Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (983 page)

“Why do I?  Alas, far times ago
   A woman lyred here
In the evenfall; one who fain did so
   From year to year;
And, in loneliness bending wistfully,
   Would wake each note
   In sick sad rote,
   None to listen or see!

“I would not join.  I would not stay,
   But drew away,
Though the winter fire beamed brightly . . . Aye!
   I do to-day
What I would not then; and the chill old keys,
   Like a skull’s brown teeth
   Loose in their sheath,
   Freeze my touch; yes, freeze.”

I LOOK IN HER FACE

(SONG:
Minor
)

I look in her face and say,
“Sing as you used to sing
About Love’s blossoming”;
But she hints not Yea or Nay.

“Sing, then, that Love’s a pain,
If, Dear, you think it so,
Whether it be or no;”
But dumb her lips remain.

I go to a far-off room,
A faint song ghosts my ear;
Which
song I cannot hear,
But it seems to come from a tomb.

AFTER THE WAR

Last Post sounded
Across the mead
To where he loitered
With absent heed.
Five years before
In the evening there
Had flown that call
To him and his Dear.
“You’ll never come back;
Good-bye!” she had said;
“Here I’ll be living,
And my Love dead!”

Those closing minims
Had been as shafts darting
Through him and her pressed
In that last parting;
They thrilled him not now,
In the selfsame place
With the selfsame sun
On his war-seamed face.
“Lurks a god’s laughter
In this?” he said,
“That I am the living
And she the dead!”

IF YOU HAD KNOWN

   If you had known
When listening with her to the far-down moan
Of the white-selvaged and empurpled sea,
And rain came on that did not hinder talk,
Or damp your flashing facile gaiety
In turning home, despite the slow wet walk
By crooked ways, and over stiles of stone;
   If you had known

   You would lay roses,
Fifty years thence, on her monument, that discloses
Its graying shape upon the luxuriant green;
Fifty years thence to an hour, by chance led there,
What might have moved you? - yea, had you foreseen
That on the tomb of the selfsame one, gone where
The dawn of every day is as the close is,
   You would lay roses!

1920.

THE CHAPEL-ORGANIST

(A.D. 185-)

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
In the gallery, right upon me, sitting up to these keys once more . . .

How I used to hear tongues ask, as I sat here when I was new:
“Who is she playing the organ?  She touches it mightily true!”
“She travels from Havenpool Town,” the deacon would softly speak,
“The stipend can hardly cover her fare hither twice in the week.”
(It fell far short of doing, indeed; but I never told,
For I have craved minstrelsy more than lovers, or beauty, or gold.)

‘Twas so he answered at first, but the story grew different later:
“It cannot go on much longer, from what we hear of her now!”
At the meaning wheeze in the words the inquirer would shift his place
Till he could see round the curtain that screened me from people below.
“A handsome girl,” he would murmur, upstaring, (and so I am).
“But - too much sex in her build; fine eyes, but eyelids too heavy;
A bosom too full for her age; in her lips too voluptuous a look.”
(It may be.  But who put it there?  Assuredly it was not I.)

I went on playing and singing when this I had heard, and more,
Though tears half-blinded me; yes, I remained going on and on,
Just as I used me to chord and to sing at the selfsame time! . . .
For it’s a contralto - my voice is; they’ll hear it again here to-night
In the psalmody notes that I love more than world or than flesh or than life.

Well, the deacon, in fact, that day had learnt new tidings about me;
They troubled his mind not a little, for he was a worthy man.
(He trades as a chemist in High Street, and during the week he had sought
His fellow-deacon, who throve as a book-binder over the way.)
“These are strange rumours,” he said.  “We must guard the good name of the chapel.
If, sooth, she’s of evil report, what else can we do but dismiss her?”
“ - But get such another to play here we cannot for double the price!”
It settled the point for the time, and I triumphed awhile in their strait,
And my much-beloved grand semibreves went living on under my fingers.

At length in the congregation more head-shakes and murmurs were rife,
And my dismissal was ruled, though I was not warned of it then.
But a day came when they declared it.  The news entered me as a sword;
I was broken; so pallid of face that they thought I should faint, they said.
I rallied.  “O, rather than go, I will play you for nothing!” said I.
‘Twas in much desperation I spoke it, for bring me to forfeit I could not
Those melodies chorded so richly for which I had laboured and lived.
They paused.  And for nothing I played at the chapel through Sundays anon,
Upheld by that art which I loved more than blandishments lavished of men.

But it fell that murmurs again from the flock broke the pastor’s peace.
Some member had seen me at Havenpool, comrading close a sea-captain.
(Yes; I was thereto constrained, lacking means for the fare to and fro.)
Yet God knows, if aught He knows ever, I loved the Old-Hundredth, Saint Stephen’s,
Mount Zion, New Sabbath, Miles-Lane, Holy Rest, and Arabia, and Eaton,
Above all embraces of body by wooers who sought me and won! . . .
Next week ‘twas declared I was seen coming home with a lover at dawn.
The deacons insisted then, strong; and forgiveness I did not implore.
I saw all was lost for me, quite, but I made a last bid in my throbs.
High love had been beaten by lust; and the senses had conquered the soul,
But the soul should die game, if I knew it!  I turned to my masters and said:
“I yield, Gentlemen, without parlance.  But - let me just hymn you
once
more!
It’s a little thing, Sirs, that I ask; and a passion is music with me!”
They saw that consent would cost nothing, and show as good grace, as knew I,
Though tremble I did, and feel sick, as I paused thereat, dumb for their words.
They gloomily nodded assent, saying, “Yes, if you care to.  Once more,
And only once more, understand.”  To that with a bend I agreed.
- “You’ve a fixed and a far-reaching look,” spoke one who had eyed me awhile.
“I’ve a fixed and a far-reaching plan, and my look only showed it,” said I.

This evening of Sunday is come - the last of my functioning here.
“She plays as if she were possessed!” they exclaim, glancing upward and round.
“Such harmonies I never dreamt the old instrument capable of!”
Meantime the sun lowers and goes; shades deepen; the lights are turned up,
And the people voice out the last singing: tune Tallis: the Evening Hymn.
(I wonder Dissenters sing Ken: it shows them more liberal in spirit
At this little chapel down here than at certain new others I know.)
I sing as I play.  Murmurs some one: “No woman’s throat richer than hers!”
“True: in these parts, at least,” ponder I.  “But, my man, you will hear it no more.”
And I sing with them onward: “The grave dread as little do I as my bed.”

I lift up my feet from the pedals; and then, while my eyes are still wet
From the symphonies born of my fingers, I do that whereon I am set,
And draw from my “full round bosom,” (their words; how can
I
help its heave?)
A bottle blue-coloured and fluted - a vinaigrette, they may conceive -
And before the choir measures my meaning, reads aught in my moves to and fro,
I drink from the phial at a draught, and they think it a pick-me-up; so.
Then I gather my books as to leave, bend over the keys as to pray.
When they come to me motionless, stooping, quick death will have whisked me away.

“Sure, nobody meant her to poison herself in her haste, after all!”
The deacons will say as they carry me down and the night shadows fall,
“Though the charges were true,” they will add.  “It’s a case red as scarlet withal!”
I have never once minced it.  Lived chaste I have not.  Heaven knows it above! . . .
But past all the heavings of passion - it’s music has been my life-love! . . .
That tune did go well - this last playing! . . . I reckon they’ll bury me here . . .
Not a soul from the seaport my birthplace - will come, or bestow me . . . a tear.

FETCHING HER

   An hour before the dawn,
         My friend,
You lit your waiting bedside-lamp,
   Your breakfast-fire anon,
And outing into the dark and damp
   You saddled, and set on.

   Thuswise, before the day,
         My friend,
You sought her on her surfy shore,
   To fetch her thence away
Unto your own new-builded door
   For a staunch lifelong stay.

   You said: “It seems to be,
         My friend,
That I were bringing to my place
   The pure brine breeze, the sea,
The mews - all her old sky and space,
   In bringing her with me!”

   - But time is prompt to expugn,
         My friend,
Such magic-minted conjurings:
   The brought breeze fainted soon,
And then the sense of seamews’ wings,
   And the shore’s sibilant tune.

   So, it had been more due,
         My friend,
Perhaps, had you not pulled this flower
   From the craggy nook it knew,
And set it in an alien bower;
   But left it where it grew!

COULD I BUT WILL

(SONG:
Verses
1, 3,
key major; verse 2, key minor
)

      Could I but will,
      Will to my bent,
I’d have afar ones near me still,
And music of rare ravishment,
In strains that move the toes and heels!
And when the sweethearts sat for rest
The unbetrothed should foot with zest
      Ecstatic reels.

      Could I be head,
      Head-god, “Come, now,
Dear girl,” I’d say, “whose flame is fled,
Who liest with linen-banded brow,
Stirred but by shakes from Earth’s deep core - “
I’d say to her: “Unshroud and meet
That Love who kissed and called thee Sweet! -
      Yea, come once more!”

      Even half-god power
      In spinning dooms
Had I, this frozen scene should flower,
And sand-swept plains and Arctic glooms
Should green them gay with waving leaves,
Mid which old friends and I would walk
With weightless feet and magic talk
      Uncounted eves.

SHE REVISITS ALONE THE CHURCH OF HER MARRIAGE

I have come to the church and chancel,
   Where all’s the same!
- Brighter and larger in my dreams
Truly it shaped than now, meseems,
   Is its substantial frame.
But, anyhow, I made my vow,
   Whether for praise or blame,
Here in this church and chancel
   Where all’s the same.

Where touched the check-floored chancel
   My knees and his?
The step looks shyly at the sun,
And says, “‘Twas here the thing was done,
   For bale or else for bliss!”
Of all those there I least was ware
   Would it be that or this
When touched the check-floored chancel
   My knees and his!

Here in this fateful chancel
   Where all’s the same,
I thought the culminant crest of life
Was reached when I went forth the wife
   I was not when I came.
Each commonplace one of my race,
   Some say, has such an aim -
To go from a fateful chancel
   As not the same.

Here, through this hoary chancel
   Where all’s the same,
A thrill, a gaiety even, ranged
That morning when it seemed I changed
   My nature with my name.
Though now not fair, though gray my hair,
   He loved me, past proclaim,
Here in this hoary chancel,
   Where all’s the same.

AT THE ENTERING OF THE NEW YEAR

I (OLD STYLE)

Our songs went up and out the chimney,
And roused the home-gone husbandmen;
Our allemands, our heys, poussettings,
Our hands-across and back again,
Sent rhythmic throbbings through the casements
   On to the white highway,
Where nighted farers paused and muttered,
   ”Keep it up well, do they!”

The contrabasso’s measured booming
Sped at each bar to the parish bounds,
To shepherds at their midnight lambings,
To stealthy poachers on their rounds;
And everybody caught full duly
   The notes of our delight,
As Time unrobed the Youth of Promise
   Hailed by our sanguine sight.

II (NEW STYLE)

   We stand in the dusk of a pine-tree limb,
   As if to give ear to the muffled peal,
   Brought or withheld at the breeze’s whim;
   But our truest heed is to words that steal
   From the mantled ghost that looms in the gray,
   And seems, so far as our sense can see,
   To feature bereaved Humanity,
   As it sighs to the imminent year its say:-

   ”O stay without, O stay without,
   Calm comely Youth, untasked, untired;
   Though stars irradiate thee about
   Thy entrance here is undesired.
   Open the gate not, mystic one;
Must we avow what we would close confine?
With thee, good friend, we would have converse none,
   
Albeit the fault may not be thine.”

December 31.  During the War.

THEY WOULD NOT COME

I travelled to where in her lifetime
   She’d knelt at morning prayer,
   To call her up as if there;
But she paid no heed to my suing,
As though her old haunt could win not
   A thought from her spirit, or care.