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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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