Firmament, So fierce in blazon that the Night waxed wan, As though with an awed sense of such ostent;

What curious things we said, What curious things we did Up there in the world we walked till dead

"It never looks like summer here On Beeny by the sea." But though she saw its look as drear,

On Its Seizure By The English Under Allenby, September 1918 Did they catch as it were in a Vision at shut of the day When their cavalry smote through the ancient Esdraelon Plain,

I He sees the world as a boisterous place Where all things bear a laughing face,

When the spring comes round, and a certain day Looks out from the brume by the eastern copsetrees And says, Remember,

"The very last time I ever was here," he said, "I saw much less of the quick than I saw of the dead." - He was a man I had met with somewhere before,

Sing; how 'a would sing! How 'a would raise the tune When we rode in the waggon from harvesting

I sat. It all was past; Hope never would hail again; Fair days had ceased at a blast,

How she would have loved A party to-day! - Bright-hatted and gloved,

Pet was never mourned as you, Purrer of the spotless hue, Plumy tail, and wistful gaze

- In Gibbon's Old Garden: 11-12 P.M. June 27, 1897 (The 110th anniversary of the completion of the "Decline and Fall" at the same hour and place) A spirit seems to pass,

(1813) Scene: The Master-tradesmen's Parlour at the Old Ship Inn, Casterbridge. Evening. "Old Norbert with the flat blue cap

(Minor Key) I Let me enjoy the earth no less

Rambling I looked for an old abode Where, years back, one had lived I knew; Its site a dwelling duly showed,

Spoken by Miss ADA REHAN at the Lyceum Theatre, July 23, 1890, at a performance on behalf of Lady Jeune's Holiday Fund for City Children. Before we part to alien thoughts and aims, Permit the one brief word the occasion claims:

Show me again the time When in the Junetide's prime We flew by meads and mountains northerly! -

A Memory Of A Sister The fire advances along the log Of the tree we felled,

Lonely her fate was, Environed from sight In the house where the gate was

I It is dark in the sky, And silence is where

But don't you know it, my dear, Don't you know it, That this day of the year

I play my sweet old airs - The airs he knew When our love was true -

The train draws forth from the station-yard, And with it carries me. I rise, and stretch out, and regard

When the hamlet hailed a birth Judy used to cry: When she heard our christening mirth

'Tis May morning, All-adorning, No cloud warning

"O memory, where is now my youth, Who used to say that life was truth?" "I saw him in a crumbled cot

What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away Ere the barn-cocks say

To M. H. We passed where flag and flower Signalled a jocund throng;

I busied myself to find a sure Snug hermitage That should preserve my Love secure

I He was leaning by a face, He was looking into eyes,

No more summer for Molly and me; There is snow on the tree, And the blackbirds plump large as the rooks are, almost,

That mirror Which makes of men a transparency, Who holds that mirror

In five-score summers! All new eyes, New minds, new modes, new fools, new wise; New woes to weep, new joys to prize;

(Nocturne) I wayfared at the nadir of the sun Where populations meet, though seen of none;

I I traversed a dominion Whose spokesmen spake out strong

"Alive?" And I leapt in my wonder, Was faint of my joyance, And grasses and grove shone in garments

My spirit will not haunt the mound Above my breast, But travel, memory-possessed,

When I look forth at dawning, pool, Field, flock, and lonely tree, All seem to gaze at me

There was a stunted handpost just on the crest, Only a few feet high: She was tired, and we stopped in the twilight-time for her rest,

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,

"I have finished another year," said God, "In grey, green, white, and brown; I have strewn the leaf upon the sod,

I One mile more is Where your door is

When the wasting embers redden the chimney-breast, And Life's bare pathway looms like a desert track to me, And from hall and parlour the living have gone to their rest,

To an old air "O I won't lead a homely life As father's Jack and mother's Jill,

Often when warring for he wist not what, An enemy-soldier, passing by one weak, Has tendered water, wiped the burning cheek,

"What's the good of going to Ridgeway, Cerne, or Sydling Mill, Or to Yell'ham Hill,

I know not how it may be with others Who sit amid relics of householdry That date from the days of their mothers' mothers,

When your soft welcomings were said, This curl was waving on your head, And when we walked where breakers dinned

Whence comes Solace? - Not from seeing What is doing, suffering, being, Not from noting Life's conditions,

I could hear a gown-skirt rustling Before I could see her shape, Rustling through the heather

I idly cut a parsley stalk, And blew therein towards the moon; I had not thought what ghosts would walk

I My ardours for emprize nigh lost Since Life has bared its bones to me,

Late on Christmas Eve, in the street alone, Outside a house, on the pavement-stone, I sang to her, as we'd sung together

When a night in November Blew forth its bleared airs An infant descended

I glimpsed a woman's muslined form Sing-songing airily Against the moon; and still she sang,

Reticulations creep upon the slack stream's face When the wind skims irritably past, The current clucks smartly into each hollow place

I dreamt that people from the Land of Chimes Arrived one autumn morning with their bells, To hoist them on the towers and citadels

We kissed at the barrier; and passing through She left me, and moment by moment got Smaller and smaller, until to my view

The rain imprinted the step's wet shine With target-circles that quivered and crossed As I was leaving this porch of mine;

We never sang together Ravenscroft's terse old tune On Sundays or on weekdays,

The trees fret fitfully and twist, Shutters rattle and carpets heave, Slime is the dust of yestereve,

When I am in hell or some such place, A-groaning over my sorry case, What will those seven women say to me

(M. H. 1772-1857) She told how they used to form for the country dances - "The Triumph," "The New-rigged Ship" -

A Reminiscence Of The War We sat in the room And praised her whom

The swallows flew in the curves of an eight Above the river-gleam In the wet June's last beam:

Yea, as I sit here, crutched, and cricked, and bent, I think of Panthera, who underwent Much from insidious aches in his decline;

No; no; It must not be so: They are the ways we do not go.

I went by footpath and by stile Beyond where bustle ends, Strayed here a mile and there a mile

"Why do you sit, O pale thin man, At the end of the room By that harpsichord, built on the quaint old plan?

Nobody says: Ah, that is the place Where chanced, in the hollow of years ago, What none of the Three Towns cared to know

Snow-bound in woodland, a mournful word, Dropt now and then from the bill of a bird, Reached me on wind-wafts; and thus I heard,

What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away Ere the barn-cocks say

I When I weekly knew An ancient pew,

Clouds spout upon her Their waters amain In ruthless disdain, -

Yes; since she knows not need, Nor walks in blindness, I may without unkindness

I paused to read a letter of hers By the moon's cold shine, Eyeing it in the tenderest way,

Regret not me; Beneath the sunny tree I lie uncaring, slumbering peacefully.

I Who now remembers Almack's balls - Willis's sometime named -

Though I waste watches framing words to fetter Some spirit to mine own in clasp and kiss, Out of the night there looms a sense 'twere better

Who, then, was Cestius, And what is he to me? - Amid thick thoughts and memories multitudinous

(April, 1887) These numbered cliffs and gnarls of masonry Outskeleton Time's central city, Rome;

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,

(April, 1887) We walked where Victor Jove was shrined awhile, And passed to Livia's rich red mural show,

Why didn't you say you was promised, Rose-Ann? Why didn't you name it to me, Ere ever you tempted me hither, Rose-Ann,

"The king and the queen will stand to the child; 'Twill be handed down in song; And it's no more than their deserving,

MARY H. That "Sacred to the Memory" Is clearly carven there I own,

(August 1813) WITH THOUGHTS OF SERGEANT M- (PENSIONER), WHO DIED 185-. "Why, Sergeant, stray on the Ivel Way,

"Thou shalt be - Nothing." - OMAR KHAYYAM. "Tombless, with no remembrance." - W. SHAKESPEARE. Dead shalt thou lie; and nought

The kettle descants in a cozy drone, And the young wife looks in her husband's face, And then at her guest's, and shows in her own

"And now to God the Father," he ends, And his voice thrills up to the topmost tiles: Each listener chokes as he bows and bends,

"Sixpence a week," says the girl to her lover, "Aunt used to bring me, for she could confide In me alone, she vowed. 'Twas to cover

"Would it had been the man of our wish!" Sighs her mother. To whom with vehemence she In the wedding-dress the wife to be -

"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

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,

"You see those mothers squabbling there?" Remarks the man of the cemetery. One says in tears, ''Tis mine lies here!'

"My stick!" he says, and turns in the lane To the house just left, whence a vixen voice Comes out with the firelight through the pane,

He enters, and mute on the edge of a chair Sits a thin-faced lady, a stranger there, A type of decayed gentility;

"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,

"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

"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'll tell being past all praying for - Then promptly die . . . He was out at the war, And got some scent of the intimacy

They stand confronting, the coffin between, His wife of old, and his wife of late, And the dead man whose they both had been

"O lonely workman, standing there In a dream, why do you stare and stare At her grave, as no other grave there were?

We are always saying "Good-bye, good-bye!" In work, in playing,

Through snowy woods and shady We went to play a tune To the lonely manor-lady

Along the way He walked that day, Watching shapes that reveries limn,

Here goes a man of seventy-four, Who sees not what life means for him, And here another in years a score

They bear him to his resting-place - In slow procession sweeping by; I follow at a stranger's space;

She charged me with having said this and that To another woman long years before, In the very parlour where we sat, -

She did not turn, But passed foot-faint with averted head In her gown of green, by the bobbing fern,

There was a time in former years - While my roof-tree was his - When I should have been distressed by fears

I have come to the church and chancel, Where all's the same! - Brighter and larger in my dreams

"Did you see something within the house That made me call you before the red sunsetting? Something that all this common scene endows

I was sitting, She was knitting, And the portraits of our fore-folk hung around;

When you shall see me in the toils of Time, My lauded beauties carried off from me, My eyes no longer stars as in their prime,

Perhaps, long hence, when I have passed away, Some other's feature, accent, thought like mine, Will carry you back to what I used to say,

I will be faithful to thee; aye, I will! And Death shall choose me with a wondering eye That he did not discern and domicile

This love puts all humanity from me; I can but maledict her, pray her dead, For giving love and getting love of thee -

(The neighbourhood of Leghorn: March, 1887) Somewhere afield here something lies In Earth's oblivious eyeless trust

Close up the casement, draw the blind, Shut out that stealing moon, She wears too much the guise she wore

So there sat they, The estranged two, Thrust in one pew

Said the red-cloaked crone In a whispered moan: "The dead man was limp

Sitting on the bridge Past the barracks, town and ridge, At once the spirit seized us

Something tapped on the pane of my room When there was never a trace Of wind or rain, and I saw in the gloom

I scanned her picture dreaming, Till each dear line and hue Was imaged, to my seeming,

O sweet To-morrow! - After to-day There will away

I At last! In sight of home again, Of home again;

"It is not death that harrows us," they lipped, "The soundless cell is in itself relief, For life is an unfenced flower, benumbed and nipped

Slip back, Time! Yet again I am nearing Castle and keep, uprearing

"No smoke spreads out of this chimney-pot, The people who lived here have left the spot, And others are coming who knew them not.

When friendly summer calls again, Calls again Her little fifers to these hills,

"Cogitavi vias meas" A cry from the green-grained sticks of the fire Made me gaze where it seemed to be:

I I would that folk forgot me quite, Forgot me quite!

(Inventor of the "Perpendicular" Style of Gothic Architecture) The new-vamped Abbey shaped apace In the fourteenth century of grace;

When the walls were red That now are seen To be overspread

(1803) See "The Trumpet-Major" IN MEMORY OF ONE OF THE WRITER'S FAMILY WHO WAS A VOLUNTEER DURING THE WAR WITH NAPOLEON

They came, the brothers, and took two chairs In their usual quiet way; And for a time we did not think

I think of the slope where the rabbits fed, Of the periwinks' rockwork lair, Of the fuchsias ringing their bells of red -

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

They crush together - a rustling heap of flesh - Of more than flesh, a heap of souls; and then They part, enmesh,

O do not praise my beauty more, In such word-wild degree, And say I am one all eyes adore;

To An Unknowing God Much wonder I - here long low-laid - That this dead wall should be

So zestfully canst thou sing? And all this indignity, With God's consent, on thee!

That no man schemed it is my hope - Yea, that it fell by will and scope Of That Which some enthrone,

I When of tender mind and body I was moved by minstrelsy,

Bother Bulleys, let us sing From the dawn till evening! - For we know not that we go not

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.

Within a churchyard, on a recent grave, I saw a little cage That jailed a goldfinch. All was silence save

"Men know but little more than we, Who count us least of things terrene, How happy days are made to be!

(KHYBER PASS, 1842) A TRADITION OF J. B. L-, T. G. B-, AND J. L-. Three captains went to Indian wars,

While he was here in breath and bone, To speak to and to see, Would I had known more clearly known -

Out of the past there rises a week - Who shall read the years O! - Out of the past there rises a week

I've been thinking it through, as I play here to-night, to play never again, By the light of that lowering sun peering in at the window-pane, And over the back-street roofs, throwing shades from the boys of the chore

Why do you harbour that great cheval-glass Filling up your narrow room? You never preen or plume,

You say, O Sage, when weather-checked, "I have been favoured so With cloudless skies, I must expect

Sir Nameless, once of Athelhall, declared: "These wretched children romping in my park Trample the herbage till the soil is bared,

That morning when I trod the town The twitching chimes of long renown Played out to me

"Awake! I'm off to cities far away," I said; and rose, on peradventures bent. The chimes played "Life's a Bumper!" on that day

He often would ask us That, when he died, After playing so many

"[Greek text which cannot be reproduced]" "A woman for whom great gods might strive!" I said, and kissed her there:

Whose child is this they bring Into the aisle? - At so superb a thing

I The church flings forth a battled shade Over the moon-blanched sward;

"A spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up." And the Spirit said, "I can make the clock of the years go backward,

It is dark as a cave, Or a vault in the nave When the iron door

Fili hominis, ecce ego tollo a te desiderabile oculorum tuorom in plaga. EZECH. xxiv. 16. How I remember cleaning that strange picture! I had been deep in duty for my sick neighbour -

(Southampton Docks: October, 1899) "The quay recedes. Hurrah! Ahead we go! . . . It's true I've been accustomed now to home,

(The following lines are partly made up, partly remembered from a Wessex folk-rhyme) "What shall I bring you? Please will white do

I It bends far over Yell'ham Plain, And we, from Yell'ham Height,

How it came to an end! The meeting afar from the crowd, And the love-looks and laughters unpenned,

Yes; we'll wed, my little fay, And you shall write you mine, And in a villa chastely gray

A forward rush by the lamp in the gloom, And we clasped, and almost kissed; But she was not the woman whom

(Lines on the loss of the "Titanic") I In a solitude of the sea

I For long the cruel wish I knew That your free heart should ache for me

At Westminster, hid from the light of day, Many who once had shone as monarchs lay. Edward the Pious, and two Edwards more,

A FIDDLER'S STORY Little fogs were gathered in every hollow, But the purple hillocks enjoyed fine weather

I I thought they'd be strangers aroun' me, But she's to be there!

I The curtains now are drawn, And the spindrift strikes the glass,

I "Soul! Shall I see thy face," she said, "In one brief hour?

To Jenny came a gentle youth From inland leazes lone, His love was fresh as apple-blooth

I I pitched my day's leazings in Crimmercrock Lane, To tie up my garter and jog on again,

I leant upon a coppice gate When Frost was spectre-gray, And Winter's dregs made desolate

Here is your parents' dwelling with its curtained windows telling Of no thought of us within it or of our arrival here; Their slumbers have been normal after one day more of formal

The dead woman lay in her first night's grave, And twilight fell from the clouds' concave, And those she had asked to forgive forgave.

I They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest Uncoffined - just as found:

They hail me as one living, But don't they know That I have died of late years,

I Beside the Mead of Memories, Where Church-way mounts to Moaning Hill,

I plodded to Fairmile Hill-top, where A maiden one fain would guard From every hazard and every care

I opened my shutter at sunrise, And looked at the hill hard by, And I heartily grieved for the comrade

I Sinking down by the gate I discern the thin moon, And a blackbird tries over old airs in the pine,

I wandered to a crude coast Like a ghost; Upon the hills I saw fires -

"It was not you I came to please, Only myself," flipped she; "I like this spot of phantasies,

Rain on the windows, creaking doors, With blasts that besom the green, And I am here, and you are there,

"Whenever you dress me dolls, mammy, Why do you dress them so, And make them gallant soldiers,

I am laughing by the brook with her, Splashed in its tumbling stir; And then it is a blankness looms

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:

"I am here to time, you see; The glade is well-screened - eh? - against alarm; Fit place to vindicate by my arm

"A woman never agreed to it!" said my knowing friend to me. "That one thing she'd refuse to do for Solomon's mines in fee: No woman ever will make herself look older than she is."

Indulge no more may we In this sweet-bitter pastime: The love-light shines the last time

He saw the portrait of his enemy, offered At auction in a street he journeyed nigh, That enemy, now late dead, who in his life-time

If ever joy leave An abiding sting of sorrow, So befell it on the morrow

How was this I did not see Such a look as here was shown Ere its womanhood had blown

One without looks in to-night Through the curtain-chink From the sheet of glistening white;

I If seasons all were summers, And leaves would never fall,

The fiddler knows what's brewing To the lilt of his lyric wiles: The fiddler knows what rueing

It pleased her to step in front and sit Where the cragged slope was green, While I stood back that I might pencil it

They had long met o' Zundays her true love and she - And at junketings, maypoles, and flings; But she bode wi' a thirtover uncle, and he

The sparrow dips in his wheel-rut bath, The sun grows passionate-eyed, And boils the dew to smoke by the paddock-path;

Here alone by the logs in my chamber, Deserted, decrepit - Spent flames limning ghosts on the wainscot

Its former green is blue and thin, And its once firm legs sink in and in; Soon it will break down unaware,

We two kept house, the Past and I, The Past and I; I tended while it hovered nigh,

She sped through the door And, following in haste, And stirred to the core,

Why did you give no hint that night That quickly after the morrow's dawn, And calmly, as if indifferent quite,

(November 2, 1899) I O it was sad enough, weak enough, mad enough -

He does not think that I haunt here nightly: How shall I let him know That whither his fancy sets him wandering

Something do I see Above the fog that sheets the mead, A figure like to life indeed,

Gruffly growled the wind on Toller downland broad and bare, And lonesome was the house, and dark; and few came there. "Now don't ye rub your eyes so red; we're home and have no cares;

Here we broached the Christmas barrel, Pushed up the charred log-ends; Here we sang the Christmas carol,

"That is a quiet place - That house in the trees with the shady lawn." " - If, child, you knew what there goes on

"Can anything avail Beldame, for my hid grief? - Listen: I'll tell the tale,

(At A Cathedral Service) That from this bright believing band An outcast I should be,

I say, "She was as good as fair," When standing by her mound; "Such passing sweetness," I declare,

And are ye one of Hermitage - Of Hermitage, by Ivel Road, And do ye know, in Hermitage

Sir John was entombed, and the crypt was closed, and she, Like a soul that could meet no more the sight of the sun, Inclined her in weepings and prayings continually,

"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 longed to love a full-boughed beech And be as high as he: I stretched an arm within his reach,

(To the Editor) Yes; your up-dated modern page - All flower-fresh, as it appears -

It was a wet wan hour in spring, And Nature met King Doom beside a lane, Wherein Hodge trudged, all blithely ballading

SCENE. - A sad-coloured landscape, Waddon Vale I "O Time, whence comes the Mother's moody look amid her labours,

Words from the mirror softly pass To the curtains with a sigh: "Why should I trouble again to glass

Why should this flower delay so long To show its tremulous plumes? Now is the time of plaintive robin-song,

"I am playing my oldest tunes," declared she, "All the old tunes I know, - Those I learnt ever so long ago."

(Oct. 11, 1886) A MEMORY OF WILLIAM BARNES Silently I footed by an uphill road

The kiss had been given and taken, And gathered to many past: It never could reawaken;

"O passenger, pray list and catch Our sighs and piteous groans, Half stifled in this jumbled patch

Creak, little wood thing, creak, When I touch you with elbow or knee; That is the way you speak

Some say the spot is banned; that the pillar Cross-and-Hand Attests to a deed of hell; But of else than of bale is the mystic tale

I hear that maiden still Of Keinton Mandeville Singing, in flights that played

"Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn, We should have sat us down to wet

At a lonely cross where bye-roads met I sat upon a gate; I saw the sun decline and set,

There was merry-making When the first dart fell As a heralding, -

There it stands, though alas, what a little of her Shows in its cold white look! Not her glance, glide, or smile; not a tittle of her

I reach the marble-streeted town, Whose "Sound" outbreathes its air Of sharp sea-salts;

Nobody took any notice of her as she stood on the causey kerb, All eager to sell her honey and apples and bunches of garden herb; And if she had offered to give her wares and herself with them too that day,

I found me in a great surging space, At either end a door, And I said: "What is this giddying place,

I We are budding, Master, budding, We of your favourite tree;

"Why do you weep there, O sweet lady, Why do you weep before that brass? - (I'm a mere student sketching the mediaeval)

On Yell'Ham Hill In my loamy nook As I dig my hole

Under a daisied bank There stands a rich red ruminating cow, And hard against her flank

The grey gaunt days dividing us in twain Seemed hopeless hills my strength must faint to climb, But they are gone; and now I would detain

I I have risen again, And awhile survey

(On Egdon Heath) "What are you still, still thinking," He asked in vague surmise,

When mid-autumn's moan shook the night-time, And sedges were horny, And summer's green wonderwork faltered

Lifelong to be Seemed the fair colour of the time; That there was standing shadowed near

This, then, is the grave of my son, Whose heart she won! And nettles grow Upon his mound; and she lives just below.

He paused on the sill of a door ajar That screened a lively liquor-bar, For the name had reached him through the door

The cold moon hangs to the sky by its horn, And centres its gaze on me; The stars, like eyes in reverie,

I "We moved with pensive paces, I and he,

"More than half my life long Did they weigh me falsely, to my bitter wrong, But they all have shrunk away into the silence

When the cloud shut down on the morning shine, And darkened the sun, I said, "So ended that joy of mine

I have seen her in gowns the brightest, Of azure, green, and red, And in the simplest, whitest,

'Twas to greet the new rector I called I here, But in the arm-chair I see My old friend, for long years installed here,

"Why are you so bent down before your time, Old mason? Many have not left their prime So far behind at your age, and can still

Forty springs back, I recall, We met at this phase of the Maytime: We might have clung close through all,

I wanted to marry, but father said, "No - 'Tis weakness in women to give themselves so; If you care for your freedom you'll listen to me,

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock. "Now they are all on their knees," An elder said as we sat in a flock

L. H. Recalls Her Romance He used to pass, well-trimmed and brushed, My window every day,

It was but a little thing, Yet I knew it meant to me Ease from what had given a sting

"Si le marechal Grouchy avait ete rejoint par l'officier que Napoleon lui avait expedie la veille a dix heures du soir, toute question eut disparu. Mais cet officier n'etait point parvenu a sa destination, ainsi que le marechal n'a cesse de l'affirmer toute sa vie, et il faut l'en croire, car autrement il n'aurait eu aucune raison pour hesiter. Cet officier avait-il ete pris? avait-il passe a l'ennemi? C'est ce qu'on a toujours ignore." - THIERS: Histoire de l'Empire. "Waterloo." Good Father! . . . 'Twas an eve in middle June,

An Incident Of 1883 "Sir, will you let me give you a ride? Nox Venit, and the heath is wide."

I I bent in the deep of night Over a pedigree the chronicler gave

I Queer are the ways of a man I know: He comes and stands

The flame crept up the portrait line by line As it lay on the coals in the silence of night's profound, And over the arm's incline,

I We work here together In blast and breeze;

"O my pretty pink frock, I sha'n't be able to wear it! Why is he dying just now?

I walked in loamy Wessex lanes, afar From rail-track and from highway, and I heard In field and farmstead many an ancient word

I I look upon the map that hangs by me - Its shires and towns and rivers lined in varnished artistry -

Shall we conceal the Case, or tell it - We who believe the evidence? Here and there the watch-towers knell it

They are not those who used to feed us When we were young - they cannot be - These shapes that now bereave and bleed us?

I do not see the hills around, Nor mark the tints the copses wear; I do not note the grassy ground

An Experience Of The Mellstock Quire I We Christmas-carolled down the Vale, and up the Vale, and round the Vale,

Between the folding sea-downs, In the gloom Of a wailful wintry nightfall,

Let us off and search, and find a place Where yours and mine can be natural lives, Where no one comes who dissects and dives

We shall see her no more On the balcony, Smiling, while hurt, at the roar

While I watch the Christmas blaze Paint the room with ruddy rays, Something makes my vision glide

Since Reverend Doctors now declare That clerks and people must prepare To doubt if Adam ever were;

As I lay awake at night-time In an ancient country barrack known to ancient cannoneers, And recalled the hopes that heralded each seeming brave and bright time

I Stretching eyes west Over the sea,

'Twas just at gnat and cobweb-time, When yellow begins to show in the leaf, That your old gamut changed its chime

I determined to find out whose it was - The portrait he looked at so, and sighed; Bitterly have I rued my meanness

When up aloft I fly and fly, I see in pools

By Rome's dim relics there walks a man, Eyes bent; and he carries a basket and spade; I guess what impels him to scrape and scan;

The Roman Road runs straight and bare As the pale parting-line in hair Across the heath. And thoughtful men

"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?" -

(Circa 182-) PART I "I have a Love I love too well

"O whence do you come, Figure in the night-fog that chills me numb?" "I come to you across from my house up there,

"If ever I walk to church to wed, As other maidens use, And face the gathered eyes," she said,

(With thoughts of Leslie Stephen) (June 1897) Aloof, as if a thing of mood and whim;

I Winter is white on turf and tree, And birds are fled;

I missed one night, but the next I went; It was gusty above, and clear; She was there, with the look of one ill-content,

Here is the ancient floor, Footworn and hollowed and thin, Here was the former door

A bird bills the selfsame song, With never a fault in its flow, That we listened to here those long

When Lawyers strive to heal a breach, And Parsons practise what they preach; Then Little Boney he'll pounce down,

The dark was thick. A boy he seemed at that time Who trotted by me with uncertain air; "I'll tell my tale," he murmured, "for I fancy

I went by the Druid stone That broods in the garden white and lone, And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows

I In days when men had joy of war, A God of Battles sped each mortal jar;

Little head against my shoulder, Shy at first, then somewhat bolder, And up-eyed;

There was a singing woman Came riding across the mead At the time of the mild May weather,

When wilt thou wake, O Mother, wake and see - As one who, held in trance, has laboured long By vacant rote and prepossession strong -

(An Incident Of Froom Valley) "Thy husband poor, poor Heart! is dead Dead, out by Moreford Rise;

It was when Whirls of thick waters laved me Again and again,

I The thick lids of Night closed upon me Alone at the Bill

"I mean to build a hall anon, And shape two turrets there, And a broad newelled stair,

Down Wessex way, when spring's a-shine, The blackbird's "pret-ty de-urr!" In Wessex accents marked as mine

This statue of Liberty, busy man, Here erect in the city square, I have watched while your scrubbings, this early morning,

"I hear the piano playing Just as a ghost might play." " O, but what are you saying?

O my trade it is the rarest one, Simple shepherds all - My trade is a sight to see;

I "Poor wanderer," said the leaden sky, "I fain would lighten thee,

(Student's Love-song) Once more the cauldron of the sun Smears the bookcase with winy red,

I drew the letter out, while gleamed The sloping sun from under a roof Of cloud whose verge rose visibly.

The sun threw down a radiant spot On the face in the winding-sheet - The face it had lit when a babe's in its cot;

Ah - it's the skeleton of a lady's sunshade, Here at my feet in the hard rock's chink, Merely a naked sheaf of wires! -

I As newer comers crowd the fore, We drop behind.

I He bends his travel-tarnished feet To where she wastes in clay:

In his early days he was quite surprised When she told him she was compromised By meetings and lingerings at his whim,

"O he's suffering maybe dying and I not there to aid, And smooth his bed and whisper to him! Can I nohow go? Only the nurse's brief twelve words thus hurriedly conveyed,

Change and chancefulness in my flowering youthtime, Set me sun by sun near to one unchosen; Wrought us fellow-like, and despite divergence,

The sun said, watching my watering-pot "Some morn you'll pass away; These flowers and plants I parch up hot -

I I heard a small sad sound, And stood awhile amid the tombs around:

I I tore your letter into strips No bigger than the airy feathers

I Its roots are bristling in the air Like some mad Earth-god's spiny hair;

I have done all I could For that lady I knew! Through the heats I have shaded her, Drawn to her songsters when summer has jaded her,

"When the air was damp It made my curls hang slack As they kissed my neck and back

In the heart of night, When farers were not near, The left house said to the house on the right,

There were two youths of equal age, Wit, station, strength, and parentage; They studied at the selfsame schools,

I The dubious daylight ended, And I walked the Town alone, unminding whither bound and why,

Just at the corner of the wall We met yes, he and I - Who had not faced in camp or hall

Smoker's Club-Story I waited at home all the while they were boating together - My wife and my near neighbour's wife:

I rose at night, and visited The Cave of the Unborn: And crowding shapes surrounded me

Warm yellowy-green In the blue serene, How they skip and sway

Gilbert had sailed to India's shore, And I was all alone: My lord came in at my open door

Woman much missed, how you call 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,

I When the thorn on the down Quivers naked and cold,

Forty Augusts - aye, and several more - ago, When I paced the headlands loosed from dull employ, The waves huzza'd like a multitude below

You did not walk with me Of late to the hill-top tree By the gated ways,

There is nobody on the road But I, And no beseeming abode

Tabitha dressed for her wedding:- "Tabby, why look so sad?" " O I feel a great gloominess spreading, spreading,

I wayed by star and planet shine Towards the dear one's home At Kingsbere, there to make her mine

A very West-of-Wessex girl, As blithe as blithe could be, Was once well-known to me,

My father was the whipper-in, - Is still if I'm not misled? And now I see, where the hedge is thin,

Why does she turn in that shy soft way Whenever she stirs the fire, And kiss to the chimney-corner wall,

By Mellstock Lodge and Avenue Towards her door I went, And sunset on her window-panes

The wind blew words along the skies, And these it blew to me Through the wide dusk: "Lift up your eyes,

I travel on by barren farms, And gulls glint out like silver flecks Against a cloud that speaks of wrecks,

'Love, while you were away there came to me - From whence I cannot tell - A plaintive lady pale and passionless,

A stranger, I threaded sunken-hearted A lamp-lit crowd; And anon there passed me a soul departed,

"Why do you stand in the dripping rye, Cold-lipped, unconscious, wet to the knee, When there are firesides near?" said I.

"This is a brightsome blaze you've lit good friend, to-night!" " Aye, it has been the bleakest spring I have felt for years, And nought compares with cloven logs to keep alight:

"See, here's the workbox, little wife, That I made of polished oak." He was a joiner, of village life;

I climbed to the crest, And, fog-festooned, The sun lay west

How do you know that the pilgrim track Along the belting zodiac Swept by the sun in his seeming rounds

When he lit the candles there, And the light fell on his hand, And it trembled as he scanned

"These Gothic windows, how they wear me out With cusp and foil, and nothing straight or square, Crude colours, leaden borders roundabout,

I saw him pass as the new day dawned, Murmuring some musical phrase; Horses were drinking and floundering in the pond,

When battles were fought With a chivalrous sense of Should and Ought, In spirit men said,

I travelled to where in her lifetime She'd knelt at morning prayer, To call her up as if there;

At midnight, in the room where he lay dead Whom in his life I had never clearly read, I thought if I could peer into that citadel

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

Lalage's coming: Where is she now, O? Turning to bow, O,

Now that my page upcloses, doomed, maybe, Never to press thy cosy cushions more, Or wake thy ready Yeas as heretofore,

Joyful lady, sing! And I will lurk here listening, Though nought be done, and nought begun,

Glad old house of lichened stonework, What I owed you in my lone work, Noon and night!

I read your name when you were strange to me, Where it stood blazoned bold with many more; I passed it vacantly, and did not see

Did he who drew her in the years ago - Till now conceived creator of her grace - With telescopic sight high natures know,

Ah, child, thou art but half thy darling mother's; Hers couldst thou wholly be, My light in thee would outglow all in others;

I Breathe not, hid Heart: cease silently, And though thy birth-hour beckons thee,

You turn your back, you turn your back, And never your face to me, Alone you take your homeward track,

Sunned in the South, and here to-day; - If all organic things Be sentient, Flowers, as some men say,

O life with the sad seared face, I weary of seeing thee, And thy draggled cloak, and thy hobbling pace,

I Dear Lizbie Browne, Where are you now?

Whether to sally and see thee, girl of my dreams, Or whether to stay And see thee not! How vast the difference seems

Does he want you down there In the Nether Glooms where The hours may be a dragging load upon him,

Show thee as I thought thee When I early sought thee, Omen-scouting,

Bright baffling Soul, least capturable of themes, Thou, who display'dst a life of common-place, Leaving no intimate word or personal trace

O sweet sincerity! - Where modern methods be What scope for thine and thee?

"What have you looked at, Moon, In your time, Now long past your prime?"

"It is a foolish thing," said I, "To bear with such, and pass it by; Yet so I do, I know not why!"

Portion of this yew Is a man my grandsire knew, Bosomed here at its foot:

"Whenever I plunge my arm, like this, In a basin of water, I never miss The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day

When, soul in soul reflected, We breathed an aethered air, When we neglected

Down comes the winter rain - Spoils my hat and bow - Runs into the poll of me;

Moments the mightiest pass uncalendared, And when the Absolute In backward Time outgave the deedful word

"What do you see in Vagg Hollow, Little boy, when you go In the morning at five on your lonely drive?"

(1793) BY CORP'L TULLIDGE: see "The Trumpet-Major" IN MEMORY OF S. C. (PENSIONER). DIED 184-

These flowers are I, poor Fanny Hurd, Sir or Madam, A little girl here sepultured.

A baby watched a ford, whereto A wagtail came for drinking; A blaring bull went wading through,

(Bournemouth, 1875) We sat at the window looking out, And the rain came down like silken strings

I This is the weather the cuckoo likes, And so do I;

To my native place Bent upon returning, Bosom all day burning

There are some heights in Wessex, shaped as if by a kindly hand For thinking, dreaming, dying on, and at crises when I stand, Say, on Ingpen Beacon eastward, or on Wylls-Neck westwardly,

What did it mean that noontide, when You bade me pluck the flower Within the other woman's bower,

When I set out for Lyonnesse, A hundred miles away, The rime was on the spray,

Where we made the fire, In the summer time, Of branch and briar

Dishevelled leaves creep down Upon that bank to-day, Some green, some yellow, and some pale brown;

Where three roads joined it was green and fair, And over a gate was the sun-glazed sea, And life laughed sweet when I halted there;

"It is sad that so many of worth, Still in the flesh," soughed the yew, "Misjudge their lot whom kindly earth

"Who's in the next room? - who? I seemed to see Somebody in the dawning passing through,

Why be at pains that I should know You sought not me? Do breezes, then, make features glow

Why did I sketch an upland green, And put the figure in Of one on the spot with me? -

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;

It was your way, my dear, To be gone without a word When callers, friends, or kin

It was what you bore with you, Woman, Not inly were, That throned you from all else human,

I Never a careworn wife but shows, If a joy suffuse her,

Coomb-Firtrees say that Life is a moan, And Clyffe-hill Clump says "Yea!" But Yell'ham says a thing of its own:

I "You on the tower of my factory - What do you see up there?

You were the sort that men forget; Though I - not yet! - Perhaps not ever. Your slighted weakness

Here by the moorway you returned, And saw the borough lights ahead That lit your face all undiscerned

To The Matterhorn (June-July, 1897) Thirty-two years since, up against the sun,

Long have I framed weak phantasies of Thee, O Willer masked and dumb! Who makest Life become, -