Wessex Poems and Other Verses

Part 1

Transcribed from the 1919 Macmillan and Co. “Wessex Poems and Other Verses; Poems of the Past and the Present” edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

WESSEX POEMS AND OTHER VERSES

* * * * *

BY THOMAS HARDY

* * * * *

* * * * *

* * * * *

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON 1919

* * * * *

COPYRIGHT

“Wessex Poems”: First Edition, Crown 8vo, 1898. New Edition 1903. First Pocket Edition June 1907. Reprinted January 1909, 1913

“Poems, Past and Present”: First edition 1901 (dated 1902) Second Edition 1903. First Pocket Edition June 1907 Reprinted January 1908, 1913, 1918, 1919

* * * * *

PREFACE TO WESSEX POEMS

OF the miscellaneous collection of verse that follows, only four pieces have been published, though many were written long ago, and other partly written. In some few cases the verses were turned into prose and printed as such, it having been unanticipated at that time that they might see the light.

Whenever an ancient and legitimate word of the district, for which there was no equivalent in received English, suggested itself as the most natural, nearest, and often only expression of a thought, it has been made use of, on what seemed good grounds.

The pieces are in a large degree dramatic or personative in conception; and this even where they are not obviously so.

The dates attached to some of the poems do not apply to the rough sketches given in illustration, which have been recently made, and, as may be surmised, are inserted for personal and local reasons rather than for their intrinsic qualities.

T. H.

September 1898.

CONTENTS

PAGE THE TEMPORARY THE ALL 1 AMABEL 4 HAP 7 “IN VISION I ROAMED” 9 AT A BRIDAL 11 POSTPONEMENT 13 A CONFESSION TO A FRIEND IN TROUBLE 15 NEUTRAL TONES 17 SHE 19 HER INITIALS 21 HER DILEMMA 23 REVULSION 27 SHE, TO HIM, I. 31 ,, ,, II. 33 ,, ,, III. 35 ,, ,, IV. 37 DITTY 39 THE SERGEANT’S SONG 43 VALENCIENNES 45 SAN SEBASTIAN 51 THE STRANGER’S SONG 59 THE BURGHERS 61 LEIPZIG 67 THE PEASANT’S CONFESSION 79 THE ALARM 91 HER DEATH AND AFTER 103 THE DANCE AT THE PHŒNIX 115 THE CASTERBRIDGE CAPTAINS 125 A SIGN-SEEKER 129 MY CICELY 133 HER IMMORTALITY 143 THE IVY-WIFE 147 A MEETING WITH DESPAIR 149 UNKNOWING 153 FRIENDS BEYOND 155 TO OUTER NATURE 159 THOUGHTS OF PHENA 163 MIDDLE-AGE ENTHUSIASMS 167 IN A WOOD 169 TO A LADY 173 TO AN ORPHAN CHILD 175 NATURE’S QUESTIONING 177 THE IMPERCIPIENT 181 AT AN INN 187 THE SLOW NATURE 191 IN A EWELEAZE NEAR WEATHERBURY 195 THE FIRE AT TRANTER SWEATLEY’S 201 HEIRESS AND ARCHITECT 211 THE TWO MEN 217 LINES 223 “I LOOK INTO MY GLASS” 227

THE TEMPORARY THE ALL

CHANGE and chancefulness in my flowering youthtime, Set me sun by sun near to one unchosen; Wrought us fellow-like, and despite divergence, Friends interlinked us.

“Cherish him can I while the true one forthcome— Come the rich fulfiller of my prevision; Life is roomy yet, and the odds unbounded.” So self-communed I.

Thwart my wistful way did a damsel saunter, Fair, the while unformed to be all-eclipsing; “Maiden meet,” held I, “till arise my forefelt Wonder of women.”

Long a visioned hermitage deep desiring, Tenements uncouth I was fain to house in; “Let such lodging be for a breath-while,” thought I, “Soon a more seemly.

“Then, high handiwork will I make my life-deed, Truth and Light outshow; but the ripe time pending, Intermissive aim at the thing sufficeth.” Thus I . . . But lo, me!

Part 2

Mistress, friend, place, aims to be bettered straightway, Bettered not has Fate or my hand’s achieving; Sole the showance those of my onward earth-track— Never transcended!

AMABEL

I MARKED her ruined hues, Her custom-straitened views, And asked, “Can there indwell My Amabel?”

I looked upon her gown, Once rose, now earthen brown; The change was like the knell Of Amabel.

Her step’s mechanic ways Had lost the life of May’s; Her laugh, once sweet in swell, Spoilt Amabel.

I mused: “Who sings the strain I sang ere warmth did wane? Who thinks its numbers spell His Amabel?”—

Knowing that, though Love cease, Love’s race shows undecrease; All find in dorp or dell An Amabel.

—I felt that I could creep To some housetop, and weep, That Time the tyrant fell Ruled Amabel!

I said (the while I sighed That love like ours had died), “Fond things I’ll no more tell To Amabel,

“But leave her to her fate, And fling across the gate, ‘Till the Last Trump, farewell, O Amabel!’”

1865.

HAP

IF but some vengeful god would call to me From up the sky, and laugh: “Thou suffering thing, Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy, That thy love’s loss is my hate’s profiting!”

Then would I bear, and clench myself, and die, Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited; Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not so. How arrives it joy lies slain, And why unblooms the best hope ever sown? —Crass Casualty obstructs the sun and rain, And dicing Time for gladness casts a moan . . . These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

1866.

“IN VISION I ROAMED” TO —

IN vision I roamed the flashing Firmament, So fierce in blazon that the Night waxed wan, As though with an awed sense of such ostent; And as I thought my spirit ranged on and on

In footless traverse through ghast heights of sky, To the last chambers of the monstrous Dome, Where stars the brightest here to darkness die: Then, any spot on our own Earth seemed Home!

And the sick grief that you were far away Grew pleasant thankfulness that you were near? Who might have been, set on some outstep sphere, Less than a Want to me, as day by day I lived unware, uncaring all that lay Locked in that Universe taciturn and drear.

1866.

AT A BRIDAL TO —

WHEN you paced forth, to wait maternity, A dream of other offspring held my mind, Compounded of us twain as Love designed; Rare forms, that corporate now will never be!

Should I, too, wed as slave to Mode’s decree, And each thus found apart, of false desire, A stolid line, whom no high aims will fire As had fired ours could ever have mingled we;

And, grieved that lives so matched should mis-compose, Each mourn the double waste; and question dare To the Great Dame whence incarnation flows. Why those high-purposed children never were: What will she answer? That she does not care If the race all such sovereign types unknows.

1866.

POSTPONEMENT

SNOW-BOUND in woodland, a mournful word, Dropt now and then from the bill of a bird, Reached me on wind-wafts; and thus I heard, Wearily waiting:—

Part 3

“I planned her a nest in a leafless tree, But the passers eyed and twitted me, And said: ‘How reckless a bird is he, Cheerily mating!’

“Fear-filled, I stayed me till summer-tide, In lewth of leaves to throne her bride; But alas! her love for me waned and died, Wearily waiting.

“Ah, had I been like some I see, Born to an evergreen nesting-tree, None had eyed and twitted me, Cheerily mating!”

1866.

A CONFESSION TO A FRIEND IN TROUBLE

YOUR troubles shrink not, though I feel them less Here, far away, than when I tarried near; I even smile old smiles—with listlessness— Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries mere.

A thought too strange to house within my brain Haunting its outer precincts I discern: —That I will not show zeal again to learn Your griefs, and sharing them, renew my pain . . .

It goes, like murky bird or buccaneer That shapes its lawless figure on the main, And each new impulse tends to make outflee The unseemly instinct that had lodgment here; Yet, comrade old, can bitterer knowledge be Than that, though banned, such instinct was in me!

1866.

NEUTRAL TONES

WE stood by a pond that winter day, And the sun was white, as though chidden of God, And a few leaves lay on the starving sod, —They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove Over tedious riddles solved years ago; And some words played between us to and fro— On which lost the more by our love.

The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing Alive enough to have strength to die; And a grin of bitterness swept thereby Like an ominous bird a-wing . . .

Since then, keen lessons that love deceives, And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree, And a pond edged with grayish leaves.

1867.

SHE AT HIS FUNERAL

THEY bear him to his resting-place— In slow procession sweeping by; I follow at a stranger’s space; His kindred they, his sweetheart I. Unchanged my gown of garish dye, Though sable-sad is their attire; But they stand round with griefless eye, Whilst my regret consumes like fire!

Continue reading Wessex Poems and Other Verses free in the Wunder reader →