A new Poetry blog

THE SONGS AND SONNETS OF JOHN DONNE

begins on Sunday 6th December at

http://thesongsandsonnetsofjohndonne.blogspot.com

-o=0=o-

-o0o-

A New Poetry Blog begins on Saturday 25th July 2015

POETRY - A PERSONAL CHOICE

http://poetry-apersonalchoice.blogspot.com

-o=0=o-

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

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

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

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

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

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

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

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

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

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

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

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

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

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

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

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

PAGE 35

THE OXEN

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.

"Now they are all on their knees,"

An elder said as we sat in a flock

By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where

They dwelt in their strawy pen,

Nor did it occur to one of us there

To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave

In these years! Yet, I feel,

If someone said on Christmas Eve

"Come; see the oxen kneel

"In the lonely barton by yonder coomb

Our childhood used to know,"

I should go with him in the gloom

Hoping it might be so.

-o0o-

CHRISTMASTIDE

The rain-shafts splintered on me

As despondently I strode;

The twilight gloomed upon me

And bleared the blank high-road.

Each bush gave forth, when blown on

By gusts in shower and shower,

A sigh, as it were sown on

In handfuls by a sower.

A cheerful voice called nigh me,

"A merry Christmas, friend!"

There rose a figure by me,

Walking with townward trend,

A sodden tramp's, who, breaking

Into thin song, bore straight

Ahead, direction taking

Toward the Casual's gate.

(The Casual's gate was the entrance to the workhouse in Dorchester)

-o0o-

An Epigram (Christmas 1924)

"Peace upon earth!" was said. We sing it,

And pay a million priests to bring it.

After two thousand years of mass

We've got as far as poison-gas.

-o0o-

THE NEXT POST HERE WILL BE ON THURSDAY 9TH JANUARY

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

PAGE 34

                            A TRAMPWOMAN'S TRAGEDY                        

1

From Wynyard's Gap the livelong day,

The livelong day,

We beat afoot the northward way

We had travelled times before.

The sun-blaze burning on our backs,

Our shoulders sticking to our packs,

By fosseway, fields, and turnpike tracks

We skirted sad Sedge-Moor.

2

         Full twenty miles we jaunted on,

We jaunted on, — 

My fancy-man, and jeering John,

And Mother Lee, and I.

And, as the sun drew down to west,

We climbed the toilsome Polden crest,

And saw, of landskip sights the best,

The inn that beamed thereby.

  3

Ay, side by side

Through the Great Forest, Blackmoor wide,

And where the Parret ran.

We'd faced the gusts on Mendip ridge,

Had crossed the Yeo unhelped by bridge,

Been stung by every Marshwood midge,
I and my fancy-man.

4

       Lone inns we loved, my man and I,

My man and I;

'King's Stag', 'Windwhistle' high and dry,

'The Horse' on Hintock Green,

The cosy house at Wynyard's Gap,

'The Hut', renowned on Bredy Knap,

And many another wayside tap

Where folk might sit unseen.

              5                   

O deadly day,

O deadly day! — 

I teased my fancy man in play

And wanton idleness.

I walked alongside jeering John,

I laid his hand my waist upon;

I would not bend my glances on

My lover's dark distress.

                               
6

Thus Poldon top at last we won,

At last we won,

And gained the inn at sink of sun

Far-famed as 'Marshal's Elm'.

Beneath us figured tor and lea,

From Mendip to the western sea — 

I doubt if any finer sight there be

Within this royal realm.

                7                 

Inside the settle all a-row —
All four a-row
We sat, I next to John, to show
That he had wooed and won.
And then he took me on his knee,
And swore it was his turn to be
My favoured mate, and Mother Lee
Passed to my former one.
                               
8

Then in a voice I had never heard,
I had never heard,
My only love to me: 'One word,
My lady, if you please!
Whose is the child you are like to bear? —
His? After all my months o' care?'
Gods knows 'twas not! But, O despair!
I nodded — still to tease.

                9                

Then he sprung, and with his knife —
And with his knife,
He let out jeering Johnny's life,
Yes; there at set of sun.
The slant ray through the window nigh
Gilded John's blood and glazing eye,
Ere scarcely Mother Lee and I
Knew that the deed was done.

                10                

The taverns tell the gloomy tale,
The gloomy tale,
How that at Ivel-Chester jail
My love, my sweetheart swung;
Though stained till now by no misdeed
Save one horse ta'en in time of need;
(Blue Jimmy stole right many a steed
Ere his last fling he flung.)

11

Thereaft I walked the world alone
Alone, alone!
On his death-day I gave my groan
And dropt his dead-born child.
'Twas nigh the jail, beneath a tree,
None tending me; for Mother Lee
Had died at Glaston, leaving me
Unfriended on the wild.

               12                

And in the night as I lay weak,
As I lay weak,
The leaves a-falling on my cheek,
The red moon low declined —
The ghost of him I'd die to kiss
Rose up and said: 'Ah, tell me this!
Was the child mine, or was it his?
Speak, that I my rest may find!'

                13                

O doubt but I told him then,
I told him then,
That I had kept me from all men
Since we joined lips and swore.
Whereat he smiled, and thinned away
As the wind stirred to call up day . . .
— 'Tis past! And here alone I stray
Haunting the Western Moor.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

PAGE 33

THE WEST-OF-WESSEX GIRL 

A very West-of-Wessex girl,

   As blithe as blithe could be,

   Was once well-known to me,

And she would laud her native town,

   And hope and hope that we

Might sometime study up and down

   Its charms in company.

But never I squired my Wessex girl

   In jaunts to Hoe or street

   When hearts were high in beat,

Nor saw her in the marbled ways

   Where market-people meet

That in her bounding early days

   Were friendly with her feet.

Yet now my West-of-Wessex girl,

   When midnight hammers slow

   From Andrew's, blow by blow,

As phantom draws me by the hand

   To the place - Plymouth Hoe -

Where side by side in life, as planned,

   We never were to go!

-o0o-

JUST THE SAME

I sat.  It all was past;
Hope never would hail again;
Fair days had ceased at a blast,
The world was a darkened den.

The beauty and dream were gone,
And the halo in which I had hied
So gaily gallantly on
Had suffered blot and died!

I went forth, heedless whither,
In a cloud too black for name:
- People frisked hither and thither;
The world was just the same.

-o0o-

THE 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.

-o0o-

TO A WELL-NAMED DWELLING

Glad old house of lichened stonework,
What I owed you in my lone work,
   Noon and night!
Whensoever faint or ailing,
Letting go my grasp and failing,
   You lent light.

How by that fair title came you?
Did some forward eye so name you
   Knowing that one,
Sauntering down his century blindly,
Would remark your sound, so kindly,
   And be won?

Smile in sunlight, sleep in moonlight,
Bask in April, May, and June-light,
   Zephyr-fanned;
Let your chambers show no sorrow,
Blanching day, or stuporing morrow,
   While they stand.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

PAGE 32

WHO'S IN THE NEXT ROOM?

"Who's in the next room? - who?

I seem to see

Somebody in the dawning passing through,

Unknown to me."

"Nay: you saw nought. He passed invisibly."

"Who's in the next room? - who?

I seem to hear

Somebody muttering firm in a language new

That chills my ear."

"No: you catch not his tongue who has entered there."

"Who's in the next room? - who?

I seem to feel

His breath like a clammy draught, as if it drew

From the Polar Wheel."

"No: none who breathes at all does the door conceal."

"Who's in the next room? - who?

A figure wan

With a message to one in there of something due?

Shall I know him anon?"

"Yea he; and he brought such; and you'll know him anon."

-o0o-

I SOMETIMES THINK

(For F. E. H)

I sometimes think as here I sit

Of things I have done,

Which seemed in doing not unfit

To face the sun;

Yet never a soul has paused a whit

On such - not one.

There was that eager strenuous press

To sow good seed;

There was that saving from distress

In the nick of need;

There were those words in the wilderness

Who cared to heed?

Yet can this be full true, or no?

For one did care,

And, spiriting into my house, to, fro,

Like wind on the stair,

Cares still, heeds all, and will, even though

I may despair.

-o0o-

THE FARM-WOMAN'S WINTER

If seasons all were summers,

And leaves would never fall,

And hopping casement-comers

Were foodless not at all,

And fragile folk might be here

That white winds bid depart;

Then one I used to see here

Would warm my wasted heart!

One frail, who, bravely tilling
Long hours in gripping gusts,
Was mastered by their chilling,
And now his ploughshare rusts,
So savage winter catches
The breath of limber things,
And what I love he snatches,
And what I love not, brings.

-o0o-

PAGE 31

THE INTERLOPER

There are three folk driving in a quaint old chaise,
And the cliff-side track looks green and fair;
I view them talking in quiet glee
As they drop down towards the puffins' lair
    By the roughest of ways;
But another with the three rides on, I see,
    Whom I like not to be there!

No: it's not anybody you think of. Next
A dwelling appears by a slow sweet stream
Where two sit happily and half in the dark:
They read, helped out by a frail-wick'd gleam,
    Some rhythmic text;
But one sits with them whom they don't mark,
    One I'm wishing could not be there.

No: not whom you knew and name. And now
I discern gay diners in a mansion-place,
And the guests dropping wit - pert, prim, or choice,
And the hostess's tender and laughing face,
    And the host's bland brow;
But I cannot help hearing a hollow voice,
    And I'd fain not hear it there.

No: it's not from the stranger you once met. Ah,
Yet a goodlier scene than that succeeds;
People on a lawn - quite a crowd of them. Yes,
And they chatter and ramble as fancy leads;
    And they say, "Hurrah!"

To a blithe speech made; save one, mirthless,
    Who ought not to be there.

Nay: it's not the pale Form your imagings raise,
That waits on us all at a destined time,
It is not the Fourth Figure the Furnace showed;
O that it were such a shape sublime
    In these latter days!
It is that under which best lives corrode;
    Would, would it could not be there!

-o0o-

LOGS ON THE HEARTH
In Memory of a Sister

 The fire advances along the log
Of the tree we felled,
Which bloomed and bore striped apples by the peck
Till its last hour of bearing knelled.

The fork that first my hand would reach
And then my foot
In climbings upward inch by inch, lies now
Sawn, sapless, darkening with soot.

Where the bark chars is where, one year,
It was pruned, and bled -
Then overgrew the wound. But now, at last,
Its growings all have stagnated.

My fellow-climber rises dim
From her chilly grave -
Just as she was, her foot near mine on the bending limb,
Laughing, her young brown hand awave.

-o0o-

A JANUARY NIGHT
(1879)

The rain smites more and more,
The east wind snarls and sneezes;
Through the joints of the quivering door
   The water wheezes.

The tip of each ivy-shoot
Writhes on its neighbour's face;
There is some hid dread afoot
   That we cannot trace.

Is it the spirit astray
Of the man at the house below
Whose coffin they took in today?
   We do not know.

-o0o-

THE DARK-EYED GENTLEMAN

I pitched my day’s leazings in Crimmercrock Lane,   
To tie up my garter and jog on again,   
When a dear dark-eyed gentleman passed there and said,   
In a way that made all o’ me colour rose-red,   
                “What do I see -          
                O pretty knee!”   
And he came and he tied up my garter for me.   

’Twixt sunset and moonrise it was, I can mind:   
Ah, ’tis easy to lose what we nevermore find! -   
Of the dear stranger’s home, of his name, I knew nought,           
But I soon knew his nature and all that it brought.   
                Then bitterly   
                Sobbed I that he   
Should ever have tied up my garter for me!   

Yet now I’ve beside me a fine lissom lad,           
And my slip’s nigh forgot, and my days are not sad;   
My own dearest joy is he, comrade, and friend,   
He it is who safe-guards me, on him I depend;   
                No sorrow brings he,   
                And thankful I be           
That his daddy once tied up my garter for me!   

-o0o-

MORE POETRY BY THOMAS HARDY NEXT THURSDAY

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

PAGE 30

THE OLD WORKMAN

"Why are you so bent down before your time,
Old mason? Many have not left their prime
So far behind at your age, and can still
Stand full upright at will."

He pointed to the mansion-front hard by,
And to the stones of the quoin against the sky;
"Those upper blocks," he said, "that there you see,
It was that ruined me."

There stood in the air up to the parapet
Crowning the corner height, the stones as set
By him - ashlar whereon the gales might drum
For centuries to come.

"I carried them up," he said, "by a ladder there;
The last was as big a load as I could bear;
But on I heaved; and something in my back
Moved, as 'twere with a crack.

"So I got crookt. I never lost that sprain;
And those who live there, walled from wind and rain
By freestone that I lifted, do not know
That my life's ache came so.

"They don't know me, or even know my name,
But good I think it, somehow, all the same
To have kept 'em safe from harm, and right and tight,
Though it has broke me quite.

"Yes; that I fixed it firm up there I am proud,
Facing the hail and snow and sun and cloud,
And to stand storms for ages, beating round
When I lie underground."

-o0o-

THE SUPERCEDED

As newer comers crowd the fore,
   We drop behind.
- We who have laboured long and sore
   Times out of mind,
And keen are yet, must not regret
   To drop behind.

Yet there are of us some who grieve
   To go behind;
Staunch, strenuous souls who scarce believe
   Their fires declined,
And know none cares, remembers, spares
   Who go behind.

 'Tis not that we have unforetold
   The drop behind;
We feel the new must oust the old
   In every kind;
But yet we think, must we, must WE,
   Too, drop behind?

-o0o-

AT THE RAILWAY STATION, UPWAY

"There is not much that I can do,
For I've no money that's quite my own!"
Spoke up the pitying child -
A little boy with a violin
At the station before the train came in, -
"But I can play my fiddle to you,
And a nice one 'tis, and good in tone!"

The man in the handcuffs smiled;
The constable looked, and he smiled, too,
As the fiddle began to twang;
And the man in the handcuffs suddenly sang
Uproariously:
"This life so free
Is the thing for me!"
And the constable smiled, and said no word,
As if unconscious of what he heard;
And so they went on till the train came in -
The convict, and boy with the violin.

-o0o-

THE WALK

You did not walk with me
Of late to the hill-top tree
By the gated ways,
As in earlier days;
You were weak and lame,
So you never came,
And I went alone, and I did not mind,
Not thinking of you as left behind.

I walked up there to-day
Just in the former way;
Surveyed around
The familiar ground
By myself again:
What difference, then?
Only that underlying sense
Of the look of a room on returning thence.

-o0o-

More poetry next Thursday

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-

PAGE 29

CHANNEL FIRING

That night your great guns, unawares,
Shook all our coffins as we lay,
And broke the chancel window-squares,
We thought it was the Judgement-day

And sat upright,  While drearisome
Arose the howl of wakened hounds:
The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,
The worm drew back into the mounds,

The glebe cow drooled. Till God cried,
"No; It's gunnery practice out at sea
Just as before you went below;
The world is as it used to be:

"All nations striving strong to make
Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters
They do no more for Christés sake
Than you who are helpless in such matters.

"That this is not the judgment-hour
For some of them's a blessed thing,
For if it were they'd have to scour
Hell's floor for so much threatening. . . .

"Ha, ha. It will be warmer when
I blow the trumpet (if indeed
I ever do; for you are men,
And rest eternal sorely need)."

So down we lay again. "I wonder,
Will the world ever saner be,"
Said one, "than when He sent us under
In our indifferent century!"

And many a skeleton shook his head.
"Instead of preaching forty year,"
My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,
"I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer."

Again the guns disturbed the hour,
Roaring their readiness to avenge,
As far inland as Stourton Tower,
And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.

-o0o-

HER FATHER 

I met her, as we had privily planned,
Where passing feet beat busily:
She whispered: "Father is at hand!
       He wished to walk with me."

His presence as he joined us there
Banished our words of warmth away;
We felt, with cloudings of despair,
       What Love must lose that day.

Her crimson lips remained unkissed,
Our fingers kept no tender hold,
His lack of feeling made the tryst
       Embarrassed, stiff, and cold.

A cynic ghost then rose and said,
"But is his love for her so small
That, nigh to yours, it may be read
       As of no worth at all?

"You love her for her pink and white;
But what when their fresh splendours close?
His love will last her in despite
       Of Time, and wrack, and foes."

-o0o-

I FOUND HER OUT THERE

I found her out there
On a slope few see,
That falls westwardly
To the salt-edged air,
Where the ocean breaks
On the purple strand,
And the hurricane shakes
The solid land.

I brought her here,
And have laid her to rest
In a noiseless nest
No sea beats near.
She will never be stirred
In her loamy cell
By the waves long heard
And loved so well.

So she does not sleep
By those haunted heights
The Atlantic smites
And the blind gales sweep,
Whence she often would gaze
At Dundagel's famed head,
While the dipping blaze
Dyed her face fire-red;

And would sigh at the tale
Of sunk Lyonesse,
As a wind-tugged tress
Flapped her cheek like a flail
Or listen at whiles
With a thought-bound brow
To the murmuring miles
She is far from now.

Yet her shade, maybe,
Will creep underground
Till it catch the sound
Of that western sea
As it swells and sobs
Where she once domiciled,
And joy in its throbs
With the heart of a child

-o0o-

 THE FROZEN GREENHOUSE

"There was a frost
Last night!" she said,
"And the stove was forgot
When we went to bed,
And the greenhouse plants
are frozen dead!"

By the breakfast blaze
Blank-faced spoke she,
Her scared young look
Seeming to be
The very symbol
Of tragedy.

The frost is fiercer
Than then today,
As I pass the place
Of her once dismay,
But the greenhouse stands
Warm, tight, and gay,

While she who grieved
At the sad lot
Of her pretty plants -
Cold, iced, forgot -
Herself is colder,
And knows it not.

-o0o-

My blog JOHN'S QUIET CORNER ran from My 2009 until May 2011.A new series begins tomorrow.

http://john-quietcorner.blogspot.com

PAGE 28

THE BLINDED BIRD

So zestfully canst thou sing?
And all this indignity,
With God's consent, on thee!
Blinded ere yet a-wing
By the red-hot needle thou,
I stand and wonder how
So zestfully thou canst sing!

Resenting not such wrong,
Thy grievous pain forgot,
Eternal dark thy lot,
Groping thy whole life long;
After that stab of fire;
Enjailed in pitiless wire;
Resenting not such wrong!

Who hath charity? This bird.
Who suffereth long and is kind,
Is not provoked, though blind
And alive ensepulchred?
Who hopeth, endureth all things?
Who thinketh no evil, but sings?
Who is divine? This bird.

-o0o-

A MAIDEN’S PLEDGE

I do not wish to win your vow
To take me soon or late as bride,
And lift me from the nook where now
I tarry your farings to my side.
I am blissful ever to abide
In this green labyrinth - let all be,
If but, whatever may betide,
You do not leave off loving me!

Your comet-comings I will wait
With patience time shall not wear through;
The yellowing years will not abate
My largened love and truth to you,
Nor drive me to complaint undue
Of absence, much as I may pine,
If never another 'twixt us two
Shall come, and you stand wholly mine.

-o0o-

THE FIVE STUDENTS

The sparrow dips in his wheel-rut bath,
   The sun grows passionate-eyed,
And boils the dew to smoke by the paddock-path;
   As strenuously we stride, —
Five of us; dark He, fair He, dark She, fair She, I,
  All beating by.

The air is shaken, the high-road hot,
   Shadowless swoons the day,
The greens are sobered and cattle at rest; but not
   We on our urgent way, —
Four of us; fair She, dark She, fair He, I, are there,
   But one - elsewhere.

Autumn moulds the hard fruit mellow,
   And forward still we press
Through moors, briar-meshed plantations, clay-pits yellow,
As in the spring hours - yes,
Three of us; fair He, fair She, I, as heretofore,
   But - fallen one more.

The leaf drops: earthworms draw it in
   At night-time noiselessly,
The fingers of birch and beech are skeleton-thin
   And yet on the beat are we, —
Two of us; fair She, I. But no more left to go
   The track we know.

Icicles tag the church-aisle leads,
   The flag-rope gibbers hoarse,
The home-bound foot-folk wrap their snow-flaked heads,
   Yet I still stalk the course —
One of us -  Dark and fair He, dark and fair She - gone:
   The rest - anon.

-o0o-

THE FALLOW DEER AT THE LONELY HOUSE

One without looks in to-night
Through the curtain-chink
From the sheet of glistening white;
One without looks in to-night
As we sit and think
By the fender-brink.

We do not discern those eyes
Watching in the snow;
Lit by lamps of rosy dyes
We do not discern those eyes
Wondering, aglow,
Fourfooted, tiptoe.

-o0o-

PAGE 27

AT MOONRISE AND ONWARDS

  I thought you a fire
   On Heron-Plantation Hill,
Dealing out mischief the most dire
   To the chattels of men of hire
      There in their vill.

      But by and by
   You turned a yellow-green,
Like a large glow-worm in the sky;
   And then I could descry
      Your mood and mien.

      How well I know
   Your furtive feminine shape!
As if reluctantly you show
   You nude of cloud, and but by favour throw
      Aside its drape -

     - How many a year
   Have you kept pace with me,
Wan Woman of the waste up there,
   Behind a hedge, or the bare
      Bough of a tree!

No novelty are you,
   O Lady of all my time,
Veering unbid into my view
   Whether I near Death's mew,
      Or Life's top cyme!

-o0o-

WHY BE AT PAINS

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.

-o0o-

A HOUSE WITH HISTORY

There is a house in a city street
   Some past ones made their own;
Its floors were criss-crossed by their feet,
      And their babblings beat
   From ceiling to white hearth-stone.

And who are peopling its parlours now?
   Who talk across its floor?
Mere freshlings are they, blank of brow,
      Who read not how
   Its prime had passed before

Their raw equipments, scenes, and says
   Afflicted its memoried face,
That had seen every larger phase
      Of human ways
   Before these filled the place.

To them that house's tale is theirs,
   No former voices call
Aloud therein.  Its aspect bears
      Their joys and cares
   Alone, from wall to wall.

-o0o-

GROWTH IN MAY

 I enter a daisy-and-buttercup land,
   And thence thread a jungle of grass:
Hurdles and stiles scarce visible stand
   Above the lush stems as I pass.

Hedges peer over, and try to be seen,
   And seem to reveal a dim sense
That amid such ambitious and elbow-high green
   They make a mean show as a fence.

Elsewhere the mead is possessed of the neats,
   That range not greatly above
The rich rank thicket which brushes their teats,
   And HER gown, as she waits for her Love.

-o0o-

PAGE 26

MIDNIGHT ON THE GREAT WESTERN

In the third-class seat sat the journeying boy,
And the roof-lamp's oily flame
Played down on his listless form and face,
Bewrapt past knowing to what he was going,
Or whence he came.

In the band of his hat the journeying boy
Had a ticket stuck; and a string
Around his neck bore the key of his box,
That twinkled gleams of the lamp's sad beams
Like a living thing.

What past can be yours, O journeying boy
Towards a world unknown,
Who calmly, as if incurious quite
On all at stake, can undertake
This plunge alone?

Knows your soul a sphere, O journeying boy,
Our rude realms far above,
Whence with spacious vision you mark and mete
This region of sin that you find you in,
But are not of?

-o0o-

THE DIVISION

Rain on the windows, creaking doors,
With blasts that besom the green,
And I am here, and you are there,
And a hundred miles between!

O were it but the weather, Dear,
O were it but the miles
That summed up all our severance,
There might be room for smiles.

But that thwart thing betwixt us twain,
Which nothing cleaves or clears,
Is more than distance, Dear, or rain,
And longer than the years!

-o0o-

PROUD SONGSTERS

The thrushes sing as the sun is going,
And the finches whistle in ones and pairs,
And as it gets dark loud nightingales
In bushes
Pipe, as they can when April wears,
As if all Time were theirs.

These are brand new birds of twelvemonths' growing,
Which a year ago, or less than twain,
No finches were, nor nightingales,
Nor thrushes,
But only particles of grain,
And earth and air and rain.

-o0o-

LYING AWAKE

You, Morningtide Star, now are steady-eyed, over the east,
      I know it as if I saw you;
You, Beeches, engrave on the sky your thin twigs, even the least;
      Had I paper and pencil I'd draw you.

You, Meadow, are white with your counterpane cover of dew,
      I see it as if I were there;
You, Churchyard, are lightening faint from the shade of the yew,
      The names creeping out everywhere.

-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-