Late Lyrics And Earlier With Many Other Verses By Thomas Hardy

LATE LYRICS AND EARLIER WITH MANY OTHER VERSES Contents: Apology Weathers The maid of Keinton Mandeville Summer Schemes Epeisodia Faintheart in a Railway Train At Moonrise and Onwards The Garden Seat Barthelemon at Vauxhall “I sometimes think” Jezreel A Jog-trot Pair “The Curtains now are Drawn” “According to the Mighty Working” “I was not he” The West-of-Wessex Girl Welcome Home Going and Staying Read by Moonlight At a house in Hampstead A Woman’s Fancy Her Song A Wet August The Dissemblers To a Lady Playing and Singing in the Morning “A man was drawing near to me” The Strange House “As ’twere to-night” The Contretemps A Gentleman’s Epitaph on Himself and a Lady The Old Gown A night in November A Duettist to her Pianoforte “Where three roads joined” “And there was a great calm” Haunting Fingers The Woman I Met “If it’s ever spring again” The Two Houses On Stinsford Hill at Midnight The Fallow Deer at the Lonely House The Selfsame Song The Wanderer A Wife Comes Back A Young Man’s Exhortation At Lulworth Cove a Century Back A Bygone Occasion Two Serenades The Wedding Morning End of the Year 1912 The Chimes Play “Life’s a bumper!” “I worked no wile to meet you” At the Railway Station, Upway Side by Side Dream of the City Shopwoman A Maiden’s Pledge The Child and the Sage Mismet An Autumn Rain-scene Meditations on a Holiday An Experience The Beauty The Collector Cleans his Picture The Wood Fire Saying Good-bye On the tune called The Old-hundred-and-fourth The Opportunity Evelyn G. Of Christminster The Rift Voices from things growing in a Churchyard On the Way “She did not turn” Growth in May The Children and Sir Nameless At the Royal Academy Her Temple A Two-years’ Idyll By Henstridge Cross at the year’s end Penance “I look in her face” After the War “If you had known” The Chapel-organist Fetching Her “Could I but will” She revisits alone the church of her marriage At the Entering of the New Year They would not come After a romantic day The Two Wives “I knew a lady” A house with a History A Procession of Dead Days He Follows Himself The Singing Woman Without, not within her “O I won’t lead a homely life” In the small hours The little old table Vagg Hollow The dream is–which? The Country Wedding First or Last Lonely Days “What did it mean?” At the dinner-table The marble tablet The Master and the Leaves Last words to a dumb friend A drizzling Easter morning On one who lived and died where he was born The Second Night She who saw not The old workman The sailor’s mother Outside the casement The passer-by “I was the midmost” A sound in the night On a discovered curl of hair An old likeness Her Apotheosis “Sacred to the memory” To a well-named dwelling The Whipper-in A military appointment The milestone by the rabbit-burrow The Lament of the Looking-glass Cross-currents The old neighbour and the new The chosen The inscription The marble-streeted town A woman driving A woman’s trust Best times The casual acquaintance Intra Sepulchrum The whitewashed wall Just the same The last time The seven times The sun’s last look on the country girl In a London flat Drawing details in an old church Rake-hell muses The Colour Murmurs in the gloom Epitaph An ancient to ancients After reading psalms xxxix., xl. Surview APOLOGY About half the verses that follow were written quite lately. The rest are older, having been held over in MS. when past volumes were published, on considering that these would contain a sufficient number of pages to offer readers at one time, more especially during the distractions of the war. The unusually far back poems to be found here are, however, but some that were overlooked in gathering previous collections. A freshness in them, now unattainable, seemed to make up for their inexperience and to justify their inclusion. A few are dated; the dates of others are not discoverable. The launching of a volume of this kind in neo-Georgian days by one who began writing in mid-Victorian, and has published nothing to speak of for some years, may seem to call for a few words of excuse or explanation. Whether or no, readers may feel assured that a new book is submitted to them with great hesitation at so belated a date. Insistent practical reasons, however, among which were requests from some illustrious men of letters who are in sympathy with my productions, the accident that several of the poems have already seen the light, and that dozens of them have been lying about for years, compelled the course adopted, in spite of the natural disinclination of a writer whose works have been so frequently regarded askance by a pragmatic section here and there, to draw attention to them once more. I do not know that it is necessary to say much on the contents of the book, even in deference to suggestions that will be mentioned presently. I believe that those readers who care for my poems at all–readers to whom no passport is required–will care for this new instalment of them, perhaps the last, as much as for any that have preceded them. Moreover, in the eyes of a less friendly class the pieces, though a very mixed collection indeed, contain, so far as I am able to see, little or nothing in technic or teaching that can be considered a Star-Chamber matter, or so much as agitating to a ladies’ school; even though, to use Wordsworth’s observation in his Preface to Lyrical Ballads, such readers may suppose “that by the act of writing in verse an author makes a formal engagement that he will gratify certain known habits of association: that he not only thus apprises the reader that certain classes of ideas and expressions will be found in his book, but that others will be carefully excluded.” It is true, nevertheless, that some grave, positive, stark, delineations are interspersed among those of the passive, lighter, and traditional sort presumably nearer to stereotyped tastes. For– while I am quite aware that a thinker is not expected, and, indeed, is scarcely allowed, now more than heretofore, to state all that crosses his mind concerning existence in this universe, in his attempts to explain or excuse the presence of evil and the incongruity of penalizing the irresponsible–it must be obvious to open intelligences that, without denying the beauty and faithful service of certain venerable cults, such disallowance of “obstinate questionings” and “blank misgivings” tends to a paralysed intellectual stalemate. Heine observed nearly a hundred years ago that the soul has her eternal rights; that she will not be darkened by statutes, nor lullabied by the music of bells. And what is to- day, in allusions to the present author’s pages, alleged to be “pessimism” is, in truth, only such “questionings” in the exploration of reality, and is the first step towards the soul’s betterment, and the body’s also. If I may be forgiven for quoting my own old words, let me repeat what I printed in this relation more than twenty years ago, and wrote much earlier, in a poem entitled “In Tenebris”: If way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst: that is to say, by the exploration of reality, and its frank recognition stage by stage along the survey, with an eye to the best consummation possible: briefly, evolutionary meliorism. But it is called pessimism nevertheless; under which word, expressed with condemnatory emphasis, it is regarded by many as some pernicious new thing (though so old as to underlie the Christian idea, and even to permeate the Greek drama); and the subject is charitably left to decent silence, as if further comment were needless. Happily there are some who feel such Levitical passing-by to be, alas, by no means a permanent dismissal of the matter; that comment on where the world stands is very much the reverse of needless in these disordered years of our prematurely afflicted century: that amendment and not madness lies that way. And looking down the future these few hold fast to the same: that whether the human and kindred animal races survive till the exhaustion or destruction of the globe, or whether these races perish and are succeeded by others before that conclusion comes, pain to all upon it, tongued or dumb, shall be kept down to a minimum by lovingkindness, operating through scientific knowledge, and actuated by the modicum of free will conjecturally possessed by organic life when the mighty necessitating forces– unconscious or other–that have “the balancings of the clouds,” happen to be in equilibrium, which may or may not be often. To conclude this question I may add that the argument of the so- called optimists is neatly summarized in a stern pronouncement against me by my friend Mr. Frederic Harrison in a late essay of his, in the words: “This view of life is not mine.” The solemn declaration does not seem to me to be so annihilating to the said “view” (really a series of fugitive impressions which I have never tried to co-ordinate) as is complacently assumed. Surely it embodies a too human fallacy quite familiar in logic. Next, a knowing reviewer, apparently a Roman Catholic young man, speaks, with some rather gross instances of the suggestio falsi in his article, of “Mr. Hardy refusing consolation,” the “dark gravity of his ideas,” and so on. When a Positivist and a Catholic agree there must be something wonderful in it, which should make a poet sit up. But . . . O that ’twere possible! I would not have alluded in this place or anywhere else to such casual personal criticisms–for casual and unreflecting they must be- -but for the satisfaction of two or three friends in whose opinion a short answer was deemed desirable, on account of the continual repetition of these criticisms, or more precisely, quizzings. After all, the serious and truly literary inquiry in this connection is: Should a shaper of such stuff as dreams are made on disregard considerations of what is customary and expected, and apply himself to the real function of poetry, the application of ideas to life (in Matthew Arnold’s familiar phrase)? This bears more particularly on what has been called the “philosophy” of these poems–usually reproved as “queer.” Whoever the author may be that undertakes such application of ideas in this “philosophic” direction–where it is specially required–glacial judgments must inevitably fall upon him amid opinion whose arbiters largely decry individuality, to whom IDEAS are oddities to smile at, who are moved by a yearning the reverse of that of the Athenian inquirers on Mars Hill; and stiffen their features not only at sound of a new thing, but at a restatement of old things in new terms. Hence should anything of this sort in the following adumbrations seem “queer “–should any of them seem to good Panglossians to embody strange and disrespectful conceptions of this best of all possible worlds, I apologize; but cannot help it. Such divergences, which, though piquant for the nonce, it would be affectation to say are not saddening and discouraging likewise, may, to be sure, arise sometimes from superficial aspect only, writer and reader seeing the same thing at different angles. But in palpable cases of divergence they arise, as already said, whenever a serious effort is made towards that which the authority I have cited–who would now be called old-fashioned, possibly even parochial–affirmed to be what no good critic could deny as the poet’s province, the application of ideas to life. One might shrewdly guess, by the by, that in such recommendation the famous writer may have overlooked the cold-shouldering results upon an enthusiastic disciple that would be pretty certain to follow his putting the high aim in practice, and have forgotten the disconcerting experience of Gil Blas with the Archbishop. To add a few more words to what has already taken up too many, there is a contingency liable to miscellanies of verse that I have never seen mentioned, so far as I can remember; I mean the chance little shocks that may be caused over a book of various character like the present and its predecessors by the juxtaposition of unrelated, even discordant, effusions; poems perhaps years apart in the making, yet facing each other. An odd result of this has been that dramatic anecdotes of a satirical and humorous intention (such, e.g., as “Royal Sponsors”) following verse in graver voice, have been read as misfires because they raise the smile that they were intended to raise, the journalist, deaf to the sudden change of key, being unconscious that he is laughing with the author and not at him. I admit that I did not foresee such contingencies as I ought to have done, and that people might not perceive when the tone altered. But the difficulties of arranging the themes in a graduated kinship of moods would have been so great that irrelation was almost unavoidable with efforts so diverse. I must trust for right note-catching to those finely-touched spirits who can divine without half a whisper, whose intuitiveness is proof against all the accidents of inconsequence. In respect of the less alert, however, should any one’s train of thought be thrown out of gear by a consecutive piping of vocal reeds in jarring tonics, without a semiquaver’s rest between, and be led thereby to miss the writer’s aim and meaning in one out of two contiguous compositions, I shall deeply regret it. Having at last, I think, finished with the personal points that I was recommended to notice, I will forsake the immediate object of this Preface; and, leaving Late Lyrics to whatever fate it deserves, digress for a few moments to more general considerations. The thoughts of any man of letters concerned to keep poetry alive cannot but run uncomfortably on the precarious prospects of English verse at the present day. Verily the hazards and casualties surrounding the birth and setting forth of almost every modern creation in numbers are ominously like those of one of Shelley’s paper-boats on a windy lake. And a forward conjecture scarcely permits the hope of a better time, unless men’s tendencies should change. So indeed of all art, literature, and “high thinking” nowadays. Whether owing to the barbarizing of taste in the younger minds by the dark madness of the late war, the unabashed cultivation of selfishness in all classes, the plethoric growth of knowledge simultaneously with the stunting of wisdom, “a degrading thirst after outrageous stimulation” (to quote Wordsworth again), or from any other cause, we seem threatened with a new Dark Age. I formerly thought, like so many roughly handled writers, that so far as literature was concerned a partial cause might be impotent or mischievous criticism; the satirizing of individuality, the lack of whole-seeing in contemporary estimates of poetry and kindred work, the knowingness affected by junior reviewers, the overgrowth of meticulousness in their peerings for an opinion, as if it were a cultivated habit in them to scrutinize the tool-marks and be blind to the building, to hearken for the key-creaks and be deaf to the diapason, to judge the landscape by a nocturnal exploration with a flash-lantern. In other words, to carry on the old game of sampling the poem or drama by quoting the worst line or worst passage only, in ignorance or not of Coleridge’s proof that a versification of any length neither can be nor ought to be all poetry; of reading meanings into a book that its author never dreamt of writing there. I might go on interminably. But I do not now think any such temporary obstructions to be the cause of the hazard, for these negligences and ignorances, though they may have stifled a few true poets in the run of generations, disperse like stricken leaves before the wind of next week, and are no more heard of again in the region of letters than their writers themselves. No: we may be convinced that something of the deeper sort mentioned must be the cause. In any event poetry, pure literature in general, religion–I include religion because poetry and religion touch each other, or rather modulate into each other; are, indeed, often but different names for the same thing–these, I say, the visible signs of mental and emotional life, must like all other things keep moving, becoming; even though at present, when belief in witches of Endor is displacing the Darwinian theory and “the truth that shall make you free, men’s minds appear, as above noted, to be moving backwards rather than on. I speak, of course, somewhat sweepingly, and should except many isolated minds; also the minds of men in certain worthy but small bodies of various denominations, and perhaps in the homely quarter where advance might have been the very least expected a few years back–the English Church–if one reads it rightly as showing evidence of “removing those things that are shaken,” in accordance with the wise Epistolary recommendation to the Hebrews. For since the historic and once august hierarchy of Rome some generation ago lost its chance of being the religion of the future by doing otherwise, and throwing over the little band of neo-Catholics who were making a struggle for continuity by applying the principle of evolution to their own faith, joining hands with modern science, and outflanking the hesitating English instinct towards liturgical reform (a flank march which I at the time quite expected to witness, with the gathering of many millions of waiting agnostics into its fold); since then, one may ask, what other purely English establishment than the Church, of sufficient dignity and footing, and with such strength of old association, such architectural spell, is left in this country to keep the shreds of morality together? It may be a forlorn hope, a mere dream, that of an alliance between religion, which must be retained unless the world is to perish, and complete rationality, which must come, unless also the world is to perish, by means of the interfusing effect of poetry–“the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; the impassioned expression of science,” as it was defined by an English poet who was quite orthodox in his ideas. But if it be true, as Comte argued, that advance is never in a straight line, but in a looped orbit, we may, in the aforesaid ominous moving backward, be doing it pour mieux sauter, drawing back for a spring. I repeat that I forlornly hope so, notwithstanding the supercilious regard of hope by Schopenhauer, von Hartmann, and other philosophers down to Einstein who have my respect. But one dares not prophesy. Physical, chronological, and other contingencies keep me in these days from critical studies and literary circles Where once we held debate, a bandOf youthful friends, on mind and art (if one may quote Tennyson in this century of free verse). Hence I cannot know how things are going so well as I used to know them, and the aforesaid limitations must quite prevent my knowing hence- forward. I have to thank the editors and owners of The Times, Fortnightly, Mercury, and other periodicals in which a few of the poems have appeared for kindly assenting to their being reclaimed for collected publication. T. H. February 1922. WEATHERS This is the weather the cuckoo likes, And so do I;When showers betumble the chestnut spikes, And nestlings fly:And the little brown nightingale bills his best, And they sit outside at “The Travellers’ Rest,” And maids come forth sprig-muslin drest, And citizens dream of the south and west, And so do I. II This is the weather the shepherd shuns, And so do I;When beeches drip in browns and duns, And thresh, and ply;And hill-hid tides throb, throe on throe, And meadow rivulets overflow,And drops on gate-bars hang in a row, And rooks in families homeward go, And so do I. THE MAID OF KEINTON MANDEVILLE(A TRIBUTE TO SIR H. BISHOP) I hear that maiden stillOf Keinton MandevilleSinging, in flights that playedAs wind-wafts through us all,Till they made our mood a thrallTo their aery rise and fall, “Should he upbraid.” Rose-necked, in sky-gray gown,From a stage in Stower TownDid she sing, and singing smileAs she blent that dexterous voiceWith the ditty of her choice,And banished our annoys Thereawhile. One with such song had powerTo wing the heaviest hourOf him who housed with her.Who did I never knewWhen her spoused estate ondrew,And her warble flung its woo In his ear. Ah, she’s a beldame now,Time-trenched on cheek and brow,Whom I once heard as a maidFrom Keinton MandevilleOf matchless scope and skillSing, with smile and swell and trill, “Should he upbraid!” 1915 or 1916. SUMMER SCHEMES When friendly summer calls again, Calls againHer little fifers to these hills,We’ll go–we two–to that arched fane Of leafage where they prime their billsBefore they start to flood the plain With quavers, minims, shakes, and trills. “–We’ll go,” I sing; but who shall say What may not chance before that day! And we shall see the waters spring, Waters springFrom chinks the scrubby copses crown; And we shall trace their oncreepingTo where the cascade tumbles downAnd sends the bobbing growths aswing, And ferns not quite but almost drown. “–We shall,” I say; but who may sing Of what another moon will bring! EPEISODIA I Past the hills that peepWhere the leaze is smiling,On and on beguilingCrisply-cropping sheep;Under boughs of brushwoodLinking tree and treeIn a shade of lushwood, There caressed we! II Hemmed by city wallsThat outshut the sunlight,In a foggy dun light,Where the footstep fallsWith a pit-pat wearisomeIn its cadencyOn the flagstones drearisome There pressed we! III Where in wild-winged crowdsBlown birds show their whitenessUp against the lightnessOf the clammy clouds;By the random riverPushing to the sea,Under bents that quiver There rest we. FAINTHEART IN A RAILWAY TRAIN At nine in the morning there passed a church, At ten there passed me by the sea,At twelve a town of smoke and smirch, At two a forest of oak and birch, And then, on a platform, she: A radiant stranger, who saw not me.I queried, “Get out to her do I dare?” But I kept my seat in my search for a plea, And the wheels moved on. O could it but be That I had alighted there! 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! THE GARDEN SEAT Its former green is blue and thin,And its once firm legs sink in and in; Soon it will break down unaware,Soon it will break down unaware. At night when reddest flowers are black Those who once sat thereon come back;Quite a row of them sitting there,Quite a row of them sitting there. With them the seat does not break down, Nor winter freeze them, nor floods drown, For they are as light as upper air,They are as light as upper air! BARTHELEMON AT VAUXHALL Francois Hippolite Barthelemon, first-fiddler at Vauxhall Gardens, composed what was probably the most popular morning hymn-tune ever written. It was formerly sung, full-voiced, every Sunday in most churches, to Bishop Ken’s words, but is now seldom heard. He said: “Awake my soul, and with the sun,” . . . And paused upon the bridge, his eyes due east, Where was emerging like a full-robed priest The irradiate globe that vouched the dark as done. It lit his face–the weary face of one Who in the adjacent gardens charged his string, Nightly, with many a tuneful tender thing, Till stars were weak, and dancing hours outrun. And then were threads of matin music spun In trial tones as he pursued his way:“This is a morn,” he murmured, “well begun: This strain to Ken will count when I am clay!” And count it did; till, caught by echoing lyres, It spread to galleried naves and mighty quires. “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. JEZREELON ITS SEIZURE BY THE ENGLISH UNDER ALLENBY, SEPTEMBER 1918 Did they catch as it were in a Vision at shut of the day– When their cavalry smote through the ancient Esdraelon Plain, And they crossed where the Tishbite stood forth in his enemy’s way– His gaunt mournful Shade as he bade the King haste off amain? On war-men at this end of time–even on Englishmen’s eyes– Who slay with their arms of new might in that long-ago place, Flashed he who drove furiously? . . . Ah, did the phantom arise Of that queen, of that proud Tyrian woman who painted her face? Faintly marked they the words “Throw her down!” rise from Night eerily,Spectre-spots of the blood of her body on some rotten wall? And the thin note of pity that came: “A King’s daughter is she,” As they passed where she trodden was once by the chargers’ footfall? Could such be the hauntings of men of to-day, at the cease Of pursuit, at the dusk-hour, ere slumber their senses could seal? Enghosted seers, kings–one on horseback who asked “Is it peace?” . . .Yea, strange things and spectral may men have beheld in Jezreel! September 24, 1918. A JOG-TROT PAIR Who were the twain that trod this track So many times together Hither and back,In spells of certain and uncertain weather? Commonplace in conduct they Who wandered to and fro here Day by day:Two that few dwellers troubled themselves to know here. The very gravel-path was prim That daily they would follow: Borders trim:Never a wayward sprout, or hump, or hollow. Trite usages in tamest style Had tended to their plighting. “It’s just worth while,Perhaps,” they had said. “And saves much sad good-nighting.” And petty seemed the happenings That ministered to their joyance: Simple things,Onerous to satiate souls, increased their buoyance. Who could those common people be, Of days the plainest, barest? They were we;Yes; happier than the cleverest, smartest, rarest. “THE CURTAINS NOW ARE DRAWN”(SONG) I The curtains now are drawn, And the spindrift strikes the glass, Blown up the jagged pass By the surly salt sou’-west, And the sneering glare is gone Behind the yonder crest, While she sings to me:“O the dream that thou art my Love, be it thine, And the dream that I am thy Love, be it mine, And death may come, but loving is divine.” II I stand here in the rain, With its smite upon her stone, And the grasses that have grown Over women, children, men, And their texts that “Life is vain”; But I hear the notes as when Once she sang to me:“O the dream that thou art my Love, be it thine, And the dream that I am thy Love, be it mine, And death may come, but loving is divine.” 1913. “ACCORDING TO THE MIGHTY WORKING” I When moiling seems at cease In the vague void of night-time, And heaven’s wide roomage stormless Between the dusk and light-time, And fear at last is formless,We call the allurement Peace. II Peace, this hid riot, Change, This revel of quick-cued mumming, This never truly being, This evermore becoming, This spinner’s wheel onfleeingOutside perception’s range. 1917. “I WAS NOT HE”(SONG) I was not he–the manWho used to pilgrim to your gate,At whose smart step you grew elate, And rosed, as maidens can, For a brief span. It was not I who sangBeside the keys you touched so true With note-bent eyes, as if with you It counted not whence sprang The voice that rang . . . Yet though my destinyIt was to miss your early sweet,You still, when turned to you my feet, Had sweet enough to be A prize for me! 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 weMight 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 meetThat 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! Begun in Plymouth, March 1913. WELCOME HOME To my native place Bent upon returning, Bosom all day burning To be where my raceWell were known, ’twas much with me There to dwell in amity. Folk had sought their beds, But I hailed: to view me Under the moon, out to me Several pushed their heads,And to each I told my name,Plans, and that therefrom I came. “Did you? . . . Ah, ’tis true I once heard, back a long time, Here had spent his young time, Some such man as you . . .Good-night.” The casement closed again, And I was left in the frosty lane. GOING AND STAYING I The moving sun-shapes on the spray,The sparkles where the brook was flowing, Pink faces, plightings, moonlit May,These were the things we wished would stay; But they were going. II Seasons of blankness as of snow,The silent bleed of a world decaying, The moan of multitudes in woe,These were the things we wished would go; But they were staying. III Then we looked closelier at Time,And saw his ghostly arms revolvingTo sweep off woeful things with prime, Things sinister with things sublime Alike dissolving. READ BY MOONLIGHT I paused to read a letter of hers By the moon’s cold shine,Eyeing it in the tenderest way,And edging it up to catch each ray Upon her light-penned line.I did not know what years would flow Of her life’s span and mineEre I read another letter of hers By the moon’s cold shine! I chance now on the last of hers, By the moon’s cold shine;It is the one remaining pageOut of the many shallow and sage Whereto she set her sign.Who could foresee there were to be Such letters of pain and pineEre I should read this last of hers By the moon’s cold shine! AT A HOUSE IN HAMPSTEADSOMETIME THE DWELLING OF JOHN KEATS O poet, come you haunting hereWhere streets have stolen up all around, And never a nightingale pours one Full-throated sound? Drawn from your drowse by the Seven famed Hills, Thought you to find all just the sameHere shining, as in hours of old, If you but came? What will you do in your surpriseAt seeing that changes wrought in Rome Are wrought yet more on the misty slope One time your home? Will you wake wind-wafts on these stairs? Swing the doors open noisily?Show as an umbraged ghost beside Your ancient tree? Or will you, softening, the whileYou further and yet further look,Learn that a laggard few would fain Preserve your nook? . . . –Where the Piazza steps incline,And catch late light at eventide,I once stood, in that Rome, and thought, “‘Twas here he died.” I drew to a violet-sprinkled spot,Where day and night a pyramid keeps Uplifted its white hand, and said, “‘Tis there he sleeps.” Pleasanter now it is to holdThat here, where sang he, more of him Remains than where he, tuneless, cold, Passed to the dim. July 1920. A WOMAN’S FANCY “Ah Madam; you’ve indeed come back here? ‘Twas sad–your husband’s so swift death, And you away! You shouldn’t have left him: It hastened his last breath.” “Dame, I am not the lady you think me; I know not her, nor know her name;I’ve come to lodge here–a friendless woman; My health my only aim.” She came; she lodged. Wherever she rambled They held her as no other thanThe lady named; and told how her husband Had died a forsaken man. So often did they call her thuswise Mistakenly, by that man’s name,So much did they declare about him, That his past form and fame Grew on her, till she pitied his sorrow As if she truly had been the cause–Yea, his deserter; and came to wonder What mould of man he was. “Tell me my history!” would exclaim she; “OUR history,” she said mournfully.“But YOU know, surely, Ma’am?” they would answer, Much in perplexity. Curious, she crept to his grave one evening, And a second time in the dusk of the morrow; Then a third time, with crescent emotion Like a bereaved wife’s sorrow. No gravestone rose by the rounded hillock; –“I marvel why this is?” she said.– “He had no kindred, Ma’am, but you near.” –She set a stone at his head. She learnt to dream of him, and told them: “In slumber often uprises he,And says: ‘I am joyed that, after all, Dear, You’ve not deserted me!” At length died too this kinless woman, As he had died she had grown to crave; And at her dying she besought them To bury her in his grave. Such said, she had paused; until she added: “Call me by his name on the stone,As I were, first to last, his dearest, Not she who left him lone!” And this they did. And so it became there That, by the strength of a tender whim, The stranger was she who bore his name there, Not she who wedded him. HER SONG I sang that song on Sunday, To witch an idle while,I sang that song on Monday, As fittest to beguile;I sang it as the year outwore, And the new slid in;I thought not what might shape before Another would begin. I sang that song in summer, All unforeknowingly,To him as a new-comer From regions strange to me:I sang it when in afteryears The shades stretched out,And paths were faint; and flocking fears Brought cup-eyed care and doubt. Sings he that song on Sundays In some dim land afar,On Saturdays, or Mondays, As when the evening starGlimpsed in upon his bending face And my hanging hair,And time untouched me with a trace Of soul-smart or despair? A WET AUGUST Nine drops of water bead the jessamine, And nine-and-ninety smear the stones and tiles: – ‘Twas not so in that August–full-rayed, fine– When we lived out-of-doors, sang songs, strode miles. Or was there then no noted radiancyOf summer? Were dun clouds, a dribbling bough, Gilt over by the light I bore in me,And was the waste world just the same as now? It can have been so: yea, that threatenings Of coming down-drip on the sunless gray, By the then possibilities in thingsWere wrought more bright than brightest skies to-day. 1920. THE DISSEMBLERS “It was not you I came to please, Only myself,” flipped she;“I like this spot of phantasies, And thought you far from me.”But O, he was the secret spell That led her to the lea! “It was not she who shaped my ways, Or works, or thoughts,” he said.“I scarcely marked her living days, Or missed her much when dead.”But O, his joyance knew its knell When daisies hid her head! TO A LADY PLAYING AND SINGING IN THE MORNING Joyful lady, sing!And I will lurk here listening,Though nought be done, and nought begun, And work-hours swift are scurrying. Sing, O lady, still!Aye, I will wait each note you trill, Though duties due that press to doThis whole day long I unfulfil. “–It is an evening tune;One not designed to waste the noon,” You say. I know: time bids me go–For daytide passes too, too soon! But let indulgence be,This once, to my rash ecstasy:When sounds nowhere that carolled air My idled morn may comfort me! “A MAN WAS DRAWING NEAR TO ME” On that gray night of mournful drone, A part from aught to hear, to see,I dreamt not that from shires unknown In gloom, alone, By Halworthy,A man was drawing near to me. I’d no concern at anything,No sense of coming pull-heart play; Yet, under the silent outspreading Of even’s wing Where Otterham lay,A man was riding up my way. I thought of nobody–not of one,But only of trifles–legends, ghosts– Though, on the moorland dim and dun That travellers shun About these coasts,The man had passed Tresparret Posts. There was no light at all inland,Only the seaward pharos-fire,Nothing to let me understand That hard at hand By Hennett ByreThe man was getting nigh and nigher. There was a rumble at the door,A draught disturbed the drapery,And but a minute passed before, With gaze that bore My destiny,The man revealed himself to me. THE STRANGE HOUSE(MAX GATE, A.D. 2000) “I hear the piano playing– Just as a ghost might play.”“–O, but what are you saying? There’s no piano to-day;Their old one was sold and broken; Years past it went amiss.”“–I heard it, or shouldn’t have spoken: A strange house, this! “I catch some undertone here, From some one out of sight.”“–Impossible; we are alone here, And shall be through the night.”“–The parlour-door–what stirred it?” “–No one: no soul’s in range.”“–But, anyhow, I heard it, And it seems strange! “Seek my own room I cannot– A figure is on the stair!”“–What figure? Nay, I scan not Any one lingering there.A bough outside is waving, And that’s its shade by the moon.” “–Well, all is strange! I am craving Strength to leave soon.” “–Ah, maybe you’ve some vision Of showings beyond our sphere;Some sight, sense, intuition Of what once happened here?The house is old; they’ve hinted It once held two love-thralls,And they may have imprinted Their dreams on its walls? “They were–I think ’twas told me– Queer in their works and ways;The teller would often hold me With weird tales of those days.Some folk can not abide here, But we–we do not careWho loved, laughed, wept, or died here, Knew joy, or despair.” “AS ‘TWERE TO-NIGHT”(SONG) As ’twere to-night, in the brief space Of a far eventime, My spirit rang achimeAt vision of a girl of grace;As ’twere to-night, in the brief space Of a far eventime. As ’twere at noontide of to-morrow I airily walked and talked, And wondered as I walkedWhat it could mean, this soar from sorrow; As ’twere at noontide of to-morrow I airily walked and talked. As ’twere at waning of this week Broke a new life on me; Trancings of bliss to beIn some dim dear land soon to seek; As ’twere at waning of this week Broke a new life on me! THE CONTRETEMPS A forward rush by the lamp in the gloom, And we clasped, and almost kissed; But she was not the woman whom I had promised to meet in the thawing brume On that harbour-bridge; nor was I he of her tryst. So loosening from me swift she said: “O why, why feign to be The one I had meant!–to whom I have sped To fly with, being so sorrily wed!”– ‘Twas thus and thus that she upbraided me. My assignation had struck upon Some others’ like it, I found. And her lover rose on the night anon; And then her husband entered onThe lamplit, snowflaked, sloppiness around. “Take her and welcome, man!” he cried: “I wash my hands of her. I’ll find me twice as good a bride!” –All this to me, whom he had eyed,Plainly, as his wife’s planned deliverer. And next the lover: “Little I knew, Madam, you had a third! Kissing here in my very view!” –Husband and lover then withdrew. I let them; and I told them not they erred. Why not? Well, there faced she and I– Two strangers who’d kissed, or near, Chancewise. To see stand weeping by A woman once embraced, will tryThe tension of a man the most austere. So it began; and I was young, She pretty, by the lamp, As flakes came waltzing down among The waves of her clinging hair, that hung Heavily on her temples, dark and damp. And there alone still stood we two; She one cast off for me, Or so it seemed: while night ondrew, Forcing a parley what should doWe twain hearts caught in one catastrophe. In stranded souls a common strait Wakes latencies unknown, Whose impulse may precipitate A life-long leap. The hour was late, And there was the Jersey boat with its funnel agroan. “Is wary walking worth much pother?” It grunted, as still it stayed. “One pairing is as good as another Where all is venture! Take each other, And scrap the oaths that you have aforetime made.” . . . –Of the four involved there walks but one On earth at this late day. And what of the chapter so begun? In that odd complex what was done? Well; happiness comes in full to none: Let peace lie on lulled lips: I will not say. WEYMOUTH. A GENTLEMAN’S EPITAPH ON HIMSELF AND A LADY, WHO WERE BURIED TOGETHER I dwelt in the shade of a city, She far by the sea,With folk perhaps good, gracious, witty; But never with me. Her form on the ballroom’s smooth flooring I never once met,To guide her with accents adoring Through Weippert’s “First Set.” {1} I spent my life’s seasons with pale ones In Vanity Fair,And she enjoyed hers among hale ones In salt-smelling air. Maybe she had eyes of deep colour, Maybe they were blue,Maybe as she aged they got duller; That never I knew. She may have had lips like the coral, But I never kissed them,Saw pouting, nor curling in quarrel, Nor sought for, nor missed them. Not a word passed of love all our lifetime, Between us, nor thrill;We’d never a husband-and-wife time, For good or for ill. Yet as one dust, through bleak days and vernal, Lie I and lies she,This never-known lady, eternal Companion to me! THE OLD GOWN(SONG) 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 watery-browed.And once or twice she has cast me As she pomped along the streetCourt-clad, ere quite she had passed me, A glance from her chariot-seat. But in my memoried passion For evermore stands sheIn 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?” A NIGHT IN NOVEMBER I marked when the weather changed,And the panes began to quake,And the winds rose up and ranged,That night, lying half-awake. Dead leaves blew into my room,And alighted upon my bed,And a tree declared to the gloomIts sorrow that they were shed. One leaf of them touched my hand,And I thought that it was youThere stood as you used to stand,And saying at last you knew! (?) 1913. A DUETTIST TO HER PIANOFORTESONG OF SILENCE(E. L. H.–H. C. H.) Since every sound moves memories, How can I play youJust as I might if you raised no scene, By your ivory rows, of a form betweenMy vision and your time-worn sheen, As when each day youAnswered our fingers with ecstasy?So it’s hushed, hushed, hushed, you are for me! And as I am doomed to counterchord Her notes no moreIn those old things I used to know, In a fashion, when we practised so,“Good-night!–Good-bye!” to your pleated show Of silk, now hoar,Each nodding hammer, and pedal and key, For dead, dead, dead, you are to me! I fain would second her, strike to her stroke, As when she was by,Aye, even from the ancient clamorous “Fall Of Paris,” or “Battle of Prague” withal, To the “Roving Minstrels,” or “Elfin Call” Sung soft as a sigh:But upping ghosts press achefully,And mute, mute, mute, you are for me! Should I fling your polyphones, plaints, and quavers Afresh on the air,Too quick would the small white shapes be here Of the fellow twain of hands so dear;And a black-tressed profile, and pale smooth ear; –Then how shall I bearSuch heavily-haunted harmony?Nay: hushed, hushed, hushed you are for me! “WHERE THREE ROADS JOINED” Where three roads joined it was green and fair, And over a gate was the sun-glazed sea,And life laughed sweet when I halted there; Yet there I never again would be. I am sure those branchways are brooding now, With a wistful blankness upon their face, While the few mute passengers notice how Spectre-beridden is the place; Which nightly sighs like a laden soul, And grieves that a pair, in bliss for a spell Not far from thence, should have let it roll Away from them down a plumbless well While the phasm of him who fared starts up, And of her who was waiting him sobs from near, As they haunt there and drink the wormwood cup They filled for themselves when their sky was clear. Yes, I see those roads–now rutted and bare, While over the gate is no sun-glazed sea; And though life laughed when I halted there, It is where I never again would be. “AND THERE WAS A GREAT CALM”(ON THE SIGNING OF THE ARMISTICE, Nov. 11, 1918) I There had been years of Passion–scorching, cold, And much Despair, and Anger heaving high, Care whitely watching, Sorrows manifold, Among the young, among the weak and old, And the pensive Spirit of Pity whispered, “Why?” II Men had not paused to answer. Foes distraught Pierced the thinned peoples in a brute-like blindness, Philosophies that sages long had taught, And Selflessness, were as an unknown thought, And “Hell!” and “Shell!” were yapped at Lovingkindness. III The feeble folk at home had grown full-used To “dug-outs,” “snipers,” “Huns,” from the war-adept In the mornings heard, and at evetides perused; To day–dreamt men in millions, when they mused– To nightmare-men in millions when they slept. IV Waking to wish existence timeless, null, Sirius they watched above where armies fell; He seemed to check his flapping when, in the lull Of night a boom came thencewise, like the dull Plunge of a stone dropped into some deep well. V So, when old hopes that earth was bettering slowly Were dead and damned, there sounded “War is done!” One morrow. Said the bereft, and meek, and lowly, “Will men some day be given to grace? yea, wholly, And in good sooth, as our dreams used to run?” VI Breathless they paused. Out there men raised their glance To where had stood those poplars lank and lopped, As they had raised it through the four years’ dance Of Death in the now familiar flats of France; And murmured, “Strange, this! How? All firing stopped?” VII Aye; all was hushed. The about-to-fire fired not, The aimed-at moved away in trance-lipped song. One checkless regiment slung a clinching shot And turned. The Spirit of Irony smirked out, “What? Spoil peradventures woven of Rage and Wrong?” VIII Thenceforth no flying fires inflamed the gray, No hurtlings shook the dewdrop from the thorn, No moan perplexed the mute bird on the spray; Worn horses mused: “We are not whipped to-day”; No weft-winged engines blurred the moon’s thin horn. IX Calm fell. From Heaven distilled a clemency; There was peace on earth, and silence in the sky; Some could, some could not, shake off misery: The Sinister Spirit sneered: “It had to be!” And again the Spirit of Pity whispered, “Why?” HAUNTING FINGERSA PHANTASY IN A MUSEUM OF MUSICAL INSTRUMENTS “Are you awake, Comrades, this silent night? Well ’twere if all of our glossy gluey make Lay in the damp without, and fell to fragments quite!” “O viol, my friend, I watch, though Phosphor nears, And I fain would drowse away to its utter end This dumb dark stowage after our loud melodious years!” And they felt past handlers clutch them, Though none was in the room,Old players’ dead fingers touch them, Shrunk in the tomb. “‘Cello, good mate, You speak my mind as yours: Doomed to this voiceless, crippled, corpselike state, Who, dear to famed Amphion, trapped here, long endures?” “Once I could thrill The populace through and through, Wake them to passioned pulsings past their will.” . . . (A contra-basso spake so, and the rest sighed anew.) And they felt old muscles travel Over their tense contours,And with long skill unravel Cunningest scores. “The tender pat Of her aery finger-tips Upon me daily–I rejoiced thereat!” (Thuswise a harpsicord, as from dampered lips.) “My keys’ white shine, Now sallow, met a hand Even whiter. . . . Tones of hers fell forth with mine In sowings of sound so sweet no lover could withstand!” And its clavier was filmed with fingers Like tapering flames–wan, cold–Or the nebulous light that lingers In charnel mould. “Gayer than most Was I,” reverbed a drum; “The regiments, marchings, throngs, hurrahs! What a host I stirred–even when crape mufflings gagged me well-nigh dumb!” Trilled an aged viol: “Much tune have I set free To spur the dance, since my first timid trial Where I had birth–far hence, in sun-swept Italy!” And he feels apt touches on him From those that pressed him then; Who seem with their glance to con him, Saying, “Not again!” “A holy calm,” Mourned a shawm’s voice subdued, “Steeped my Cecilian rhythms when hymn and psalm Poured from devout souls met in Sabbath sanctitude.” “I faced the sock Nightly,” twanged a sick lyre, “Over ranked lights! O charm of life in mock, O scenes that fed love, hope, wit, rapture, mirth, desire!” Thus they, till each past player Stroked thinner and more thin,And the morning sky grew grayer And day crawled in. THE WOMAN I MET A stranger, I threaded sunken-hearted A lamp-lit crowd;And anon there passed me a soul departed, Who mutely bowed.In my far-off youthful years I had met her, Full-pulsed; but now, no more life’s debtor, Onward she slid In a shroud that furs half-hid. “Why do you trouble me, dead woman, Trouble me;You whom I knew when warm and human? –How it beThat you quitted earth and are yet upon it Is, to any who ponder on it, Past being read!” “Still, it is so,” she said. “These were my haunts in my olden sprightly Hours of breath;Here I went tempting frail youth nightly To their death;But you deemed me chaste–me, a tinselled sinner! How thought you one with pureness in her Could pace this street Eyeing some man to greet? “Well; your very simplicity made me love you Mid such town dross,Till I set not Heaven itself above you, Who grew my Cross;For you’d only nod, despite how I sighed for you; So you tortured me, who fain would have died for you! –What I suffered then Would have paid for the sins of ten! “Thus went the days. I feared you despised me To fling me a nodEach time, no more: till love chastised me As with a rodThat a fresh bland boy of no assurance Should fire me with passion beyond endurance, While others all I hated, and loathed their call. “I said: ‘It is his mother’s spirit Hovering aroundTo shield him, maybe!’ I used to fear it, As still I foundMy beauty left no least impression, And remnants of pride withheld confession Of my true trade By speaking; so I delayed. “I said: ‘Perhaps with a costly flower He’ll be beguiled.’I held it, in passing you one late hour, To your face: you smiled,Keeping step with the throng; though you did not see there A single one that rivalled me there! . . . Well: it’s all past. I died in the Lock at last.” So walked the dead and I together The quick among,Elbowing our kind of every feather Slowly and long;Yea, long and slowly. That a phantom should stalk there With me seemed nothing strange, and talk there That winter night By flaming jets of light. She showed me Juans who feared their call-time, Guessing their lot;She showed me her sort that cursed their fall-time, And that did not.Till suddenly murmured she: “Now, tell me, Why asked you never, ere death befell me, To have my love, Much as I dreamt thereof?” I could not answer. And she, well weeting All in my heart,Said: “God your guardian kept our fleeting Forms apart!”Sighing and drawing her furs around her Over the shroud that tightly bound her, With wafts as from clay She turned and thinned away. LONDON, 1918. “IF IT’S EVER SPRING AGAIN”(SONG) If it’s ever spring again, Spring again,I shall go where went I whenDown the moor-cock splashed, and hen, Seeing me not, amid their flounder,Standing with my arm around her;If it’s ever spring again, Spring again,I shall go where went I then. If it’s ever summer-time, Summer-time,With the hay crop at the prime,And the cuckoos–two–in rhyme,As they used to be, or seemed to,We shall do as long we’ve dreamed to, If it’s ever summer-time, Summer-time,With the hay, and bees achime. THE TWO HOUSES In the heart of night, When farers were not near, The left house said to the house on the right, “I have marked your rise, O smart newcomer here.” Said the right, cold-eyed: “Newcomer here I am, Hence haler than you with your cracked old hide, Loose casements, wormy beams, and doors that jam. “Modern my wood, My hangings fair of hue; While my windows open as they should, And water-pipes thread all my chambers through. “Your gear is gray, Your face wears furrows untold.” “–Yours might,” mourned the other, “if you held, brother, The Presences from aforetime that I hold. “You have not known Men’s lives, deaths, toils, and teens; You are but a heap of stick and stone: A new house has no sense of the have-beens. “Void as a drum You stand: I am packed with these, Though, strangely, living dwellers who come See not the phantoms all my substance sees! “Visible in the morning Stand they, when dawn drags in; Visible at night; yet hint or warning Of these thin elbowers few of the inmates win. “Babes new-brought-forth Obsess my rooms; straight-stretched Lank corpses, ere outborne to earth;Yea, throng they as when first from the ‘Byss upfetched. “Dancers and singers Throb in me now as once; Rich-noted throats and gossamered fingers Of heels; the learned in love-lore and the dunce. “Note here within The bridegroom and the bride, Who smile and greet their friends and kin, And down my stairs depart for tracks untried. “Where such inbe, A dwelling’s character Takes theirs, and a vague semblancy To them in all its limbs, and light, and atmosphere. “Yet the blind folk My tenants, who come and go In the flesh mid these, with souls unwoke, Of such sylph-like surrounders do not know.” “–Will the day come,” Said the new one, awestruck, faint, “When I shall lodge shades dim and dumb – And with such spectral guests become acquaint?” “–That will it, boy; Such shades will people thee, Each in his misery, irk, or joy,And print on thee their presences as on me.” ON STINSFORD HILL AT MIDNIGHT I glimpsed a woman’s muslined form Sing-songing airilyAgainst the moon; and still she sang, And took no heed of me. Another trice, and I beheld What first I had not scanned,That now and then she tapped and shook A timbrel in her hand. So late the hour, so white her drape, So strange the look it lentTo that blank hill, I could not guess What phantastry it meant. Then burst I forth: “Why such from you? Are you so happy now?”Her voice swam on; nor did she show Thought of me anyhow. I called again: “Come nearer; much That kind of note I need!”The song kept softening, loudening on, In placid calm unheed. “What home is yours now?” then I said; “You seem to have no care.”But the wild wavering tune went forth As if I had not been there. “This world is dark, and where you are,” I said, “I cannot be!”But still the happy one sang on, And had no heed of me. THE FALLOW DEER AT THE LONELY HOUSE One without looks in to-night Through the curtain-chinkFrom 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 dyesWe do not discern those eyes Wondering, aglow, Fourfooted, tiptoe. THE SELFSAME SONG A bird bills the selfsame song,