PAGE 43

A WIFE IN LONDON

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

Though shaped so shortly:

He - has fallen - in the far South Land . . .

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.

-o0o-

BEREFT

In the black winter morning
No light will be struck near my eyes
While the clock in the stairway is warning
For five, when he used to rise.

Leave the door unbarred,
The clock unwound,
Make my lone bed hard -
Would 'twere underground!

When the summer dawns clearly,
And the appletree-tops seem alight,
Who will undraw the curtain and cheerly
Call out that the morning is bright?

When I tarry at market
No form will cross Durnover Lea
In the gathering darkness, to hark at
Grey's Bridge for the pit-pat o' me.

When the supper crock's steaming,
And the time is the time of his tread,
I shall sit by the fire and wait dreaming
In a silence as of the dead.

Leave the door unbarred,
The clock unwound,
Make my lone bed hard -
Would 'twere underground!

-o0o-

BEST TIMES

We went a day's excursion to the stream,
Basked by the bank, and bent to the ripple-gleam,
And I did not know
That life would show,
However it might flower, no finer glow.

I walked in the Sunday sunshine by the road
That wound towards the wicket of your abode,
And I did not think
That life would shrink
To nothing ere it shed a rosier pink.

Unlooked for I arrived on a rainy night,
And you hailed me at the door by the swaying light,
And I full forgot
That life might not
Again be touching that ecstatic height.

And that calm eve when you walked up the stair,
After a gaiety prolonged and rare,
No thought soever
That you might never
Walk down again, struck me as I stood there.

-o0o-

SITTING ON THE BRIDGE

Sitting on the bridge
Past the barracks, town and ridge,
At once the spirit seized us
To sing a song that pleased us -
As "The Fifth" were much in rumour;
It was "Whilst I'm in the humour,
Take me, Paddy, will you now?"
And a lancer soon drew nigh,
And his Royal Irish eye
Said, "Willing, faith, am I,
O, to take you anyhow, dears,
To take you anyhow."

But, lo! - dad walking by,
Cried, "What, you lightheels! Fie!
Is this the way you roam
And mock the sunset gleam?"
And he marched us straightway home,
Though we said, "We are only, daddy,
Singing, 'Will you take me, Paddy?'"
- Well, we never saw from then
If we sang there anywhen,
The soldier dear again,
Except at night in dream-time,
Except at night in dream.

Perhaps that soldier's fighting
In a land that's far away,
Or he may be idly plighting
Some foreign hussy gay;
Or perhaps his bones are whiting
In the wind to their decay! . . .
Ah! - does he mind him how
The girls he saw that day
On the bridge, were sitting singing
At the time of curfew-ringing,
"Take me, Paddy; will you now, dear?
Paddy, will you now?"

-o0o-

TODAY'S POST BRINGS THIS SERIES TO AN END.

HOWEVER, A NEW BLOG THE READING ROOM WHICH BEGINS ON SATURDAY 1ST MARCH WILL INCLUDE A POEM BY THOMAS HARDY EVERY WEEK

http://publicdomainessays.blogspot.com

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PAGE 42

THE SPELL OF THE ROSE

"I mean to build a hall anon,
And shape two turrets there,
And a broad newelled stair,
And a cool well for crystal water;
Yes; I will build a hall anon,
Plant roses love shall feed upon,
And apple trees and pear."

He set to build the manor-hall,
And shaped the turrets there,
And the broad newelled stair,
And the cool well for crystal water;
He built for me that manor-hall,
And planted many trees withal,
But no rose anywhere.

And as he planted never a rose
That bears the flower of love,
Though other flowers throve
A frost-wind moved our souls to sever
Since he had planted never a rose;
And misconceits raised horrid shows,
And agonies came thereof.

"I'll mend these miseries," then said I,
And so, at dead of night,
I went and, screened from sight,
That nought should keep our souls in severance,
I set a rose-bush."This," said I,
"May end divisions dire and wry,
And long-drawn days of blight."

But I was called from earth - yea, called
Before my rose-bush grew;
And would that now I knew
What feels he of the tree I planted,
And whether, after I was called
To be a ghost, he, as of old,
Gave me his heart anew!

Perhaps now blooms that queen of trees
I set but saw not grow,
And he, beside its glow -
Eyes couched of the mis-vision that blurred me -
Ay, there beside that queen of trees
He sees me as I was, though sees
Too late to tell me so!

-o0o-

IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM

What do you see in that time-touched stone,
When nothing is there
But ashen blankness, although you give it
A rigid stare?

You look not quite as if you saw,
But as if you heard,
Parting your lips, and treading softly
As mouse or bird.

It is only the base of a pillar, they'll tell you,
That came to us
From a far old hill men used to name
Areopagus."

"I know no art, and I only view
A stone from a wall,
But I am thinking that stone has echoed
The voice of Paul,

"Paul as he stood and preached beside it
Facing the crowd,
A small gaunt figure with wasted features,
Calling out loud

"Words that in all their intimate accents
Pattered upon
That marble front, and were far reflected,
And then were gone.

"I'm a labouring man, and know but little,
Or nothing at all;
But I can't help thinking that stone once echoed
The voice of Paul."

-o0o-

ON STURMINSTER FOOT-BRIDGE
(onomatopoeic)

Reticulations creep upon the slack stream's face

When the wind skims irritably past,

The current clucks smartly into each hollow place

That years of flood have scrabbled in the pier's sodden base;

The floating-lily leaves rot fast.

On a roof stand the swallows ranged in wistful waiting rows,

Till they arrow off and drop like stones

Among the *eyot-withies at whose foot the river flows;

And beneath the roof is she who in the dark world shows

As a lattice-gleam when midnight moans.

eyot = a small island, usually in a river

-o0o-

MORE POEMS NEXT THURSDAY

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PAGE 41

THE WELL-BELOVED

I went by star and planet shine 

   Towards the dear one's home 

At Kingsbere, there to make her mine 

   When the next sun upclomb. 

I edged the ancient hill and wood 

   Beside the Ikling Way, 

Nigh where the Pagan temple stood 

   In the world's earlier day. 

And as I quick and quicker walked 

   On gravel and on green, 

I sang to sky, and tree, or talked 

   Of her I called my queen. 

- "O faultless is her dainty form, 

   And luminous her mind; 

She is the God-created norm 

   Of perfect womankind!" 

A shape whereon one star-blink gleamed 

   Slid softly by my side, 

A woman's; and her motion seemed 

   The motion of my bride. 

And yet methought she'd drawn erstwhile 

   Out from the ancient leaze, 

Where once were pile and peristyle 

   For men's idolatries. 

- "O maiden lithe and lone, what may 

   Thy name and lineage be, 

Who so resemblest by this ray 

   My darling?--Art thou she?" 

The Shape: "Thy bride remains within 

   Her father's grange and grove." 

- "Thou speakest rightly," I broke in, 

   "Thou art not she I love." 

- "Nay: though thy bride remains inside 

   Her father's walls," said she, 

"The one most dear is with thee here, 

   For thou dost love but me." 

Then I: "But she, my only choice, 

   Is now at Kingsbere Grove?" 

Again her soft mysterious voice: 

   "I am thy only Love." 

Thus still she vouched, and still I said, 

   "O sprite, that cannot be!" . . . 

It was as if my bosom bled, 

   So much she troubled me. 

The sprite resumed: "Thou hast transferred 

   To her dull form awhile 

My beauty, fame, and deed, and word, 

   My gestures and my smile. 

"O fatuous man, this truth infer, 

   Brides are not what they seem; 

Thou lovest what thou dreamest her; 

   I am thy very dream!" 

- "O then," I answered miserably, 

   Speaking as scarce I knew, 

"My loved one, I must wed with thee 

   If what thou say'st be true!" 

She, proudly, thinning in the gloom: 

   "Though, since troth-plight began, 

I've ever stood as bride to groom, 

   I wed no mortal man!"

Thereat she vanished by the lane
Adjoining Kingsbere town,
Near where, men say, once stood the Fane
To Venus, on the Down.

When I arrived and met my bride
her look was pinched and thin,
As if her soul had shrunk and died,
And left a waste within.

-o0o-

*SHELLEY'S SKYLARK

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.

Lived 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. 

* Hardy was inspired to write that by Shelley's "To a Skylark" the poem which begins with these lines:

Hail to thee, blithe spirit!

Bird thou never wert - 

That from heaven or near it

Pourest thy full heart

In profuse strains of unpremeditated art.

Higher still and higher

From the earth thou springest,
Like a cloud of fire;
The blue deep thou wingest,
And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest.

-o0o-

THE WOUND

I climbed to the crest,
   And, fog-festooned,
The sun lay west
   Like a crimson wound:

Like that wound of mine
   Of which none knew,
For I'd given no sign
   That it pierced me through.

-o0o-

More poems next Thursday

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PAGE 40

THE DREAM IS - WHICH?

I am laughing by the brook with her,

Splashed in its tumbling stir;

And then it is a blankness looms

As if I walked not there,

Nor she, but found me in haggard rooms,

And treading a lonely stair.

With radiant cheeks and rapid eyes

We sit where none espies;

Till a harsh change comes edging in

As no such scene were there,

But winter, and I were bent and thin,

And cinder-grey my hair.

We dance in heys around the hall,

Weightless as thistleball;

And then a curtain drops between,

As if I danced not there,

But wandered through a mounded green

To find her, I knew where.

-o0o-

THE WHITEWASHED WALL

Why does she turn in that shy soft way

Whenever she stirs the fire,

And kiss to the chimney-corner wall,

As if entranced to admire

Its whitewashed bareness more than the sight

Of a rose in richest green?

I have known her long, but this raptured rite

I never before have seen.

Well, once when her son cast his shadow there,

A friend took a pencil and drew him

Upon that flame-lit wall. And the lines

Had a lifelike semblance to him.

And there long stayed his familiar look;

But one day, ere she knew,

The whitener came to cleanse the nook,

And covered the face from view.

"Yes," he said: "My brush goes on with a rush,

And the draught is buried under;

When you have to whiten old cots and brighten,

What else can you do, I wonder?"

But she knows he's there. And when she yearns

For him, deep in the labouring night,

She sees him as close as hand, and turns

To him under his sheet of white.

-o0o-

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!"

-o0o-

More poetry next Thursday

The new blog THE POETRY PATH will be updated tomorrow
http://thepoetrypath.blogspot.com

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PAGE 39

PENANCE

"Why do you sit, O pale thin man,
At the end of the room
By that harpsichord, built on the quaint old plan?
- It is cold as a tomb,
And there's not a spark within the grate;
And the jingling wires
Are vain desires
That have lagged too late."

"Why do I? Alas, far times ago
A woman lyred here
In the evenfall; one who fain did so
From year to year;
And, in loneliness bending wistfully,
Would wake each note
In sick sad rote,
None to listen or see.

"I would not join. I would not stay,
But drew away,
Though the winter fire beamed brightly - Aye!
I do today
What I would not then; and the chill old keys,
Like a skull's brown teeth
Loose in their sheath,
Freeze my touch; yes, freeze."

-o0o-

A WOOD FIRE

"This is a brightsome blaze you've lit, good friend, tonight!"
- "Aye, it has been the bleakest spring I have felt for years,
And nought compares with cloven logs to keep alight:
I buy them bargain-cheap of the executioners,
As I dwell near; and they wanted the crosses out of sight
By Passover, not to affront the eyes of visitors.

"Yes, they're from the crucifixions last week-ending
At Kranion. We can sometimes use the poles again,
But they get split by the nails, and 'tis quicker work than mending
To knock together new; though the uprights now and then
Serve twice when they're let stand. But if a feast's impending,
As lately, you've to tidy up for the corners' ken.

"Though only three were impaled, you may know it didn't pass off
So quietly as was wont? That Galilee carpenter's son
Who boasted he was king, incensed the rabble to scoff:
I heard the noise from my garden. This piece is the one he was on -
Yes, it blazes up well if lit with a few dry chips and shroff;
And it's worthless for much else, what with cuts and stains thereon."

-o0o-

THE OLD GOWN

I have seen her in gowns the brightest,
Of azure, green, and red,
And in the simplest, whitest,
Muslined from heel to head;
I have watched her walking, riding,
Shade-flecked by a leafy tree,
Or in fixed thought abiding
By the foam-fingered sea.

In woodlands I have known her,
When boughs were mourning loud,
In the rain-reek she has shown her
Wild-haired and water-browed.
And once or twice she has cast me
As she pomped along the street
Court-clad, ere quite she has passed me,
A glance from her chariot seat.

But in my memoried passion
For evermore stands she
In the gown of fading fashion
She wore that night when we,
Doomed long to part, assembled
In the snug, small room; yea, when
She sang with lips that trembled,
"Shall I see his face again?"

-o=0=o-

BLOG NEWS

There will be no further posts to POETRY AND PROSE - MY CHOICE.
Instead a new blog THE POETRY PATH will be begin on Saturday 1st February at
http://thepoetrypath.blogspot.com

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PAGE 38

I KNEW A LADY

I knew a lady when the days

Grew long, and evenings goldened;

But I was not emboldened

By her prompt eyes and winning ways.

And when old Winter nipt the haws,

"Another's wife I'll be,

And then you'll care for me,"

She said, "and think how sweet I was!"

And soon she shone as another's wife:

As such I often met her,

And sighed, "How I regret her!

My folly cuts me like a knife!"

And then, today, her husband came,

And moaned, "Why did you flout her?

Well could I do without her!

For both our burdens you are to blame!"

-o0o-

I WAS THE MIDMOST

I was the midmost of my world
When first I frisked me free,
For though within its circuit gleamed
But a small company,
And I was immature, they seemed
To bend their looks on me.

She was the midmost of my world
When I went further forth,
And hence it was that, whether I turned
To south, east, west, or north,
Beams of an all-day Polestar burned
From that new axe of earth.

Where now is midmost in my world?
I trace it not at all:
No midmost shows it here, or there,
When wistful voices call
"We are fain! We are fain!" from everywhere
On Earth's bewildering ball.

-o0o-

A PARTING-SCENE

The two pale women cried,

But the man seemed to suffer more,
Which he strove hard to hide,
They stayed in the waiting-room, behind the door,
Till startled by the entering engine-roar,
As if they could not bear to have unfurled
Their misery to the eyes of all the world.

A soldier and his young wife
Were the couple; his mother the third,
Who had seen the seams of life.
He was sailing for the East I later heard.
They kissed long, but they did not speak a word;
Then, strained, he went. To the elder the wife in tears
"Too long; too long!" burst out. ('Twas for five years,)

-o0o-

SNOW IN THE SUBURBS

Every branch big with it,
Bent every twig with it;
Every fork like a white web-foot;
Every street and pavement mute:
Some flakes have lost their way, and grope back upward, when
Meeting those meandering down they turn and descend again.
The palings are glued together like a wall,
And there is no waft of wind with the fleecy fall.

A sparrow enters the tree,
Whereon immediately
A snow-lump thrice his own slight size
Descends on him and showers his head and eyes,
And overturns him,
And near inurns him,
And lights on a nether twig, when its brush
Starts off a volley of other lodging lumps with a rush.

The steps are a blanched slope,
Up which, with feeble hope,
A black cat comes, wide-eyed and thin;
And we take him in.

-o0o-

The Thomas Hardy Poetry Page is normally updated every Thursday

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PAGE 37

AN UNKINDLY MAY

A shepherd stands by a gate in a white smock-frock;

He holds the gate ajar, intently counting his flock.

The sour spring wind is blurting boisterous-wise,

And bears on it dirty clouds across the skies;

Plantation timbers creak like rusty cranes,

And pigeons and rooks, dishevelled by late rains,

Are like gaunt vultures, sodden and unkempt,

And songbirds do not end what they attempt;

The buds have tried to open, but quite failing

Have pinched themselves together in their quailing.

The sun frowns whitely in eye-trying flaps

Through passing cloud-holes, mimicking audible taps.

"Nature, you're not commendable today!"

I think, "Better tomorrow," she seems to say.

That shepherd still stands in that white smock-frock,

Unnoting all things save the counting his flock.

-o0o-

SONG TO AN OLD BURDEN

The feet have left the wormholed flooring,

That danced to the ancient air,

The fiddler, all-ignoring,

Sleeps by the gray-grassed cello-player;

Shall I then foot around around around, 

As once I footed there!

The voice is heard to the room no longer

That trilled, none sweetlier,

To gentle steps or stronger,

Where now the dust-draped cobwebs stir;

Shall I then sing again again again,

As once I sang with her!

The eyes that beamed out rapid brightness

Have longtime found their close,

The cheeks have wanned to whiteness

That used to sort with summer rose;

Shall I then joy anew anew anew,

As once I joyed in those!

O what's to me this tedious Maying,

What's to me this June?

O why should viols be playing

To catch and reel and rigadoon?

Shall I sing, dance around around around,

When phantoms call the tune!

-o0o-

EVENING SHADOWS

The shadows of my chimneys stretch afar
Across the plot, and on to the privet bower,
And even the shadows of their smokings show,
And nothing says just now that where they are
They will in future stretch at this same hour,
Though in my earthen cyst I shall not know.

And at this time the neighbouring Pagan mound,
Whose myths the Gospel news now supersede,
Upon the greensward also throws its shade,
And nothing says such shade will spread around
Even as today when men will no more heed
The Gospel news than when the mound was made.

-o0o-

HE INADVERTENTLY CURES HIS LOVE-PAINS

I said: "O let me sing the praise
Of her who sweetly racks my days, -
Her I adore;
Her lips, her eyes, her moods, her ways."

In miseries of pulse and pang
I strung my harp, and straightway sang
As none before: -
To wondrous words my quavers rang!

Thus I let heartaches lilt my verse,
Which suaged and soothed, and made disperse
The smarts I bore
To stagnance like a sepulchre's.

But, eased, the days that thrilled ere then
Lost value; and I ask, O when,
And how, restore
Those old sweet agonies again.

-o0o-

The Thomas Hardy Poetry Page is normally updated every Thursday

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PAGE 36

THE SECOND VISIT

Clack, clack, clack, went the mill-wheel as I came,

And she was on the bridge with the thin hand-rail,

And the miller at the door, and the ducks at mill-tail;

I come again years after, and all there seems the same.

And so indeed it is: the apple-tree'd old house,

And the deep mill-pond, and the wet wheel clacking,

And a woman on the bridge, and white ducks quacking,

And the miller at the door, powdered pale from boots to brows.

But it's not the same miller whom long ago I knew,

Nor are they the same apples, nor the same drops that dash

Over the wet wheel, nor the ducks below that splash,

Nor the woman who to fond plaints replied, "You know I do!"

-o=0=o-

HE NEVER EXPECTED MUCH

A consideration on my eighty-sixth birthday

Well, World, you have kept faith with me,

Kept faith with me;

Upon the whole you have proved to be

Much as you said you were.

Since as a child I used to lie

Upon the leaze and watch the sky,

Never, I own, expected I

That life would all be fair.

'Twas then you said, and since have said,

Times since have said,

In that mysterious voice you shed

From clouds and hills around;

"Many have loved me desperately,

Many with smooth serenity,

While some have shown contempt of me

Till they dropped underground.

"I do not promise overmuch,

Child; overmuch;

Just neutral-tinted haps and such,"

You said to minds like mine.

Wise warning for your credit's sake!

Which I for one failed not to take,

And hence could stem such strain and ache

As each year might assign.

-o=0=o-

SILENCES

There is a silence of a copse or croft

When the wind sinks dumb,

And of a belfry-loft

When the tenor after tolling stops its hum.

And there's the silence of a lonely pond

Where a man was drowned,

Nor nigh nor yond

A newt, frog, toad, to make the merest sound.

But the rapt silence of an empty house

Where oneself was born,

Dwelt, held carouse

With friends, is of all silences most forlorn!

Past are remembered songs and music-strains

Once audible there:

Roof, rafters, panes

Look absent-thoughted, tranced, or locked in prayer.

It seems no power on earth can waken it

Or rouse its rooms,

Or its past permit

The present to stir a torpor like a tomb's.

-o=0=o-

 SHORTENING DAYS AT THE HOMESTEAD

The first fire since the summer is lit, and is smoking into the room:

The sun-rays thread it through, like woof-lines in a loom.

Sparrows spurt from the hedge, whom misgivings appal

That winter did not leave last year for ever, after all.

Like shock-headed urchins, spiny-haired,

Stand pollard willows, their twigs just bared.

Who is this coming with pondering pace,

Black and ruddy, with white embossed,

His eyes being black, and ruddy his face

And the marge of his hair like morning frost?

It's the cider-maker,

And apple-treeshaker,

And behind him on wheels, in readiness,

His mill, and tubs, and vat, and press.

-o=0=o-

The Thomas Hardy Poetry Page is normally updated every Thursday

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