Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses

Thomas Hardy

Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses

MOMENTS OF VISION

      That mirror   Which makes of men a transparency,      Who holds that mirrorAnd bids us such a breast-bare spectacle see      Of you and me?      That mirror   Whose magic penetrates like a dart,      Who lifts that mirrorAnd throws our mind back on us, and our heart,      Until we start?      That mirror   Works well in these night hours of ache;      Why in that mirrorAre tincts we never see ourselves once take      When the world is awake?      That mirror   Can test each mortal when unaware;      Yea, that strange mirrorMay catch his last thoughts, whole life foul or fair,      Glassing it – where?

THE VOICE OF THINGS

Forty Augusts – aye, and several more – ago,   When I paced the headlands loosed from dull employ,The waves huzza’d like a multitude below   In the sway of an all-including joy      Without cloy.Blankly I walked there a double decade after,   When thwarts had flung their toils in front of me,And I heard the waters wagging in a long ironic laughter   At the lot of men, and all the vapoury      Things that be.Wheeling change has set me again standing where   Once I heard the waves huzza at Lammas-tide;But they supplicate now – like a congregation there   Who murmur the Confession – I outside,      Prayer denied.

“WHY BE AT PAINS?”

(Wooer’s Song)

Why be at pains that I should know   You sought not me?Do breezes, then, make features glow   So rosily?Come, the lit port is at our back,   And the tumbling sea;Elsewhere the lampless uphill track   To uncertainty!O should not we two waifs join hands?   I am alone,You would enrich me more than lands   By being my own.Yet, though this facile moment flies,   Close is your tone,And ere to-morrow’s dewfall dries   I plough the unknown.

“WE SAT AT THE WINDOW”

(Bournemouth, 1875)

We sat at the window looking out,And the rain came down like silken stringsThat Swithin’s day.  Each gutter and spoutBabbled unchecked in the busy way   Of witless things:Nothing to read, nothing to seeSeemed in that room for her and me   On Swithin’s day.We were irked by the scene, by our own selves; yes,For I did not know, nor did she inferHow much there was to read and guessBy her in me, and to see and crown   By me in her.Wasted were two souls in their prime,And great was the waste, that July time   When the rain came down.

AFTERNOON SERVICE AT MELLSTOCK

(Circa 1850)

   On afternoons of drowsy calm      We stood in the panelled pew,Singing one-voiced a Tate-and-Brady psalm      To the tune of “Cambridge New.”   We watched the elms, we watched the rooks,      The clouds upon the breeze,Between the whiles of glancing at our books,      And swaying like the trees.   So mindless were those outpourings! —      Though I am not awareThat I have gained by subtle thought on things      Since we stood psalming there.

AT THE WICKET-GATE

There floated the sounds of church-chiming,   But no one was nigh,Till there came, as a break in the loneness,   Her father, she, I.And we slowly moved on to the wicket,   And downlooking stood,Till anon people passed, and amid them   We parted for good.Greater, wiser, may part there than we three   Who parted there then,But never will Fates colder-featured   Hold sway there again.Of the churchgoers through the still meadows   No single one knewWhat a play was played under their eyes there   As thence we withdrew.

IN A MUSEUM

IHere’s the mould of a musical bird long passed from light,Which over the earth before man came was winging;There’s a contralto voice I heard last night,That lodges in me still with its sweet singing.IISuch a dream is Time that the coo of this ancient birdHas perished not, but is blent, or will be blendingMid visionless wilds of space with the voice that I heard,In the full-fugued song of the universe unending.

Exeter.

APOSTROPHE TO AN OLD PSALM TUNE

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,   While dimming day grew dimmer      In the pulpit-glimmer.Much riper in years I met you – in a templeWhere summer sunset streamed upon our shapes,And you spread over me like a gauze that drapes,   And flapped from floor to rafters,      Sweet as angels’ laughters.But you had been stripped of some of your old vestureBy Monk, or another.  Now you wore no frill,And at first you startled me.  But I knew you still,   Though I missed the minim’s waver,      And the dotted quaver.I grew accustomed to you thus.  And you hailed meThrough one who evoked you often.  Then at lastYour raiser was borne off, and I mourned you had passed   From my life with your late outsetter;      Till I said, “’Tis better!”But you waylaid me.  I rose and went as a ghost goes,And said, eyes-full “I’ll never hear it again!It is overmuch for scathed and memoried men   When sitting among strange people      Under their steeple.”Now, a new stirrer of tones calls you up before meAnd wakes your speech, as she of Endor did(When sought by Saul who, in disguises hid,   Fell down on the earth to hear it)      Samuel’s spirit.So, your quired oracles beat till they make me trembleAs I discern your mien in the old attire,Here in these turmoiled years of belligerent fire   Living still on – and onward, maybe,      Till Doom’s great day be!

Sunday, August 13, 1916.

AT THE WORD “FAREWELL”

She looked like a bird from a cloud   On the clammy lawn,Moving alone, bare-browed   In the dim of dawn.The candles alight in the room   For my parting mealMade all things withoutdoors loom   Strange, ghostly, unreal.The hour itself was a ghost,   And it seemed to me thenAs of chances the chance furthermost   I should see her again.I beheld not where all was so fleet   That a Plan of the pastWhich had ruled us from birthtime to meet   Was in working at last:No prelude did I there perceive   To a drama at all,Or foreshadow what fortune might weave   From beginnings so small;But I rose as if quicked by a spur   I was bound to obey,And stepped through the casement to her   Still alone in the gray.“I am leaving you.. Farewell!” I said,   As I followed her onBy an alley bare boughs overspread;   “I soon must be gone!”Even then the scale might have been turned   Against love by a feather,– But crimson one cheek of hers burned   When we came in together.

FIRST SIGHT OF HER AND AFTER

A day is drawing to its fall   I had not dreamed to see;The first of many to enthrall   My spirit, will it be?Or is this eve the end of all   Such new delight for me?I journey home: the pattern grows   Of moonshades on the way:“Soon the first quarter, I suppose,”   Sky-glancing travellers say;I realize that it, for those,   Has been a common day.

THE RIVAL

   I determined to find out whose it was —   The portrait he looked at so, and sighed;Bitterly have I rued my meanness      And wept for it since he died!   I searched his desk when he was away,   And there was the likeness – yes, my own!Taken when I was the season’s fairest,      And time-lines all unknown.   I smiled at my image, and put it back,   And he went on cherishing it, untilI was chafed that he loved not the me then living,      But that past woman still.   Well, such was my jealousy at last,   I destroyed that face of the former me;Could you ever have dreamed the heart of woman      Would work so foolishly!

HEREDITY

I am the family face;Flesh perishes, I live on,Projecting trait and traceThrough time to times anon,And leaping from place to placeOver oblivion.The years-heired feature that canIn curve and voice and eyeDespise the human spanOf durance – that is I;The eternal thing in man,That heeds no call to die.

“YOU WERE THE SORT THAT MEN FORGET”

   You were the sort that men forget;      Though I – not yet! —Perhaps not ever.  Your slighted weakness   Adds to the strength of my regret!   You’d not the art – you never had      For good or bad —To make men see how sweet your meaning,   Which, visible, had charmed them glad.   You would, by words inept let fall,      Offend them all,Even if they saw your warm devotion   Would hold your life’s blood at their call.   You lacked the eye to understand      Those friends offhandWhose mode was crude, though whose dim purport   Outpriced the courtesies of the bland.   I am now the only being who      Remembers youIt may be.  What a waste that Nature   Grudged soul so dear the art its due!

SHE, I, AND THEY

      I was sitting,      She was knitting,And the portraits of our fore-folk hung around;   When there struck on us a sigh;   “Ah – what is that?” said I:“Was it not you?” said she.  “A sigh did sound.”      I had not breathed it,      Nor the night-wind heaved it,And how it came to us we could not guess;   And we looked up at each face   Framed and glazed there in its place,Still hearkening; but thenceforth was silentness.      Half in dreaming,      “Then its meaning,”Said we, “must be surely this; that they repine   That we should be the last   Of stocks once unsurpassed,And unable to keep up their sturdy line.”

1916.

NEAR LANIVET, 1872

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,   At the crossways close thereby.She leant back, being so weary, against its stem,   And laid her arms on its own,Each open palm stretched out to each end of them,   Her sad face sideways thrown.Her white-clothed form at this dim-lit cease of day   Made her look as one crucifiedIn my gaze at her from the midst of the dusty way,   And hurriedly “Don’t,” I cried.I do not think she heard.  Loosing thence she said,   As she stepped forth ready to go,“I am rested now. – Something strange came into my head;   I wish I had not leant so!”And wordless we moved onward down from the hill   In the west cloud’s murked obscure,And looking back we could see the handpost still   In the solitude of the moor.“It struck her too,” I thought, for as if afraid   She heavily breathed as we trailed;Till she said, “I did not think how ’twould look in the shade,   When I leant there like one nailed.”I, lightly: “There’s nothing in it.  For you, anyhow!”   – “O I know there is not,” said she.“Yet I wonder.. If no one is bodily crucified now,   In spirit one may be!”And we dragged on and on, while we seemed to see   In the running of Time’s far glassHer crucified, as she had wondered if she might be   Some day. – Alas, alas!

JOYS OF MEMORY

   When the spring comes round, and a certain dayLooks out from the brume by the eastern copsetrees         And says, Remember,      I begin again, as if it were new,      A day of like date I once lived through,      Whiling it hour by hour away;         So shall I do till my December,            When spring comes round.   I take my holiday then and my restAway from the dun life here about me,         Old hours re-greeting      With the quiet sense that bring they must      Such throbs as at first, till I house with dust,      And in the numbness my heartsome zest         For things that were, be past repeating            When spring comes round.

TO THE MOON

   “What have you looked at, Moon,      In your time,   Now long past your prime?”“O, I have looked at, often looked at      Sweet, sublime,Sore things, shudderful, night and noon      In my time.”   “What have you mused on, Moon,      In your day,   So aloof, so far away?”“O, I have mused on, often mused on      Growth, decay,Nations alive, dead, mad, aswoon,      In my day!”   “Have you much wondered, Moon,      On your rounds,   Self-wrapt, beyond Earth’s bounds?”“Yea, I have wondered, often wondered      At the soundsReaching me of the human tune      On my rounds.”   “What do you think of it, Moon,      As you go?   Is Life much, or no?”“O, I think of it, often think of it      As a showGod ought surely to shut up soon,      As I go.”

COPYING ARCHITECTURE IN AN OLD MINSTER

(Wimborne)

   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,Or got the true twist of the ogee over,         A double ding-dong ricochetts.   Just so did he clang here before I came,      And so will he clang when I’m gone   Through the Minster’s cavernous hollows – the sameTale of hours never more to be will he deliver      To the speechless midnight and dawn!   I grow to conceive it a call to ghosts,      Whose mould lies below and around.   Yes; the next “Come, come,” draws them out from their posts,And they gather, and one shade appears, and another,      As the eve-damps creep from the ground.   See – a Courtenay stands by his quatre-foiled tomb,      And a Duke and his Duchess near;   And one Sir Edmund in columned gloom,And a Saxon king by the presbytery chamber;      And shapes unknown in the rear.   Maybe they have met for a parle on some plan      To better ail-stricken mankind;   I catch their cheepings, though thinner thanThe overhead creak of a passager’s pinion      When leaving land behind.   Or perhaps they speak to the yet unborn,      And caution them not to come   To a world so ancient and trouble-torn,Of foiled intents, vain lovingkindness,      And ardours chilled and numb.   They waste to fog as I stir and stand,      And move from the arched recess,   And pick up the drawing that slipped from my hand,And feel for the pencil I dropped in the cranny      In a moment’s forgetfulness.

TO SHAKESPEARE AFTER THREE HUNDRED YEARS

   Bright baffling Soul, least capturable of themes,   Thou, who display’dst a life of common-place,   Leaving no intimate word or personal trace   Of high design outside the artistry      Of thy penned dreams,Still shalt remain at heart unread eternally.   Through human orbits thy discourse to-day,   Despite thy formal pilgrimage, throbs on   In harmonies that cow Oblivion,   And, like the wind, with all-uncared effect      Maintain a swayNot fore-desired, in tracks unchosen and unchecked.   And yet, at thy last breath, with mindless note   The borough clocks but samely tongued the hour,   The Avon just as always glassed the tower,   Thy age was published on thy passing-bell      But in due roteWith other dwellers’ deaths accorded a like knell.   And at the strokes some townsman (met, maybe,   And thereon queried by some squire’s good dame   Driving in shopward) may have given thy name,   With, “Yes, a worthy man and well-to-do;      Though, as for me,I knew him but by just a neighbour’s nod, ’tis true.   “I’ faith, few knew him much here, save by word,   He having elsewhere led his busier life;   Though to be sure he left with us his wife.”   – “Ah, one of the tradesmen’s sons, I now recall.      Witty, I’ve heard.We did not know him.. Well, good-day.  Death comes to all.”   So, like a strange bright bird we sometimes find   To mingle with the barn-door brood awhile,   Then vanish from their homely domicile —   Into man’s poesy, we wot not whence,      Flew thy strange mind,Lodged there a radiant guest, and sped for ever thence.

1916.

QUID HIC AGIS?

IWhen I weekly knewAn ancient pew,And murmured thereThe forms of prayerAnd thanks and praiseIn the ancient ways,And heard read outDuring August droughtThat chapter from KingsHarvest-time brings;– How the prophet, brokenBy griefs unspoken,Went heavily awayTo fast and to pray,And, while waiting to die,The Lord passed by,And a whirlwind and fireDrew nigher and nigher,And a small voice anonBade him up and be gone, —I did not apprehendAs I sat to the endAnd watched for her smileAcross the sunned aisle,That this tale of a seerWhich came once a yearMight, when sands were heaping,Be like a sweat creeping,Or in any degreeBear on her or on me!IIWhen later, by chanceOf circumstance,It befel me to readOn a hot afternoonAt the lectern thereThe selfsame wordsAs the lesson decreed,To the gathered fewFrom the hamlets near —Folk of flocks and herdsSitting half aswoon,Who listened theretoAs women and menNot overmuchConcerned at such —So, like them then,I did not seeWhat drought might beWith me, with her,As the KalendarMoved on, and TimeDevoured our prime.IIIBut now, at last,When our glory has passed,And there is no smileFrom her in the aisle,But where it once shoneA marble, men say,With her name thereonIs discerned to-day;And spiritlessIn the wildernessI shrink from sightAnd desire the night,(Though, as in old wise,I might still arise,Go forth, and standAnd prophesy in the land),I feel the shakeOf wind and earthquake,And consuming fireNigher and nigher,And the voice catch clear,“What doest thou here?”

The Spectator 1916. During the War.

ON A MIDSUMMER EVE

I idly cut a parsley stalk,And blew therein towards the moon;I had not thought what ghosts would walkWith shivering footsteps to my tune.I went, and knelt, and scooped my handAs if to drink, into the brook,And a faint figure seemed to standAbove me, with the bygone look.I lipped rough rhymes of chance, not choice,I thought not what my words might be;There came into my ear a voiceThat turned a tenderer verse for me.

TIMING HER

(Written to an old folk-tune)

Lalage’s coming:Where is she now, O?Turning to bow, O,And smile, is she,Just at parting,Parting, parting,As she is startingTo come to me?Where is she now, O,Now, and now, O,Shadowing a bough, O,Of hedge or treeAs she is rushing,Rushing, rushing,Gossamers brushingTo come to me?Lalage’s coming;Where is she now, O;Climbing the brow, O,Of hills I see?Yes, she is nearing,Nearing, nearing,Weather unfearingTo come to me.Near is she now, O,Now, and now, O;Milk the rich cow, O,Forward the tea;Shake the down bed for her,Linen sheets spread for her,Drape round the head for herComing to me.Lalage’s coming,She’s nearer now, O,End anyhow, O,To-day’s husbandry!Would a gilt chair were mine,Slippers of vair were mine,Brushes for hair were mineOf ivory!What will she think, O,She who’s so comely,Viewing how homelyA sort are we!Nothing resplendent,No prompt attendant,Not one dependentPertaining to me!Lalage’s coming;Where is she now, O?Fain I’d avow, O,Full honestlyNought here’s enough for her,All is too rough for her,Even my love for herPoor in degree.She’s nearer now, O,Still nearer now, O,She ’tis, I vow, O,Passing the lea.Rush down to meet her there,Call out and greet her there,Never a sweeter thereCrossed to me!Lalage’s come; aye,Come is she now, O!.Does Heaven allow, O,A meeting to be?Yes, she is here now,Here now, here now,Nothing to fear now,Here’s Lalage!

BEFORE KNOWLEDGE

When I walked roseless tracks and wide,Ere dawned your date for meeting me,O why did you not cry HallooAcross the stretch between, and say:“We move, while years as yet divide,On closing lines which – though it beYou know me not nor I know you —Will intersect and join some day!”   Then well I had borne   Each scraping thorn;   But the winters froze,   And grew no rose;   No bridge bestrode   The gap at all;   No shape you showed,   And I heard no call!

THE BLINDED BIRD

So zestfully canst thou sing?And all this indignity,With God’s consent, on thee!Blinded ere yet a-wingBy the red-hot needle thou,I stand and wonder howSo zestfully thou canst sing!Resenting not such wrong,Thy grievous pain forgot,Eternal dark thy lot,Groping thy whole life long;After that stab of fire;Enjailed in pitiless wire;Resenting not such wrong!Who hath charity?  This bird.Who suffereth long and is kind,Is not provoked, though blindAnd alive ensepulchred?Who hopeth, endureth all things?Who thinketh no evil, but sings?Who is divine?  This bird.

“THE WIND BLEW WORDS”

The wind blew words along the skies,   And these it blew to meThrough the wide dusk: “Lift up your eyes,   Behold this troubled tree,Complaining as it sways and plies;   It is a limb of thee.“Yea, too, the creatures sheltering round —   Dumb figures, wild and tame,Yea, too, thy fellows who abound —   Either of speech the sameOr far and strange – black, dwarfed, and browned,   They are stuff of thy own frame.”I moved on in a surging awe   Of inarticulatenessAt the pathetic Me I saw   In all his huge distress,Making self-slaughter of the law   To kill, break, or suppress.

THE FADED FACE

How was this I did not seeSuch a look as here was shownEre its womanhood had blownPast its first felicity? —That I did not know you young,   Faded Face,      Know you young!Why did Time so ill besteadThat I heard no voice of yoursHail from out the curved contoursOf those lips when rosy red;Weeted not the songs they sung,   Faded Face,      Songs they sung!By these blanchings, blooms of old,And the relics of your voice —Leavings rare of rich and choiceFrom your early tone and mould —Let me mourn, – aye, sorrow-wrung,   Faded Face,      Sorrow-wrung!

THE RIDDLE

IStretching eyes westOver the sea,Wind foul or fair,Always stood sheProspect-impressed;Solely out thereDid her gaze rest,Never elsewhereSeemed charm to be.IIAlways eyes eastPonders she now —As in devotion —Hills of blank browWhere no waves plough.Never the leastRoom for emotionDrawn from the oceanDoes she allow.

THE DUEL

      “I am here to time, you see;The glade is well-screened – eh? – against alarm;   Fit place to vindicate by my arm   The honour of my spotless wife,   Who scorns your libel upon her life      In boasting intimacy!      “‘All hush-offerings you’ll spurn,My husband.  Two must come; one only go,’   She said.  ‘That he’ll be you I know;   To faith like ours Heaven will be just,   And I shall abide in fullest trust      Your speedy glad return.’”   “Good.  Here am also I;And we’ll proceed without more waste of words   To warm your cockpit.  Of the swords   Take you your choice.  I shall thereby   Feel that on me no blame can lie,      Whatever Fate accords.”   So stripped they there, and fought,And the swords clicked and scraped, and the onsets sped;   Till the husband fell; and his shirt was red   With streams from his heart’s hot cistern.  Nought   Could save him now; and the other, wrought      Maybe to pity, said:   “Why did you urge on this?Your wife assured you; and ’t had better been   That you had let things pass, serene   In confidence of long-tried bliss,   Holding there could be nought amiss      In what my words might mean.”   Then, seeing nor ruth nor rageCould move his foeman more – now Death’s deaf thrall —   He wiped his steel, and, with a call   Like turtledove to dove, swift broke   Into the copse, where under an oak      His horse cropt, held by a page.   “All’s over, Sweet,” he criedTo the wife, thus guised; for the young page was she.   “’Tis as we hoped and said ’t would be.   He never guessed.. We mount and ride   To where our love can reign uneyed.      He’s clay, and we are free.”

AT MAYFAIR LODGINGS

How could I be aware,The opposite window eyeingAs I lay listless there,That through its blinds was dyingOne I had rated rareBefore I had set me sighingFor another more fair?Had the house-front been glass,My vision unobscuring,Could aught have come to passMore happiness-insuringTo her, loved as a lassWhen spouseless, all-alluring?I reckon not, alas!So, the square window stood,Steadily night-long shiningIn my close neighbourhood,Who looked forth undiviningThat soon would go for goodOne there in pain reclining,Unpardoned, unadieu’d.Silently screened from viewHer tragedy was endingThat need not have come dueHad she been less unbending.How near, near were we twoAt that last vital rending, —And neither of us knew!

TO MY FATHER’S VIOLIN

   Does he want you down there   In the Nether Glooms whereThe hours may be a dragging load upon him,   As he hears the axle grind      Round and round   Of the great world, in the blind      Still profoundOf the night-time?  He might liven at the soundOf your string, revealing you had not forgone him.   In the gallery west the nave,   But a few yards from his grave,Did you, tucked beneath his chin, to his bowing   Guide the homely harmony      Of the quire   Who for long years strenuously —      Son and sire —Caught the strains that at his fingering low or higherFrom your four thin threads and eff-holes came outflowing.   And, too, what merry tunes   He would bow at nights or noonsThat chanced to find him bent to lute a measure,   When he made you speak his heart      As in dream,   Without book or music-chart,      On some themeElusive as a jack-o’-lanthorn’s gleam,And the psalm of duty shelved for trill of pleasure.   Well, you can not, alas,   The barrier overpassThat screens him in those Mournful Meads hereunder,   Where no fiddling can be heard      In the glades   Of silentness, no bird      Thrills the shades;Where no viol is touched for songs or serenades,No bowing wakes a congregation’s wonder.   He must do without you now,   Stir you no more anyhowTo yearning concords taught you in your glory;   While, your strings a tangled wreck,      Once smart drawn,   Ten worm-wounds in your neck,      Purflings wanWith dust-hoar, here alone I sadly conYour present dumbness, shape your olden story.

1916.