Poems of the Past and the Present

Thomas Hardy

Poems of the Past and the Present

V.R. 1819–1901

A REVERIE

Moments the mightiest pass uncalendared,      And when the Absolute   In backward Time outgave the deedful word      Whereby all life is stirred:“Let one be born and throned whose mould shall constituteThe norm of every royal-reckoned attribute,”      No mortal knew or heard.   But in due days the purposed Life outshone —      Serene, sagacious, free;   – Her waxing seasons bloomed with deeds well done,      And the world’s heart was won.Yet may the deed of hers most bright in eyes to beLie hid from ours – as in the All-One’s thought lay she —      Till ripening years have run.Sunday Night,27th January 1901.

WAR POEMS

EMBARCATION

(Southampton Docks: October, 1899)

Here, where Vespasian’s legions struck the sands,And Cerdic with his Saxons entered in,And Henry’s army leapt afloat to winConvincing triumphs over neighbour lands,Vaster battalions press for further strands,To argue in the self-same bloody modeWhich this late age of thought, and pact, and code,Still fails to mend. – Now deckward tramp the bands,Yellow as autumn leaves, alive as spring;And as each host draws out upon the seaBeyond which lies the tragical To-be,None dubious of the cause, none murmuring,Wives, sisters, parents, wave white hands and smile,As if they knew not that they weep the while.

DEPARTURE

(Southampton Docks: October, 1899)

While the far farewell music thins and fails,And the broad bottoms rip the bearing brine —All smalling slowly to the gray sea line —And each significant red smoke-shaft pales,Keen sense of severance everywhere prevails,Which shapes the late long tramp of mounting menTo seeming words that ask and ask again:“How long, O striving Teutons, Slavs, and GaelsMust your wroth reasonings trade on lives like these,That are as puppets in a playing hand? —When shall the saner softer politiesWhereof we dream, have play in each proud land,And patriotism, grown Godlike, scorn to standBondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas?”

THE COLONEL’S SOLILOQUY

(Southampton Docks: October, 1899)

“The quay recedes.   Hurrah!  Ahead we go!.It’s true I’ve been accustomed now to home,And joints get rusty, and one’s limbs may grow   More fit to rest than roam.“But I can stand as yet fair stress and strain;There’s not a little steel beneath the rust;My years mount somewhat, but here’s to’t again!   And if I fall, I must.“God knows that for myself I’ve scanty care;Past scrimmages have proved as much to all;In Eastern lands and South I’ve had my share   Both of the blade and ball.“And where those villains ripped me in the flitchWith their old iron in my early time,I’m apt at change of wind to feel a twitch,   Or at a change of clime.“And what my mirror shows me in the morningHas more of blotch and wrinkle than of bloom;My eyes, too, heretofore all glasses scorning,   Have just a touch of rheum.“Now sounds ‘The Girl I’ve left behind me,’ – Ah,The years, the ardours, wakened by that tune!Time was when, with the crowd’s farewell ‘Hurrah!’   ’Twould lift me to the moon.“But now it’s late to leave behind me oneWho if, poor soul, her man goes underground,Will not recover as she might have done   In days when hopes abound.“She’s waving from the wharfside, palely grieving,As down we draw.. Her tears make little show,Yet now she suffers more than at my leaving   Some twenty years ago.“I pray those left at home will care for her!I shall come back; I have before; though whenThe Girl you leave behind you is a grandmother,   Things may not be as then.”

THE GOING OF THE BATTERY

WIVES’ LAMENT

(November 2, 1899)IO it was sad enough, weak enough, mad enough —Light in their loving as soldiers can be —First to risk choosing them, leave alone losing themNow, in far battle, beyond the South Sea!.II– Rain came down drenchingly; but we unblenchinglyTrudged on beside them through mirk and through mire,They stepping steadily – only too readily! —Scarce as if stepping brought parting-time nigher.IIIGreat guns were gleaming there, living things seeming there,Cloaked in their tar-cloths, upmouthed to the night;Wheels wet and yellow from axle to felloe,Throats blank of sound, but prophetic to sight.IVGas-glimmers drearily, blearily, eerilyLit our pale faces outstretched for one kiss,While we stood prest to them, with a last quest to themNot to court perils that honour could miss.VSharp were those sighs of ours, blinded these eyes of ours,When at last moved away under the archAll we loved.   Aid for them each woman prayed for them,Treading back slowly the track of their march.VISomeone said: “Nevermore will they come: evermoreAre they now lost to us.”  O it was wrong!Though may be hard their ways, some Hand will guard their ways,Bear them through safely, in brief time or long.VII– Yet, voices haunting us, daunting us, taunting us,Hint in the night-time when life beats are lowOther and graver things.. Hold we to braver things,Wait we, in trust, what Time’s fulness shall show.

AT THE WAR OFFICE, LONDON

(Affixing the Lists of Killed and Wounded: December, 1899)

ILast year I called this world of gain-givingsThe darkest thinkable, and questioned sadlyIf my own land could heave its pulse less gladly,So charged it seemed with circumstance whence springs   The tragedy of things.IIYet at that censured time no heart was rentOr feature blanched of parent, wife, or daughterBy hourly blazoned sheets of listed slaughter;Death waited Nature’s wont; Peace smiled unshent   From Ind to Occident.

A CHRISTMAS GHOST-STORY

South of the Line, inland from far Durban,A mouldering soldier lies – your countryman.Awry and doubled up are his gray bones,And on the breeze his puzzled phantom moansNightly to clear Canopus: “I would knowBy whom and when the All-Earth-gladdening LawOf Peace, brought in by that Man Crucified,Was ruled to be inept, and set aside?And what of logic or of truth appearsIn tacking ‘Anno Domini’ to the years?Near twenty-hundred livened thus have hied,But tarries yet the Cause for which He died.” Christmas-eve, 1899.

THE DEAD DRUMMER

IThey 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.IIYoung 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.IIIYet portion of that unknown plain   Will Hodge for ever be;His homely Northern breast and brain   Grow up a Southern tree.And strange-eyed constellations reign   His stars eternally.

A WIFE IN LONDON

(December, 1899)

ITHE TRAGEDYShe sits in the tawny vapour      That the City lanes have uprolled,      Behind whose webby fold on foldLike 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 understandThough shaped so shortly:   He – has fallen – in the far South Land.IITHE IRONY’Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker,      The postman nears and goes:      A letter is brought whose lines discloseBy 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 burnIn the summer weather,   And of new love that they would learn.

THE SOULS OF THE SLAIN

I   The thick lids of Night closed upon me      Alone at the Bill      Of the Isle by the Race 1—   Many-caverned, bald, wrinkled of face —And with darkness and silence the spirit was on me      To brood and be still.II   No wind fanned the flats of the ocean,      Or promontory sides,      Or the ooze by the strand,   Or the bent-bearded slope of the land,Whose base took its rest amid everlong motion      Of criss-crossing tides.III   Soon from out of the Southward seemed nearing      A whirr, as of wings      Waved by mighty-vanned flies,   Or by night-moths of measureless size,And in softness and smoothness well-nigh beyond hearing      Of corporal things.IV   And they bore to the bluff, and alighted —      A dim-discerned train      Of sprites without mould,   Frameless souls none might touch or might hold —On the ledge by the turreted lantern, farsighted      By men of the main.V   And I heard them say “Home!” and I knew them      For souls of the felled      On the earth’s nether bord   Under Capricorn, whither they’d warred,And I neared in my awe, and gave heedfulness to them      With breathings inheld.VI   Then, it seemed, there approached from the northward      A senior soul-flame      Of the like filmy hue:   And he met them and spake: “Is it you,O my men?”  Said they, “Aye!  We bear homeward and hearthward      To list to our fame!”VII   “I’ve flown there before you,” he said then:      “Your households are well;      But – your kin linger less   On your glory arid war-mightinessThan on dearer things.” – “Dearer?” cried these from the dead then,      “Of what do they tell?”VIII   “Some mothers muse sadly, and murmur      Your doings as boys —      Recall the quaint ways   Of your babyhood’s innocent days.Some pray that, ere dying, your faith had grown firmer,      And higher your joys.IX   “A father broods: ‘Would I had set him      To some humble trade,      And so slacked his high fire,   And his passionate martial desire;Had told him no stories to woo him and whet him      To this due crusade!”X   “And, General, how hold out our sweethearts,      Sworn loyal as doves?”      – “Many mourn; many think   It is not unattractive to prinkThem in sables for heroes.   Some fickle and fleet hearts      Have found them new loves.”XI   “And our wives?” quoth another resignedly,      “Dwell they on our deeds?”      – “Deeds of home; that live yet   Fresh as new – deeds of fondness or fret;Ancient words that were kindly expressed or unkindly,      These, these have their heeds.”XII   – “Alas! then it seems that our glory      Weighs less in their thought      Than our old homely acts,   And the long-ago commonplace factsOf our lives – held by us as scarce part of our story,      And rated as nought!”XIII   Then bitterly some: “Was it wise now      To raise the tomb-door      For such knowledge?  Away!”   But the rest: “Fame we prized till to-day;Yet that hearts keep us green for old kindness we prize now      A thousand times more!”XIV   Thus speaking, the trooped apparitions      Began to disband      And resolve them in two:   Those whose record was lovely and trueBore to northward for home: those of bitter traditions      Again left the land,XV   And, towering to seaward in legions,      They paused at a spot      Overbending the Race —   That engulphing, ghast, sinister place —Whither headlong they plunged, to the fathomless regions      Of myriads forgot.XVI   And the spirits of those who were homing      Passed on, rushingly,      Like the Pentecost Wind;   And the whirr of their wayfaring thinnedAnd surceased on the sky, and but left in the gloaming      Sea-mutterings and me. December 1899.

SONG OF THE SOLDIERS’ WIVES

IAt last!  In sight of home again,      Of home again;No more to range and roam again   As at that bygone time?No more to go away from us      And stay from us? —Dawn, hold not long the day from us,   But quicken it to prime!IINow all the town shall ring to them,      Shall ring to them,And we who love them cling to them   And clasp them joyfully;And cry, “O much we’ll do for you      Anew for you,Dear Loves! – aye, draw and hew for you,   Come back from oversea.”IIISome told us we should meet no more,      Should meet no more;Should wait, and wish, but greet no more   Your faces round our fires;That, in a while, uncharily      And drearilyMen gave their lives – even wearily,   Like those whom living tires.IVAnd now you are nearing home again,      Dears, home again;No more, may be, to roam again   As at that bygone time,Which took you far away from us      To stay from us;Dawn, hold not long the day from us,   But quicken it to prime!

THE SICK GOD

I   In days when men had joy of war,A God of Battles sped each mortal jar;   The peoples pledged him heart and hand,   From Israel’s land to isles afar.II   His crimson form, with clang and chime,Flashed on each murk and murderous meeting-time,   And kings invoked, for rape and raid,   His fearsome aid in rune and rhyme.III   On bruise and blood-hole, scar and seam,On blade and bolt, he flung his fulgid beam:   His haloes rayed the very gore,   And corpses wore his glory-gleam.IV   Often an early King or Queen,And storied hero onward, knew his sheen;   ’Twas glimpsed by Wolfe, by Ney anon,   And Nelson on his blue demesne.V   But new light spread.  That god’s gold nimbAnd blazon have waned dimmer and more dim;   Even his flushed form begins to fade,   Till but a shade is left of him.VI   That modern meditation brokeHis spell, that penmen’s pleadings dealt a stroke,   Say some; and some that crimes too dire   Did much to mire his crimson cloak.VII   Yea, seeds of crescive sympathyWere sown by those more excellent than he,   Long known, though long contemned till then —   The gods of men in amity.VIII   Souls have grown seers, and thought out-bringsThe mournful many-sidedness of things   With foes as friends, enfeebling ires   And fury-fires by gaingivings!IX   He scarce impassions champions now;They do and dare, but tensely – pale of brow;   And would they fain uplift the arm   Of that faint form they know not how.X   Yet wars arise, though zest grows cold;Wherefore, at whiles, as ’twere in ancient mould   He looms, bepatched with paint and lath;   But never hath he seemed the old!XI   Let men rejoice, let men deplore.The lurid Deity of heretofore   Succumbs to one of saner nod;   The Battle-god is god no more.

POEMS OF PILGRIMAGE

GENOA AND THE MEDITERRANEAN

(March, 1887)

   O epic-famed, god-haunted Central Sea,   Heave careless of the deep wrong done to theeWhen from Torino’s track I saw thy face first flash on me.   And multimarbled Genova the Proud,   Gleam all unconscious how, wide-lipped, up-browed,I first beheld thee clad – not as the Beauty but the Dowd.   Out from a deep-delved way my vision lit   On housebacks pink, green, ochreous – where a slitShoreward ’twixt row and row revealed the classic blue through it.   And thereacross waved fishwives’ high-hung smocks,   Chrome kerchiefs, scarlet hose, darned underfrocks;Since when too oft my dreams of thee, O Queen, that frippery mocks:   Whereat I grieve, Superba!.. Afterhours   Within Palazzo Doria’s orange bowersWent far to mend these marrings of thy soul-subliming powers.   But, Queen, such squalid undress none should see,   Those dream-endangering eyewounds no more beWhere lovers first behold thy form in pilgrimage to thee.

SHELLEY’S SKYLARK

(The neighbourhood of Leghorn: March, 1887)

Somewhere afield here something liesIn Earth’s oblivious eyeless trustThat moved a poet to prophecies —A pinch of unseen, unguarded dustThe dust of the lark that Shelley heard,And made immortal through times to be; —Though it only lived like another bird,And knew not its immortality.Lived its meek life; then, one day, fell —A little ball of feather and bone;And how it perished, when piped farewell,And where it wastes, are alike unknown.Maybe it rests in the loam I view,Maybe it throbs in a myrtle’s green,Maybe it sleeps in the coming hueOf a grape on the slopes of yon inland scene.Go find it, faeries, go and findThat tiny pinch of priceless dust,And bring a casket silver-lined,And framed of gold that gems encrust;And we will lay it safe therein,And consecrate it to endless time;For it inspired a bard to winEcstatic heights in thought and rhyme.

IN THE OLD THEATRE, FIESOLE

(April, 1887)

I traced the Circus whose gray stones inclineWhere Rome and dim Etruria interjoin,Till came a child who showed an ancient coinThat bore the image of a Constantine.She lightly passed; nor did she once opineHow, better than all books, she had raised for meIn swift perspective Europe’s historyThrough the vast years of Cæsar’s sceptred line.For in my distant plot of English loam’Twas but to delve, and straightway there to findCoins of like impress.  As with one half blindWhom common simples cure, her act flashed homeIn that mute moment to my opened mindThe power, the pride, the reach of perished Rome.

ROME: ON THE PALATINE

(April, 1887)

We walked where Victor Jove was shrined awhile,And passed to Livia’s rich red mural show,Whence, thridding cave and Criptoportico,We gained Caligula’s dissolving pile.And each ranked ruin tended to beguileThe outer sense, and shape itself as thoughIt wore its marble hues, its pristine glowOf scenic frieze and pompous peristyle.When lo, swift hands, on strings nigh over-head,Began to melodize a waltz by Strauss:It stirred me as I stood, in Cæsar’s house,Raised the old routs Imperial lyres had led,And blended pulsing life with lives long done,Till Time seemed fiction, Past and Present one.

ROME

BUILDING A NEW STREET IN THE ANCIENT QUARTER

(April, 1887)These numbered cliffs and gnarls of masonryOutskeleton Time’s central city, Rome;Whereof each arch, entablature, and domeLies bare in all its gaunt anatomy.And cracking frieze and rotten metopeExpress, as though they were an open tomeTop-lined with caustic monitory gnome;“Dunces, Learn here to spell Humanity!”And yet within these ruins’ very shadeThe singing workmen shape and set and joinTheir frail new mansion’s stuccoed cove and quoinWith no apparent sense that years abrade,Though each rent wall their feeble works invadeOnce shamed all such in power of pier and groin.

ROME

THE VATICAN – SALA DELLE MUSE

(1887)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,Till beside a Carrara column there gleamed forth One.She was nor this nor that of those beings divine,But each and the whole – an essence of all the Nine;With tentative foot she neared to my halting-place,A pensive smile on her sweet, small, marvellous face.“Regarded so long, we render thee sad?” said she.“Not you,” sighed I, “but my own inconstancy!I worship each and each; in the morning one,And then, alas! another at sink of sun.“To-day my soul clasps Form; but where is my trothOf yesternight with Tune: can one cleave to both?”– “Be not perturbed,” said she.  “Though apart in fame,As I and my sisters are one, those, too, are the same.– “But my loves go further – to Story, and Dance, and Hymn,The lover of all in a sun-sweep is fool to whim —Is swayed like a river-weed as the ripples run!”– “Nay, wight, thou sway’st not.  These are but phases of one;“And that one is I; and I am projected from thee,One that out of thy brain and heart thou causest to be —Extern to thee nothing.  Grieve not, nor thyself becall,Woo where thou wilt; and rejoice thou canst love at all!”

ROME

AT THE PYRAMID OF CESTIUS

NEAR THE GRAVES OF SHELLEY AND KEATS

(1887)

      Who, then, was Cestius,      And what is he to me? —Amid thick thoughts and memories multitudinous      One thought alone brings he.      I can recall no word      Of anything he did;For me he is a man who died and was interred      To leave a pyramid      Whose purpose was exprest      Not with its first design,Nor till, far down in Time, beside it found their rest      Two countrymen of mine.      Cestius in life, maybe,      Slew, breathed out threatening;I know not.  This I know: in death all silently      He does a kindlier thing,      In beckoning pilgrim feet      With marble finger highTo where, by shadowy wall and history-haunted street,      Those matchless singers lie.      – Say, then, he lived and died      That stones which bear his nameShould mark, through Time, where two immortal Shades abide;      It is an ample fame.

LAUSANNE

IN GIBBON’S OLD GARDEN: 11–12 P.M

June27, 1897

(The 110th anniversary of the completion of the “Decline and Fall” at the same hour and place)

      A spirit seems to pass,   Formal in pose, but grave and grand withal:   He contemplates a volume stout and tall,And far lamps fleck him through the thin acacias.      Anon the book is closed,   With “It is finished!”  And at the alley’s end   He turns, and soon on me his glances bend;And, as from earth, comes speech – small, muted, yet composed.      “How fares the Truth now? – Ill?   – Do pens but slily further her advance?   May one not speed her but in phrase askance?Do scribes aver the Comic to be Reverend still?      “Still rule those minds on earth   At whom sage Milton’s wormwood words were hurled:   ‘Truth like a bastard comes into the worldNever without ill-fame to him who gives her birth’?”

ZERMATT

TO THE MATTERHORN

(June-July, 1897)Thirty-two years since, up against the sun,Seven shapes, thin atomies to lower sight,Labouringly leapt and gained thy gabled height,And four lives paid for what the seven had won.They were the first by whom the deed was done,And when I look at thee, my mind takes flightTo that day’s tragic feat of manly might,As though, till then, of history thou hadst none.Yet ages ere men topped thee, late and soonThou watch’dst each night the planets lift and lower;Thou gleam’dst to Joshua’s pausing sun and moon,And brav’dst the tokening sky when Cæsar’s powerApproached its bloody end: yea, saw’st that NoonWhen darkness filled the earth till the ninth hour.

THE BRIDGE OF LODI 2

(Spring, 1887)

IWhen of tender mind and body   I was moved by minstrelsy,And that strain “The Bridge of Lodi”   Brought a strange delight to me.IIIn the battle-breathing jingle   Of its forward-footing tuneI could see the armies mingle,   And the columns cleft and hewnIIIOn that far-famed spot by Lodi   Where Napoleon clove his wayTo his fame, when like a god he   Bent the nations to his sway.IVHence the tune came capering to me   While I traced the Rhone and Po;Nor could Milan’s Marvel woo me   From the spot englamoured so.VAnd to-day, sunlit and smiling,   Here I stand upon the scene,With its saffron walls, dun tiling,   And its meads of maiden green,VIEven as when the trackway thundered   With the charge of grenadiers,And the blood of forty hundred   Splashed its parapets and piers.VIIAny ancient crone I’d toady   Like a lass in young-eyed prime,Could she tell some tale of Lodi   At that moving mighty time.VIIISo, I ask the wives of Lodi   For traditions of that day;But alas! not anybody   Seems to know of such a fray.IXAnd they heed but transitory   Marketings in cheese and meat,Till I judge that Lodi’s story   Is extinct in Lodi’s street.XYet while here and there they thrid them   In their zest to sell and buy,Let me sit me down amid them   And behold those thousands die.XI– Not a creature cares in Lodi   How Napoleon swept each arch,Or where up and downward trod he,   Or for his memorial March!XIISo that wherefore should I be here,   Watching Adda lip the lea,When the whole romance to see here   Is the dream I bring with me?XIIIAnd why sing “The Bridge of Lodi”   As I sit thereon and swing,When none shows by smile or nod he   Guesses why or what I sing?.XIVSince all Lodi, low and head ones,   Seem to pass that story by,It may be the Lodi-bred ones   Rate it truly, and not I.XVOnce engrossing Bridge of Lodi,   Is thy claim to glory gone?Must I pipe a palinody,   Or be silent thereupon?XVIAnd if here, from strand to steeple,   Be no stone to fame the fight,Must I say the Lodi people   Are but viewing crime aright?XVIINay; I’ll sing “The Bridge of Lodi” —   That long-loved, romantic thing,Though none show by smile or nod he   Guesses why and what I sing!

ON AN INVITATION TO THE UNITED STATES

IMy ardours for emprize nigh lostSince Life has bared its bones to me,I shrink to seek a modern coastWhose riper times have yet to be;Where the new regions claim them freeFrom that long drip of human tearsWhich peoples old in tragedyHave left upon the centuried years.IIFor, wonning in these ancient lands,Enchased and lettered as a tomb,And scored with prints of perished hands,And chronicled with dates of doom,Though my own Being bear no bloomI trace the lives such scenes enshrine,Give past exemplars present room,And their experience count as mine.