Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (1006 page)

HE NEVER EXPECTED MUCH

[
or] A CONSIDERATION

[
A reflection
] ON MY EIGHTY-SIXTH BIRTHDAY

Well, World, you have kept faith with me,
Kept faith with me;
Upon the whole you have proved to be
Much as you said you were.
Since as a child I used to lie
Upon the leaze and watch the sky,
Never, I own, expected I
That life would all be fair.

‘Twas then you said, and since have said,
Times since have said,
In that mysterious voice you shed
From clouds and hills around:
“Many have loved me desperately,
Many with smooth serenity,
While some have shown contempt of me
Till they dropped underground.

“I do not promise overmuch,
Child; overmuch;
Just neutral-tinted haps and such,”
You said to minds like mine.
Wise warning for your credit’s sake!
Which I for one failed not to take,
And hence could stem such strain and ache
As each year might assign.

STANDING BY THE MANTELPIECE

(H. M. M., 1873)

This candle-wax is shaping to a shroud
To-night. (They call it that, as you may know) —
By touching it the claimant is avowed,
And hence I press it with my finger — so.

To-night. To me twice night, that should have been
The radiance of the midmost tick of noon,
And close around me wintertime is seen
That might have shone the veriest day of June!

But since all’s lost, and nothing really lies
Above but shade, and shadier shade below,
Let me make clear, before one of us dies,
My mind to yours, just now embittered so.

Since you agreed, unurged and full-advised,
And let warmth grow without discouragement,
Why do you bear you now as if surprised,
When what has come was clearly consequent?

Since you have spoken, and finality
Closes around, and my last movements loom,
I say no more: the rest must wait till we
Are face to face again, yonside the tomb.

And let the candle-wax thus mould a shape
Whose meaning now, if hid before, you know,
And how by touch one present claims its drape,
And that it’s I who press my finger — so.

BOYS THEN AND NOW

“More than one cuckoo?”
And the little boy
Seemed to lose something
Of his spring joy.

When he’d grown up
He told his son
He’d used to think
There was only one,

Who came each year
With the trees’ new trim
On purpose to please
England and him:

And his son — old already
In life and its ways —
Said yawning: “How foolish
Boys were in those days!”

THAT KISS IN THE DARK

Recall it you? —
Say you do! —
When you went out into the night,
In an impatience that would not wait,
From that lone house in the woodland spot,
And when I, thinking you had gone
For ever and ever from my sight,
Came after, printing a kiss upon
Black air
In my despair,
And my two lips lit on your cheek
As you leant silent against a gate,
Making my woman’s face flush hot
At what I had done in the dark, unware
You lingered for me but would not speak:
Yes, kissed you, thinking you were not there!
Recall it you? —
Say you do!

A NECESSITARIAN’S EPITAPH

A world I did not wish to enter
Took me and poised me on my centre,
Made me grimace, and foot, and prance,
As cats on hot bricks have to dance
Strange jigs to keep them from the floor,
Till they sink down and feel no more.

BURNING THE HOLLY

O you are sad on Twelfth Night,
I notice: sad on Twelfth Night;
You are as sad on Twelfth Night
As any that I know.

“Yes: I am sad on that night,
Doubtless I’m sad on that night:
Yes; I am sad on that night,
For we all loved her so!”

Why are you sad on Twelfth Night,
Especially on Twelfth Night?
Why are you sad on Twelfth Night
When wit and laughter flow?

— ”She’d been a famous dancer,
Much lured of men; a dancer.
She’d been a famous dancer,
Facile in heel and toe. . . .

“And we were burning the holly
On Twelfth Night; the holly,
As people do: the holly,
Ivy, and mistletoe.

“And while it popped and crackled,
(She being our lodger), crackled;
And while it popped and crackled,
Her face caught by the glow,

“In he walked and said to her,
In a slow voice he said to her;
Yes, walking in he said to her,
‘We sail before cock-crow.’

“‘Why did you not come on to me,
As promised? Yes, come on to me?
Why did you not come on to me,
Since you had sworn to go?’

“His eyes were deep and flashing,
As flashed the holm-flames: flashing;
His eyes were deep, and flashing
In their quick, keen upthrow.

“As if she had been ready,
Had furtively been ready;
As if she had been ready
For his insistence — lo! —

“She clasped his arm and went with him
As his entirely: went with him.
She clasped his arm and went with him
Into the sprinkling snow.

“We saw the prickly leaves waste
To ashes: saw the leaves waste;
The burnt-up prickly leaves waste. . . .
The pair had gone also.

— ”On Twelfth Night, two years after —
Yes, Twelfth Night, two years after;
On Twelfth Night, two years after,
We sat — our spirits low —

“Musing, when back the door swung
Without a knock. The door swung;
Thought flew to her. The door swung,
And in she came, pale, slow;

“Against her breast a child clasped;
Close to her breast a child clasped;
She stood there with the child clasped,
Swaying it to and fro.

“Her look alone the tale told;
Quite wordless was the tale told;
Her careworn eyes the tale told
As larger they seemed to grow. . . .

“One day next spring she disappeared,
The second time she disappeared.
And that time, when she’d disappeared
Came back no more. Ah, no!

“But we still burn the holly
On Twelfth Night; burn the holly
As people do: the holly,
Ivy, and mistletoe.”

SUSPENSE

A clamminess hangs over all like a clout,
The fields are a water-colour washed out,
The sky at its rim leaves a chink of light,
Like the lid of a pot that will not close tight.

She is away by the groaning sea,
Strained at the heart, and waiting for me:
Between us our foe from a hid retreat
Is watching, to wither us if we meet. . . .

But it matters little, however we fare —
Whether we meet, or I get not there;
The sky will look the same thereupon,
And the wind and the sea go groaning on.

THE SECOND VISIT

Clack, clack, clack, went the mill-wheel as I came,
And she was on the bridge with the thin hand-rail,
And the miller at the door, and the ducks at mill-tail;
I come again years after, and all there seems the same.

And so indeed it is: the apple-tree’d old house,
And the deep mill-pond, and the wet wheel clacking,
And a woman on the bridge, and white ducks quacking,
And the miller at the door, powdered pale from boots to brows.

But it’s not the same miller whom long ago I knew,
Nor are they the same apples, nor the same drops that dash
Over the wet wheel, nor the ducks below that splash,
Nor the woman who to fond plaints replied, “You know I do!”

OUR OLD FRIEND DUALISM

All hail to him, the Protean! A tough old chap is he:
Spinoza and the Monists cannot make him cease to be.
We pound him with our “Truth, Sir, please!” and quite appear to still him:
He laughs; holds Bergson up, and James; and swears we cannot kill him.
We argue them pragmatic cheats. “Aye,” says he. “They’re deceiving:
But I must live; for flamens plead I am all that’s worth believing!”

1920.

FAITHFUL WILSON

“I say she’s handsome, by all laws
Of beauty, if wife ever was!”
Wilson insists thus, though each day
The years fret Fanny towards decay.
“She
was
once beauteous as a jewel,”
Hint friends; “but Time, of course, is cruel.”
Still Wilson does not quite feel how,
Once fair, she can be different now.

Partly from Strato of Sardis.

GALLANT’S SONG

When the maiden leaves off teasing,
Then the man may leave off pleasing:
Yea, ‘tis sign,
Wet or fine,
She will love him without ceasing
With a love there’s no appeasing.
Is it so?
Ha-ha. Ho!

Nov. 1868.

From an old notebook.

A PHILOSOPHICAL FANTASY

“Milton . . . made God argue.” — Walter Bagehot.

“Well, if thou wilt, then, ask me;
To answer will not task me:
I’ve a response, I doubt not.
And quite agree to flout not
Thy question, if of reason,
Albeit not quite in season:
A universe to marshal,
What god can give but partial
Eye to frail Earth — life-shotten
Ere long, extinct, forgotten! —
But seeing indications
That thou read’st my limitations,
And since my lack of forethought
Aggrieves thy more and more thought,
I’ll hearken to thy pleading:
Some lore may lie in heeding
Thy irregular proceeding.”

“‘Tis this
unfulfilled intention
,
O Causer, I would mention: —
Will you, in condescension
This evening, ere we’ve parted,
Say why you felt fainthearted,
And let your aim be thwarted,
Its glory be diminished,
Its concept stand unfinished? —
Such I ask you, Sir or Madam,
(I know no more than Adam,
Even vaguely, what your sex is, —
Though feminine I had thought you
Till seers as ‘Sire’ besought you; —
And this my ignorance vexes
Some people not a little,
And, though not me one tittle,
It makes me sometimes choose me
Call you ‘It,’ if you’ll excuse me?”)

“Call me ‘It’ with a good conscience,
And be sure it is all nonsense
That I mind a fault of manner
In a pigmy towards his planner!
Be I, be not I, sexless,
I am in nature vexless.
 — How vain must clay-carved man be
To deem such folly can be
As that freaks of my own framing
Can set my visage flaming —
Start me volleying interjections
Against my own confections,
As the Jews and others limned me,
And in fear and trembling hymned me!
Call me ‘but dream-projected,’
I shall not be affected;
Call me ‘blind force persisting,’
I shall remain unlisting;
(A few have done it lately,
And, maybe, err not greatly.)
 — Another such a vanity
In witless weak humanity
Is thinking that of those all
Through space at my disposal,
Man’s
shape must needs resemble
Mine, that makes zodiacs tremble!

“Continuing where we started: —
As for my aims being thwarted,
Wherefore I feel fainthearted,
Aimless am I, revealing
No heart-scope for faint feeling.
 — But thy mistake I’ll pardon,
And, as Adam’s mentioned to me,
(Though in timeless truth there never
Was a man like him whatever)
I’ll meet thee in thy garden,
As I did not him, beshrew me!
In the sun of so-called daytime —
Say, just about the Maytime
Of my next, or next, Creation?
(I love procrastination,

To use the words in thy sense,
Which have no hold on my sense)
Or at any future stray-time. —
One of thy representatives
In some later incarnation
I mean, of course, well knowing
Thy present conformation
But a unit of my tentatives,
Whereof such heaps lie blowing
As dust, where thou art going;
Yea, passed to where suns glow not,
Begrieved of those that go not
(Though what grief is, I know not.)

“Perhaps I may inform thee,
In case I should alarm thee,
That no dramatic stories
Like ancient ones whose core is
A mass of superstition
And monkish imposition
Will mark my explanation
Of the world’s sore situation
(As thou tell’st), with woes that shatter;
Though from former aions to latter
To me ‘tis malleable matter
For treatment scientific
More than sensitive and specific —
Stuff without moral features,
Which I’ve no sense of ever,
Or of ethical endeavour,
Or of justice to Earth’s creatures,
Or how Right from Wrong to sever:
Let these be as men learn such;
For me, I don’t discern such,
And — real enough I daresay —
I know them but by hearsay
As something Time hath rendered
Out of substance I engendered,
Time, too, being a condition
Beyond my recognition.
 — I would add that, while unknowing
Of this justice earthward owing,

Nor explanation offering
Of what is meant by suffering,
Thereof I’m not a spurner,
Or averse to be a learner.

“To return from wordy wandering
To the question we are pondering;
Though, viewing the world in
my
mode,
I fail to see it in
thy
mode
As ‘unfulfilled intention,’
Which is past my comprehension
Being unconscious in my doings
So largely, (whence thy rueings); —
Aye, to human tribes nor kindlessness
Nor love I’ve given, but mindlessness,
Which state, though far from ending,
May nevertheless be mending.

“However, I’ll advise him —
Him thy scion, who will walk here
When Death hath dumbed thy talk here —
In phrase that may surprise him,
What thing it was befel me,
(A thing that my confessing
Lack of forethought helps thy guessing),
And acted to compel me
By that
purposeless propension
Which is mine, and not intention,
Along lines of least resistance,
Or, in brief, unsensed persistence,
That saddens thy existence
To think my so-called scheming
Not that of my first dreaming.”