POEMS OF THE PAST AND THE PRESENT

BY THOMAS HARDY

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

p. ivCOPYRIGHT

“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

p. xiCONTENTS

PAGE

V.R. 1819–1901

231

WAR POEMS—

Embarcation

235

Departure

237

The Colonel’s Soliloquy

239

The Going of the Battery

242

At the War Office

245

A Christmas Ghost-Story

247

The Dead Drummer

249

A Wife in London

251

The Souls of the Slain

253

Song of the Soldiers’ Wives

260

The Sick God

263

POEMS OF PILGRIMAGE—

Genoa and the Mediterranean

269

Shelley’s Skylark

272

In the Old Theatre, Fiesole

274

Rome: on the Palatine

276

,, Building a New Street in the Ancient Quarter

278

,, The Vatican: Sala Delle Muse

280

,, At the Pyramid of Cestius

283

Lausanne: In Gibbon’s Old Garden

286

Zermatt: To the Matterhorn

288

The Bridge of Lodi

290

On an Invitation to the United States

295

p. xiiMISCELLANEOUS POEMS—

The Mother Mourns

299

“I said to Love”

305

A Commonplace Day

307

At a Lunar Eclipse

310

The Lacking Sense

312

To Life

316

Doom and She

318

The Problem

321

The Subalterns

323

The Sleep-worker

325

The Bullfinches

327

God-Forgotten

329

The Bedridden Peasant to an Unknowing God

333

By the Earth’s Corpse

336

Mute Opinion

339

To an Unborn Pauper Child

341

To Flowers from Italy in Winter

344

On a Fine Morning

346

To Lizbie Browne

348

Song of Hope

352

The Well-Beloved

354

Her Reproach

358

The Inconsistent

360

A Broken Appointment

362

“Between us now”

364

“How great my Grief”

366

“I need not go”

367

The Coquette, and After

369

p. xiiiA Spot

371

Long Plighted

373

The Widow

375

At a Hasty Wedding

378

The Dream-Follower

379

His Immortality

380

The To-be-Forgotten

382

Wives in the Sere

385

The Superseded

387

An August Midnight

389

The Caged Thrush Freed and Home Again

391

Birds at Winter Nightfall

393

The Puzzled Game-Birds

394

Winter in Durnover Field

395

The Last Chrysanthemum

397

The Darkling Thrush

399

The Comet at Yalbury or Yell’ham

402

Mad Judy

403

A Wasted Illness

405

A Man

408

The Dame of Athelhall

412

The Seasons of her Year

416

The Milkmaid

418

The Levelled Churchyard

420

The Ruined Maid

422

The Respectable Burgher on “the Higher Criticism”

425

Architectural Masks

428

The Tenant-for-Life

430

p. xivThe King’s Experiment

432

The Tree: an Old Man’s Story

435

Her Late Husband

439

The Self-Unseeing

441

De Profundis i.

443

De Profundis ii.

445

De Profundis iii.

448

The Church-Builder

451

The Lost Pyx: a Mediæval Legend

457

Tess’s Lament

462

The Supplanter: A Tale

465

IMITATIONS, Etc.—

Sapphic Fragment

473

Catullus: xxxi

474

After Schiller

476

Song: From Heine

477

From Victor Hugo

479

Cardinal Bembo’s Epitaph on Raphael

480

RETROSPECT—

“I have Lived with Shades”

483

Memory and I

486

ἈΓΝΩΣΤΩι ΘΕΩι.

489

p. 231V.R. 1819–1901 A REVERIE

Moments the mightiest pass uncalendared, And when the Absolute In backward Time outgave the deedful word Whereby all life is stirred: “Let one be born and throned whose mould shall constitute The norm of every royal-reckoned attribute,” No mortal knew or heard. p. 232But in due days the purposed Life outshone— Serene, sagacious, free; —Her waxing seasons bloomed with deeds well done, And the world’s heart was won . . . Yet may the deed of hers most bright in eyes to be Lie hid from ours—as in the All-One’s thought lay she— Till ripening years have run.

Sunday Night, 27th January 1901.

p. 233WAR POEMS

p. 235EMBARCATION (Southampton Docks: October, 1899)

Here, where Vespasian’s legions struck the sands, And Cerdic with his Saxons entered in, And Henry’s army leapt afloat to win Convincing triumphs over neighbour lands,

Vaster battalions press for further strands, To argue in the self-same bloody mode Which this late age of thought, and pact, and code, Still fails to mend.—Now deckward tramp the bands, p. 236Yellow as autumn leaves, alive as spring; And as each host draws out upon the sea Beyond which lies the tragical To-be, None dubious of the cause, none murmuring,

Wives, sisters, parents, wave white hands and smile, As if they knew not that they weep the while.

p. 237DEPARTURE (Southampton Docks: October, 1899)

While the far farewell music thins and fails, And the broad bottoms rip the bearing brine— All smalling slowly to the gray sea line— And each significant red smoke-shaft pales,

Keen sense of severance everywhere prevails, Which shapes the late long tramp of mounting men To seeming words that ask and ask again: “How long, O striving Teutons, Slavs, and Gaels p. 238Must your wroth reasonings trade on lives like these, That are as puppets in a playing hand?— When shall the saner softer polities Whereof we dream, have play in each proud land, And patriotism, grown Godlike, scorn to stand Bondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas?”

p. 239THE COLONEL’S SOLILOQUY (Southampton Docks: October, 1899)

“The quay recedes. Hurrah! Ahead we go! . . . It’s true I’ve been accustomed now to home, And joints get rusty, and one’s limbs may grow More fit to rest than roam.

“But I can stand as yet fair stress and strain; There’s not a little steel beneath the rust; My years mount somewhat, but here’s to’t again! And if I fall, I must.

p. 240“God knows that for myself I’ve scanty care; Past scrimmages have proved as much to all; In Eastern lands and South I’ve had my share Both of the blade and ball.

“And where those villains ripped me in the flitch With their old iron in my early time, I’m apt at change of wind to feel a twitch, Or at a change of clime.

“And what my mirror shows me in the morning Has more of blotch and wrinkle than of bloom; My eyes, too, heretofore all glasses scorning, Have just a touch of rheum . . .

“Now sounds ‘The Girl I’ve left behind me,’—Ah, The years, the ardours, wakened by that tune! Time was when, with the crowd’s farewell ‘Hurrah!’ ’Twould lift me to the moon.

p. 241“But now it’s late to leave behind me one Who if, poor soul, her man goes underground, Will not recover as she might have done In days when hopes abound.

“She’s waving from the wharfside, palely grieving, As down we draw . . . Her tears make little show, Yet now she suffers more than at my leaving Some twenty years ago.

“I pray those left at home will care for her! I shall come back; I have before; though when The Girl you leave behind you is a grandmother, Things may not be as then.”

p. 242THE GOING OF THE BATTERY WIVES’ LAMENT (November 2, 1899)

I

O it was sad enough, weak enough, mad enough— Light in their loving as soldiers can be— First to risk choosing them, leave alone losing them Now, in far battle, beyond the South Sea! . . .

p. 243II

—Rain came down drenchingly; but we unblenchingly Trudged on beside them through mirk and through mire, They stepping steadily—only too readily!— Scarce as if stepping brought parting-time nigher.

III

Great guns were gleaming there, living things seeming there, Cloaked in their tar-cloths, upmouthed to the night; Wheels wet and yellow from axle to felloe, Throats blank of sound, but prophetic to sight.

IV

Gas-glimmers drearily, blearily, eerily Lit our pale faces outstretched for one kiss, While we stood prest to them, with a last quest to them Not to court perils that honour could miss.

p. 244V

Sharp were those sighs of ours, blinded these eyes of ours, When at last moved away under the arch All we loved. Aid for them each woman prayed for them, Treading back slowly the track of their march.

VI

Someone said: “Nevermore will they come: evermore Are they now lost to us.” O it was wrong! Though may be hard their ways, some Hand will guard their ways, Bear them through safely, in brief time or long.

VII

—Yet, voices haunting us, daunting us, taunting us, Hint in the night-time when life beats are low Other and graver things . . . Hold we to braver things, Wait we, in trust, what Time’s fulness shall show.

p. 245AT THE WAR OFFICE, LONDON (Affixing the Lists of Killed and Wounded: December, 1899)

I

Last year I called this world of gain-givings The darkest thinkable, and questioned sadly If my own land could heave its pulse less gladly, So charged it seemed with circumstance whence springs The tragedy of things.

p. 246II

Yet at that censured time no heart was rent Or feature blanched of parent, wife, or daughter By hourly blazoned sheets of listed slaughter; Death waited Nature’s wont; Peace smiled unshent From Ind to Occident.

p. 247A CHRISTMAS GHOST-STORY

South of the Line, inland from far Durban, A mouldering soldier lies—your countryman. Awry and doubled up are his gray bones, And on the breeze his puzzled phantom moans Nightly to clear Canopus: “I would know By whom and when the All-Earth-gladdening Law Of Peace, brought in by that Man Crucified, Was ruled to be inept, and set aside? p. 248And what of logic or of truth appears In tacking ‘Anno Domini’ to the years? Near twenty-hundred livened thus have hied, But tarries yet the Cause for which He died.”

Christmas-eve, 1899.

p. 249THE DEAD DRUMMER

I

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest Uncoffined—just as found: His landmark is a kopje-crest That breaks the veldt around; And foreign constellations west Each night above his mound.

p. 250II

Young Hodge the Drummer never knew— Fresh from his Wessex home— The meaning of the broad Karoo, The Bush, the dusty loam, And why uprose to nightly view Strange stars amid the gloam.

III

Yet portion of that unknown plain Will Hodge for ever be; His homely Northern breast and brain Grow up a Southern tree. And strange-eyed constellations reign His stars eternally.

p. 251A WIFE IN LONDON (December, 1899)

I THE TRAGEDY

She sits in the tawny vapour That the City lanes have uprolled, Behind whose webby fold on fold Like a waning taper The street-lamp glimmers cold.

A messenger’s knock cracks smartly, Flashed news is in her hand Of meaning it dazes to understand p. 252Though shaped so shortly: He—has fallen—in the far South Land . . .

II THE IRONY

’Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker, The postman nears and goes: A letter is brought whose lines disclose By the firelight flicker His hand, whom the worm now knows:

Fresh—firm—penned in highest feather— Page-full of his hoped return, And of home-planned jaunts by brake and burn In the summer weather, And of new love that they would learn.

p. 253THE SOULS OF THE SLAIN

I

The thick lids of Night closed upon me Alone at the Bill Of the Isle by the Race [253]— Many-caverned, bald, wrinkled of face— And with darkness and silence the spirit was on me To brood and be still.

p. 254II

No wind fanned the flats of the ocean, Or promontory sides, Or the ooze by the strand, Or the bent-bearded slope of the land, Whose base took its rest amid everlong motion Of criss-crossing tides.

III

Soon from out of the Southward seemed nearing A whirr, as of wings Waved by mighty-vanned flies, Or by night-moths of measureless size, And in softness and smoothness well-nigh beyond hearing Of corporal things.

IV

And they bore to the bluff, and alighted— A dim-discerned train Of sprites without mould, Frameless souls none might touch or might hold— p. 255On the ledge by the turreted lantern, farsighted By men of the main.

V

And I heard them say “Home!” and I knew them For souls of the felled On the earth’s nether bord Under Capricorn, whither they’d warred, And I neared in my awe, and gave heedfulness to them With breathings inheld.

VI

Then, it seemed, there approached from the northward A senior soul-flame Of the like filmy hue: And he met them and spake: “Is it you, O my men?” Said they, “Aye! We bear homeward and hearthward To list to our fame!”

p. 256VII

“I’ve flown there before you,” he said then: “Your households are well; But—your kin linger less On your glory arid war-mightiness Than on dearer things.”—“Dearer?” cried these from the dead then, “Of what do they tell?”

VIII

“Some mothers muse sadly, and murmur Your doings as boys— Recall the quaint ways Of your babyhood’s innocent days. Some pray that, ere dying, your faith had grown firmer, And higher your joys.

IX

“A father broods: ‘Would I had set him To some humble trade, And so slacked his high fire, And his passionate martial desire; p. 257Had told him no stories to woo him and whet him To this due crusade!”

X

“And, General, how hold out our sweethearts, Sworn loyal as doves?” —“Many mourn; many think It is not unattractive to prink Them in sables for heroes. Some fickle and fleet hearts Have found them new loves.”

XI

“And our wives?” quoth another resignedly, “Dwell they on our deeds?” —“Deeds of home; that live yet Fresh as new—deeds of fondness or fret; Ancient words that were kindly expressed or unkindly, These, these have their heeds.”

p. 258XII

—“Alas! then it seems that our glory Weighs less in their thought Than our old homely acts, And the long-ago commonplace facts Of our lives—held by us as scarce part of our story, And rated as nought!”

XIII

Then bitterly some: “Was it wise now To raise the tomb-door For such knowledge? Away!” But the rest: “Fame we prized till to-day; Yet that hearts keep us green for old kindness we prize now A thousand times more!”

XIV

Thus speaking, the trooped apparitions Began to disband And resolve them in two: Those whose record was lovely and true p. 259Bore to northward for home: those of bitter traditions Again left the land,

XV

And, towering to seaward in legions, They paused at a spot Overbending the Race— That engulphing, ghast, sinister place— Whither headlong they plunged, to the fathomless regions Of myriads forgot.

XVI

And the spirits of those who were homing Passed on, rushingly, Like the Pentecost Wind; And the whirr of their wayfaring thinned And surceased on the sky, and but left in the gloaming Sea-mutterings and me.

December 1899.

p. 260SONG OF THE SOLDIERS’ WIVES

I

At last! In sight of home again, Of home again; No more to range and roam again As at that bygone time? No more to go away from us And stay from us?— Dawn, hold not long the day from us, But quicken it to prime!

p. 261II

Now all the town shall ring to them, Shall ring to them, And we who love them cling to them And clasp them joyfully; And cry, “O much we’ll do for you Anew for you, Dear Loves!—aye, draw and hew for you, Come back from oversea.”

III

Some told us we should meet no more, Should meet no more; Should wait, and wish, but greet no more Your faces round our fires; That, in a while, uncharily And drearily Men gave their lives—even wearily, Like those whom living tires.

p. 262IV

And now you are nearing home again, Dears, home again; No more, may be, to roam again As at that bygone time, Which took you far away from us To stay from us; Dawn, hold not long the day from us, But quicken it to prime!

p. 263THE SICK GOD

I

In days when men had joy of war, A God of Battles sped each mortal jar; The peoples pledged him heart and hand, From Israel’s land to isles afar.

II

His crimson form, with clang and chime, Flashed on each murk and murderous meeting-time, p. 264And kings invoked, for rape and raid, His fearsome aid in rune and rhyme.

III

On bruise and blood-hole, scar and seam, On blade and bolt, he flung his fulgid beam: His haloes rayed the very gore, And corpses wore his glory-gleam.

IV

Often an early King or Queen, And storied hero onward, knew his sheen; ’Twas glimpsed by Wolfe, by Ney anon, And Nelson on his blue demesne.

V

But new light spread. That god’s gold nimb And blazon have waned dimmer and more dim; Even his flushed form begins to fade, Till but a shade is left of him.

p. 265VI

That modern meditation broke His spell, that penmen’s pleadings dealt a stroke, Say some; and some that crimes too dire Did much to mire his crimson cloak.

VII

Yea, seeds of crescive sympathy Were sown by those more excellent than he, Long known, though long contemned till then— The gods of men in amity.

VIII

Souls have grown seers, and thought out-brings The mournful many-sidedness of things With foes as friends, enfeebling ires And fury-fires by gaingivings!

IX

He scarce impassions champions now; They do and dare, but tensely—pale of brow; p. 266And would they fain uplift the arm Of that faint form they know not how.

X

Yet wars arise, though zest grows cold; Wherefore, at whiles, as ’twere in ancient mould He looms, bepatched with paint and lath; But never hath he seemed the old!

XI

Let men rejoice, let men deplore. The lurid Deity of heretofore Succumbs to one of saner nod; The Battle-god is god no more.

p. 267POEMS OF PILGRIMAGE

p. 269GENOA AND THE MEDITERRANEAN (March, 1887)

O epic-famed, god-haunted Central Sea, Heave careless of the deep wrong done to thee When from Torino’s track I saw thy face first flash on me.

p. 270And multimarbled Genova the Proud, Gleam all unconscious how, wide-lipped, up-browed, I first beheld thee clad—not as the Beauty but the Dowd.

Out from a deep-delved way my vision lit On housebacks pink, green, ochreous—where a slit Shoreward ’twixt row and row revealed the classic blue through it.

And thereacross waved fishwives’ high-hung smocks, Chrome kerchiefs, scarlet hose, darned underfrocks; Since when too oft my dreams of thee, O Queen, that frippery mocks:

Whereat I grieve, Superba! . . . Afterhours Within Palazzo Doria’s orange bowers Went far to mend these marrings of thy soul-subliming powers.

p. 271But, Queen, such squalid undress none should see, Those dream-endangering eyewounds no more be Where lovers first behold thy form in pilgrimage to thee.

p. 272SHELLEY’S SKYLARK (The neighbourhood of Leghorn: March, 1887)

Somewhere afield here something lies In Earth’s oblivious eyeless trust That moved a poet to prophecies— A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust

The dust of the lark that Shelley heard, And made immortal through times to be;— Though it only lived like another bird, And knew not its immortality.

p. 273Lived its meek life; then, one day, fell— A little ball of feather and bone; And how it perished, when piped farewell, And where it wastes, are alike unknown.

Maybe it rests in the loam I view, Maybe it throbs in a myrtle’s green, Maybe it sleeps in the coming hue Of a grape on the slopes of yon inland scene.

Go find it, faeries, go and find That tiny pinch of priceless dust, And bring a casket silver-lined, And framed of gold that gems encrust;

And we will lay it safe therein, And consecrate it to endless time; For it inspired a bard to win Ecstatic heights in thought and rhyme.

p. 274IN THE OLD THEATRE, FIESOLE (April, 1887)

I traced the Circus whose gray stones incline Where Rome and dim Etruria interjoin, Till came a child who showed an ancient coin That bore the image of a Constantine.

She lightly passed; nor did she once opine How, better than all books, she had raised for me p. 275In swift perspective Europe’s history Through the vast years of Cæsar’s sceptred line.

For in my distant plot of English loam ’Twas but to delve, and straightway there to find Coins of like impress. As with one half blind Whom common simples cure, her act flashed home In that mute moment to my opened mind The power, the pride, the reach of perished Rome.

p. 276ROME: ON THE PALATINE (April, 1887)

We walked where Victor Jove was shrined awhile, And passed to Livia’s rich red mural show, Whence, thridding cave and Criptoportico, We gained Caligula’s dissolving pile.

And each ranked ruin tended to beguile The outer sense, and shape itself as though p. 277It wore its marble hues, its pristine glow Of scenic frieze and pompous peristyle.

When lo, swift hands, on strings nigh over-head, Began to melodize a waltz by Strauss: It stirred me as I stood, in Cæsar’s house, Raised the old routs Imperial lyres had led,

And blended pulsing life with lives long done, Till Time seemed fiction, Past and Present one.

p. 278ROME BUILDING A NEW STREET IN THE ANCIENT QUARTER (April, 1887)