Part 1

Transcribed from the 1919 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

MOMENTS OF VISION AND MISCELLANEOUS VERSES

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BY THOMAS HARDY

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MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON 1929

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COPYRIGHT

First Edition 1917 Reprinted 1919 Pocket Edition 1919 Reprinted 1923, 1925, 1929 Wessex Edition 1919

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PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, EDINBURGH

CONTENTS

PAGE Moments of Vision 1 The Voice of Things 2 “Why be at pains?” 3 “We sat at the window” 4 Afternoon Service at Mellstock 5 At the Wicket-gate 6 In a Museum 7 Apostrophe to an Old Psalm Tune 8 At the Word “Farewell” 11 First Sight of Her and After 13 The Rival 14 Heredity 15 “You were the sort that men forget” 16 She, I, and They 17 Near Lanivet, 1872 18 Joys of Memory 20 To the Moon 21 Copying Architecture in an Old Minster 22 To Shakespeare 24 Quid hic agis? 27 On a Midsummer Eve 30 Timing Her 31 Before Knowledge 34 The Blinded Bird 35 “The wind blew words” 36 The Faded Face 37 The Riddle 38 The Duel 39 At Mayfair Lodgings 42 To my Father’s Violin 44 The Statue of Liberty 47 The Background and the Figure 50 The Change 51 Sitting on the Bridge 54 The Young Churchwarden 56 “I travel as a phantom now” 57 Lines to a Movement in Mozart’s E-flat Symphony 58 “In the seventies” 60 The Pedigree 62 This Heart. A Woman’s Dream 65 Where they lived 68 The Occultation 69 Life laughs Onward 70 The Peace-offering 71 “Something tapped” 72 The Wound 73 A Merrymaking in Question 74 “I said and sang her excellence” 75 A January Night. 1879 77 A Kiss 78 The Announcement 79 The Oxen 80 The Tresses 81 The Photograph 82 On a Heath 84 An Anniversary 85 “By the Runic Stone” 87 The Pink Frock 88 Transformations 89 In her Precincts 90 The Last Signal 91 The House of Silence 93 Great Things 95 The Chimes 97 The Figure in the Scene 98 “Why did I sketch” 99 Conjecture 100 The Blow 101 Love the Monopolist 103 At Middle-field Gate in February 105 The Youth who carried a Light 106 The Head above the Fog 108 Overlooking the River Stour 109 The Musical Box 111 On Sturminster Foot-bridge 113 Royal Sponsors 114 Old Furniture 116 A Thought in Two Moods 118 The Last Performance 119 “You on the tower” 120 The Interloper 122 Logs on the Hearth 124 The Sunshade 126 The Ageing House 128 The Caged Goldfinch 129 At Madame Tussaud’s in Victorian Years 130 The Ballet 132 The Five Students 133 The Wind’s Prophecy 135 During Wind and Rain 137 He prefers her Earthly 139 The Dolls 140 Molly gone 141 A Backward Spring 143 Looking Across 144 At a Seaside Town in 1869 146 The Glimpse 149 The Pedestrian 151 “Who’s in the next room?” 153 At a Country Fair 155 The Memorial Brass: 186- 156 Her Love-birds 158 Paying Calls 160 The Upper Birch-Leaves 161 “It never looks like summer” 162 Everything comes 163 The Man with a Past 164 He fears his Good Fortune 166 He wonders about Himself 167 Jubilate 168 He revisits his First School 171 “I thought, my heart” 173 Fragment 174 Midnight on the Great Western 176 Honeymoon Time at an Inn 177 The Robin 181 “I rose and went to Rou’tor town” 183 The Nettles 184 In a Waiting-room 185 The Clock-winder 187 Old Excursions 189 The Masked Face 191 In a Whispering Gallery 192 The Something that saved Him 193 The Enemy’s Portrait 195 Imaginings 197 On the Doorstep 198 Signs and Tokens 199 Paths of Former Time 201 The Clock of the Years 203 At the Piano 205 The Shadow on the Stone 206 In the Garden 208 The Tree and the Lady 209 An Upbraiding 211 The Young Glass-stainer 212 Looking at a Picture on an Anniversary 213 The Choirmaster’s Burial 215 The Man who forgot 217 While drawing in a Churchyard 219 “For Life I had never cared greatly” 221 POEMS OF WAR AND PATRIOTISM— “Men who march away” (Song of the 225 Soldiers) His Country 227 England to Germany in 1914 229 On the Belgian Expatriation 230 An Appeal to America on behalf of 231 the Belgian Destitute The Pity of It 232 In Time of Wars and Tumults 233 In Time of “the Breaking of 234 nations” Cry of the Homeless 235 Before Marching and After 237 “Often when warring” 239 Then and Now 240 A Call to National Service 242 The Dead and the Living One 243 A New Year’s Eve in War Time 246 “I met a man” 248 “I looked up from my writing” 250 FINALE— The Coming of the End 255 Afterwards 257

MOMENTS OF VISION

THAT mirror Which makes of men a transparency, Who holds that mirror And bids us such a breast-bare spectacle see Of you and me?

That mirror Whose magic penetrates like a dart, Who lifts that mirror And 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 mirror Are tincts we never see ourselves once take When the world is awake?

That mirror Can test each mortal when unaware; Yea, that strange mirror May 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 strings That Swithin’s day. Each gutter and spout Babbled unchecked in the busy way Of witless things: Nothing to read, nothing to see Seemed 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 infer How much there was to read and guess By 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.