Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with Miscellaneous Pieces - Thomas Hardy

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of beings who fellowed with myself of earlier days:

      They hang about at places, and they say harsh heavy things —

      Men with a frigid sneer, and women with tart disparagings.

      Down there I seem to be false to myself, my simple self that was,

      And is not now, and I see him watching, wondering what crass cause

      Can have merged him into such a strange continuator as this,

      Who yet has something in common with himself, my chrysalis.

      I cannot go to the great grey Plain; there’s a figure against the moon,

      Nobody sees it but I, and it makes my breast beat out of tune;

      I cannot go to the tall-spired town, being barred by the forms now passed

      For everybody but me, in whose long vision they stand there fast.

      There’s a ghost at Yell’ham Bottom chiding loud at the fall of the night,

      There’s a ghost in Froom-side Vale, thin lipped and vague, in a shroud of white,

      There is one in the railway-train whenever I do not want it near,

      I see its profile against the pane, saying what I would not hear.

      As for one rare fair woman, I am now but a thought of hers,

      I enter her mind and another thought succeeds me that she prefers;

      Yet my love for her in its fulness she herself even did not know;

      Well, time cures hearts of tenderness, and now I can let her go.

      So I am found on Ingpen Beacon, or on Wylls-Neck to the west,

      Or else on homely Bulbarrow, or little Pilsdon Crest,

      Where men have never cared to haunt, nor women have walked with me,

      And ghosts then keep their distance; and I know some liberty.

      IN DEATH DIVIDED

I

         I shall rot here, with those whom in their day

            You never knew,

         And alien ones who, ere they chilled to clay,

            Met not my view,

      Will in your distant grave-place ever neighbour you.

II

         No shade of pinnacle or tree or tower,

            While earth endures,

         Will fall on my mound and within the hour

            Steal on to yours;

      One robin never haunt our two green covertures.

III

         Some organ may resound on Sunday noons

            By where you lie,

         Some other thrill the panes with other tunes

            Where moulder I;

      No selfsame chords compose our common lullaby.

IV

         The simply-cut memorial at my head

            Perhaps may take

         A Gothic form, and that above your bed

            Be Greek in make;

      No linking symbol show thereon for our tale’s sake.

V

         And in the monotonous moils of strained, hard-run

            Humanity,

         The eternal tie which binds us twain in one

            No eye will see

      Stretching across the miles that sever you from me.

      THE PLACE ON THE MAP

I

         I look upon the map that hangs by me —

      Its shires and towns and rivers lined in varnished artistry —

         And I mark a jutting height

      Coloured purple, with a margin of blue sea.

II

         – ’Twas a day of latter summer, hot and dry;

      Ay, even the waves seemed drying as we walked on, she and I,

         By this spot where, calmly quite,

      She informed me what would happen by and by.

III

         This hanging map depicts the coast and place,

      And resuscitates therewith our unexpected troublous case

         All distinctly to my sight,

      And her tension, and the aspect of her face.

IV

         Weeks and weeks we had loved beneath that blazing blue,

      Which had lost the art of raining, as her eyes to-day had too,

         While she told what, as by sleight,

      Shot our firmament with rays of ruddy hue.

V

         For the wonder and the wormwood of the whole

      Was that what in realms of reason would have joyed our double soul

         Wore a torrid tragic light

      Under order-keeping’s rigorous control.

VI

         So, the map revives her words, the spot, the time,

      And the thing we found we had to face before the next year’s prime;

         The charted coast stares bright,

      And its episode comes back in pantomime.

      WHERE THE PICNIC WAS

      Where we made the fire,

      In the summer time,

      Of branch and briar

      On the hill to the sea

      I slowly climb

      Through winter mire,

      And scan and trace

      The forsaken place

      Quite readily.

      Now a cold wind blows,

      And the grass is gray,

      But the spot still shows

      As a burnt circle – aye,

      And stick-ends, charred,

      Still strew the sward

      Whereon I stand,

      Last relic of the band

      Who came that day!

      Yes, I am here

      Just as last year,

      And the sea breathes brine

      From its strange straight line

      Up hither, the same

      As when we four came.

      – But two have wandered far

      From this grassy rise

      Into urban roar

      Where no picnics are,

      And one – has shut her eyes

      For evermore.

      THE SCHRECKHORN

      (With thoughts of Leslie Stephen)

(June 1897)

      Aloof,

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