MOMENTS OF VISION AND MISCELLANEOUS VERSES
BY THOMAS HARDY
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON 1929
p. ivCOPYRIGHT
First Edition 1917 Reprinted 1919 Pocket Edition 1919 Reprinted 1923, 1925, 1929 Wessex Edition 1919
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, EDINBURGH
p. vCONTENTS
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
p. viTo 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
p. vii“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
p. viiiThe 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
p. ixThe 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
p. xIn 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 Soldiers)
225
His Country
227
England to Germany in 1914
229
On the Belgian Expatriation
230
p. xiAn Appeal to America on behalf of the Belgian Destitute
231
The Pity of It
232
In Time of Wars and Tumults
233
In Time of “the Breaking of nations”
234
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
p. 1MOMENTS 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?
p. 2THE 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.
p. 3“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.
p. 4“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.
p. 5AFTERNOON SERVICE AT MELLSTOCK (Circa 1850)
On afternoons of drowsy calm We stood in the panelled pew, Singing one-voiced a Tate-and-Brady psalm To the tune of “Cambridge New.”
We watched the elms, we watched the rooks, The clouds upon the breeze, Between the whiles of glancing at our books, And swaying like the trees.
So mindless were those outpourings!— Though I am not aware That I have gained by subtle thought on things Since we stood psalming there.
p. 6AT THE WICKET-GATE
There floated the sounds of church-chiming, But no one was nigh, Till there came, as a break in the loneness, Her father, she, I. And we slowly moved on to the wicket, And downlooking stood, Till anon people passed, and amid them We parted for good.
Greater, wiser, may part there than we three Who parted there then, But never will Fates colder-featured Hold sway there again. Of the churchgoers through the still meadows No single one knew What a play was played under their eyes there As thence we withdrew.
p. 7IN A MUSEUM
I
Here’s the mould of a musical bird long passed from light, Which over the earth before man came was winging; There’s a contralto voice I heard last night, That lodges in me still with its sweet singing.
II
Such a dream is Time that the coo of this ancient bird Has perished not, but is blent, or will be blending Mid visionless wilds of space with the voice that I heard, In the full-fugued song of the universe unending.
Exeter.
p. 8APOSTROPHE TO AN OLD PSALM TUNE
I met you first—ah, when did I first meet you? When I was full of wonder, and innocent, Standing meek-eyed with those of choric bent, While dimming day grew dimmer In the pulpit-glimmer.
Much riper in years I met you—in a temple Where summer sunset streamed upon our shapes, And you spread over me like a gauze that drapes, And flapped from floor to rafters, Sweet as angels’ laughters.
But you had been stripped of some of your old vesture By Monk, or another. Now you wore no frill, p. 9And at first you startled me. But I knew you still, Though I missed the minim’s waver, And the dotted quaver.
I grew accustomed to you thus. And you hailed me Through one who evoked you often. Then at last Your raiser was borne off, and I mourned you had passed From my life with your late outsetter; Till I said, “’Tis better!”
But you waylaid me. I rose and went as a ghost goes, And said, eyes-full “I’ll never hear it again! It is overmuch for scathed and memoried men When sitting among strange people Under their steeple.”
Now, a new stirrer of tones calls you up before me And wakes your speech, as she of Endor did (When sought by Saul who, in disguises hid, Fell down on the earth to hear it) Samuel’s spirit.
p. 10So, your quired oracles beat till they make me tremble As I discern your mien in the old attire, Here in these turmoiled years of belligerent fire Living still on—and onward, maybe, Till Doom’s great day be!
Sunday, August 13, 1916.
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