Complete Works of Thomas Hardy (Illustrated) (994 page)

He
(after a sigh)
Carrier! A lift for my wife, please.
She
(in quick undertones)
Wife? But nay —
He
(continuing)
Her horse has thrown her and has gone astray:
See she gets safe to Crewkerne. I’ve to stay.
Carrier
I will, sir! I’m for Crookhorn straight away.
He
(to her, aloud)
Right now, dear. I shall soon be home. Adieu!
(Kisses her.)
She
(whispering confusedly)
You shouldn’t! Pretending you are my husband, too!
I now must act the part of wife to you!
He
(whispering)
Yes, since I’ve kissed you, dear. You see it’s done
To silence tongues as we’re found here alone
At night, by gossipers, and seem as shown
Staying together!
She
(whispering)
Then must I, too, kiss?
He
Yes: a mere matter of form, you know,
To check all scandal. People will talk so!
She
I’d no idea it would reach to this! (Kisses him.)
What makes it worse is, I’m ashamed to say,
I’ve a young baby waiting me at home!

He
Ah — there you beat me! — But, my dearest, play
The wife to the end, and don’t give me away,
Despite the baby, since we’ve got so far,
And what we’ve acted feel we almost are!
She
(sighing)
Yes. ‘Tis so! And my conscience has gone dumb! (Aloud)
‘Bye, dear, awhile! I’ll sit up till you come. (In a whisper)
Which means Good-bye for ever, truly heard!
Upon to-night be silent!
He
Never a word,
Till Pilsdon Pen by Marshwood wind is stirred!
He hands her up. Exeunt omnes.

AT SHAG’S HEATH

1(TRADITIONAL)

I grieve and grieve for what I have done,
And nothing now is left to me
But straight to drown; yea, I have slain
The rarest soul the world shall see!
 — My husband said: “Now thou art wed
Thou must beware! And should a man
Cajole, mind, he means ill to thee,
Depend on’t: fool him if ye can!”
But ‘twas King Monmouth, he!

As truth I took what was not true:
Till darked my door just such a one.
He asked me but the way to go,
Though looking all so down and done.

And as he stood he said, unsued,
“The prettiest wife I’ve eyed to-day!”
And then he kissed me tenderly
Before he footed fast away
Did dear King Monmouth, he!

Builded was he so beautiful! —
Why did I pout a pettish word
For what he’d done? — Then whisking off —
For his pursuers’ feet were heard —
“Dear one, keep faith!” he turns and saith.
And next he vanished in the copse
Before I knew what such might be,
And how great fears and how great hopes
Had rare King Monmouth — he!

Up rode the soldiers. “Where’s this man? —
He is the rebel Duke,” say they.
“And calls himself King Monmouth, sure!”
Then I believed my husband; aye,
Though he’d spoke lies in jealous-wise!
 — To Shag’s nigh copse beyond the road
I moved my finger mercilessly;
And there lay hidden where I showed:
My dear King Monmouth, he!

The soldiers brought him by my door,
His elbows bound behind him, fast;
Passing, he me-ward cast his eyes —
What eyes of beauty did he cast!
Grieved was his glance at me askance:
“I wished all weal might thee attend,
But this is what th’st done to me,
O heartless woman, held my friend!”
Said sweet King Monmouth, he!

O then I saw he was no hind,
But a great lord of loftihood,
Come here to claim his rule and rights,
Who’d wished me, as he’d said, but good. —
With tug and jolt, then, out to Holt,

To Justice Ettricke, he was led,
And thence to London speedily,
Where under yester’s headsman bled
The rare King Monmouth, he!

Last night, the while my husband slept,
He rose up at the window there,
All blood and blear, and hacked about,
With heavy eyes, and rumpled hair;
And said: “My Love, ‘twas cruel of
A Fair like thee to use me so!
But now it’s nought: from foes I’m free!
Sooner or later all must go,”
Said dear King Monmouth, he!

“Yes, lovely cruel one!” he said
In through the mullioned pane, shroud-pale,
“I love you still, would kiss you now,
But blood would stain your nighty-rail!”
 — That’s all. And so to drown I go:
O wear no weeds, my friends, for me . . .
When comes the waterman, he’ll say,
“Who’s done her thuswise?” — ’Twill be, yea,
Sweet, slain King Monmouth — he!

A SECOND ATTEMPT

Thirty years after
I began again
An old-time passion:
And it seemed as fresh as when
The first day ventured on:
When mutely I would waft her
In Love’s past fashion
Dreams much dwelt upon,
Dreams I wished she knew.

I went the course through,
From Love’s fresh-found sensation —
Remembered still so well —
To worn words charged anew,
That left no more to tell:

Thence to hot hopes and fears,
And thence to consummation,
And thence to sober years,
Markless, and mellow-hued.

Firm the whole fabric stood,
Or seemed to stand, and sound
As it had stood before.
But nothing backward climbs,
And when I looked around
As at the former times,
There was Life — pale and hoar;
And slow it said to me,
“Twice-over cannot be!”

FREED THE FRET OF THINKING

Freed the fret of thinking,
Light of lot were we,
Song with service linking
Like to bird or bee:
Chancing bale unblinking,
Freed the fret of thinking
On mortality!

Had not thought-endowment
Beings ever known,
What Life once or now meant
None had wanted shown —
Measuring but the moment —
Had not thought-endowment
Caught Creation’s groan!

Loosed from wrings of reason,
We might blow like flowers,
Sense of Time-wrought treason
Would not then be ours
In and out of season;
Loosed from wrings of reason
We should laud the Powers!

THE ABSOLUTE EXPLAINS

I

“O no,” said It: her lifedoings
Time’s touch hath not destroyed:
They lie their length, with the throbbing things
Akin them, down the Void,
Live, unalloyed.

II

“Know, Time is toothless, seen all through;
The Present, that men but see,
Is phasmal: since in a sane purview
All things are shaped to be
Eternally.

III

“Your ‘Now’ is just a gleam, a glide
Across your gazing sense:
With me, ‘Past,’ ‘Future,’ ever abide:
They come not, go not, whence
They are never hence.

IV

“As one upon a dark highway,
Plodding by lantern-light,
Finds but the reach of its frail ray
Uncovered to his sight,
Though mid the night

V

“The road lies all its length the same,
Forwardly as at rear,
So, outside what you ‘Present’ name,
Future and Past stand sheer,
Cognate and clear.”

VI

— Thus It: who straightway opened then
The vista called the Past,
Wherein were seen, as fair as when
They seemed they could not last,
Small things and vast.

VII

There were those songs, a score times sung,
With all their tripping tunes,
There were the laughters once that rung,
There those unmatched full moons,
Those idle noons!

VIII

There fadeless, fixed, were dust-dead flowers
Remaining still in blow;
Elsewhere, wild love-makings in bowers;
Hard by, that irised bow
Of years ago.

IX

There were my ever memorable
Glad days of pilgrimage,
Coiled like a precious parchment fell,
Illumined page by page,
Unhurt by age.

X

“ — Here you see spread those mortal ails
So powerless to restrain
Your young life’s eager hot assails,
With hazards then not plain
Till past their pain.

XI

“Here you see her who, by these laws
You learn of, still shines on,
As pleasing-pure as erst she was,
Though you think she lies yon,
Graved, glow all gone.

XII

“Here are those others you used to prize. —
But why go further we?
The Future? — Well, I would advise
You let the future be,
Unshown by me!

XIII

“‘Twould harrow you to see undraped
The scenes in ripe array
That wait your globe — all worked and shaped;
And I’ll not, as I say,
Bare them to-day.

XIV

“In fine, Time is a mock, — yea, such! —
As he might well confess:
Yet hath he been believed in much,
Though lately, under stress
Of science, less.

XV

“And hence, of her you asked about
At your first speaking: she
Hath, I assure you, not passed out
Of continuity,
But is in me.

XVI

“So thus doth Being’s length transcend
Time’s ancient regal claim
To see all lengths begin and end.
‘The Fourth Dimension’ fame
Bruits as its name.”

New Year’s Eve, 1922.

SO, TIME

(THE SAME THOUGHT RESUMED)

So, Time,
Royal, sublime;
Heretofore held to be
Master and enemy,
Thief of my Love’s adornings,
Despoiling her to scornings: —
The sound philosopher
Now sets him to aver
You are nought
But a thought
Without reality.

Young, old,
Passioned, cold,
All the loved-lost thus
Are beings continuous,
In dateless dure abiding,
Over the present striding
With placid permanence
That knows not transience:
Firm in the Vast,
First, last;
Afar, yet close to us.

AN INQUIRY

A PHANTASY

Circumdederunt me dolores mortis. — Ps. xviii.

I said to It: “We grasp not what you meant,
(Dwelling down here, so narrowly pinched and pent)
By crowning Death the King of the Firmament:
 — The query I admit to be
One of unwonted size,
But it is put you sorrowingly,
And not in idle-wise.”

“Sooth, since you ask me gravely,” It replied,
“Though too incisive questions I have decried,
This shows some thought, and may be justified.
I’ll gauge its value as I go
Across the Universe,
And bear me back in a moment or so
And say, for better or worse.”

Many years later, when It came again,
“That matter an instant back which brought you pain,”
It said, “and you besought me to explain:
Well, my forethoughtless modes to you
May seem a shameful thing,
But — I’d no meaning, that I knew,
In crowning Death as King!”

THE FAITHFUL SWALLOW

When summer shone
Its sweetest on
An August day,
“Here evermore,”
I said, “I’ll stay;
Not go away
To another shore
As fickle they!”

December came:
‘Twas not the same!
I did not know
Fidelity
Would serve me so.
Frost, hunger, snow;
And now, ah me,
Too late to go!

IN SHERBORNE ABBEY

(17**)

The moon has passed to the panes of the south-aisle wall,
And brought the mullioned shades and shines to fall
On the cheeks of a woman and man in a pew there, pressed
Together as they pant, and recline for rest.

Forms round them loom, recumbent like their own,
Yet differing; for they are chiselled in frigid stone;
In doublets are some; some mailed, as whilom ahorse they leapt:
And stately husbands and wives, side by side as they anciently slept.

“We are not like those,” she murmurs. “For ever here set!”
“True, Love,” he replies. “We two are not marble yet.”
“And, worse,” said she; “not husband and wife!”
“But we soon shall be” (from him) “if we’ve life!”
A silence. A trotting of horses is heard without.
The lovers scarce breathe till its echo has quite died out.

“It was they! They have passed, anyhow!”
“Our horse, slily hid by the conduit,
They’ve missed, or they’d rushed to impound it!”
“And they’ll not discover us now.”
“Will not, until ‘tis too late,
And we can outface them straight!”

“Why did you make me ride in your front?” says she.
“To outwit the law. That was my strategy.

As I was borne off on the pillion behind you,
Th’abductor was you, Dearest, let me remind you;
And seizure of me by an heiress is no felony,
Whatever to do it with me as the seizer may be.”

Another silence sinks. And a cloud comes over the moon:
The print of the panes upon them enfeebles, as fallen in a swoon,
Until they are left in darkness unbroke and profound,
As likewise are left their chill and chiselled neighbours around.

A Family tradition.

THE PAIR HE SAW PASS

O sad man, now a long dead man,
To whom it was so real,
I picture, as ‘twere yesterday,
How you would tell the tale!

Just wived were you, you sad dead man,
And “settling down,” you’d say,
And had rigged the house you had reared for yourself
And the mate now yours alway.

You had eyed and tried each door and lock,
And cupboard, and bell, and glass,
When you glanced across to the road without,
And saw a carriage pass.

It bowled along from the old town-gate;
Two forms its freight, and those
Were a just-joined pair, as you discerned
By the favours and the bows.

And one of the pair you saw was a Fair
Whom you had wooed awhile,
And the other you saw, with a creeping awe,
Was yourself, in bridegroom style.