THOMAS HARDY
"In Tenebris I"

"Percussus sum sicut foenum, et aruit cor meum."
Psalm 102

Wintertime nighs;
But my bereavement-pain
It cannot bring again:
Twice no one dies.

Flower-petals flee;
But, since it once hath been,
No more that severing scene
Can harrow me.

Birds faint in dread:
I shall not lose old strength
In the lone frost's black length:
Strength long since fled!

Leaves freeze to dun;
But friends can not turn cold
This season as of old
For him with none.

Tempests may scath;
But love can not make smart
Again this year his heart
Who no heart hath.

Black is night's cope;
But death will not appal
One who, past doubtings all,
Waits in unhope.

THOMAS HARDY

"How Great My Grief"

____________________

How great my grief, my joys how few,

Since first it was my fate to know thee!

- Have the slow years not brought to view

How great my grief, my joys how few,

Nor memory shaped old times anew,

   Nor loving-kindness helped to show thee

How great my grief, my joys how few,

   Since first it was my fate to know thee?

THOMAS HARDY

"Under the Waterfall"

____________________

'Whenever I plunge my arm, like this,

In a basin of water, I never miss

The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day

Fetched back from its thickening shroud of gray.

Hence the only prime

And real love-rhyme

That I know by heart,

And that leaves no smart,

Is the purl of a little valley fall

About three spans wide and two spans tall

Over a table of solid rock,

And into a scoop of the self-same block;

The purl of a runlet that never ceases

In stir of kingdoms, in wars, in peaces;

With a hollow boiling voice it speaks

And has spoken since hills were turfless peaks.'

'And why gives this the only prime

Idea to you of a real love-rhyme?

And why does plunging your arm in a bowl

Full of spring water, bring throbs to your soul?'

'Well, under the fall, in a crease of the stone,

Though precisely where none ever has known,

Jammed darkly, nothing to show how prized,

And by now with its smoothness opalized,

Is a drinking glass:

For, down that pass

My lover and I

Walked under a sky

Of blue with a leaf-wove awning of green,

In the burn of August, to paint the scene,

And we placed our basket of fruit and wine

By the runlet's rim, where we sat to dine;

And when we had drunk from the glass together,

Arched by the oak-copse from the weather,

I held the vessel to rinse in the fall,

Where it slipped, and it sank, and was past recall,

Though we stooped and plumbed the little abyss

With long bared arms. There the glass still is.

And, as said, if I thrust my arm below

Cold water in a basin or bowl, a throe

From the past awakens a sense of that time,

And the glass we used, and the cascade's rhyme.

The basin seems the pool, and its edge

The hard smooth face of the brook-side ledge,

And the leafy pattern of china-ware

The hanging plants that were bathing there.

'By night, by day, when it shines or lours,

There lies intact that chalice of ours,

And its presence adds to the rhyme of love

Persistently sung by the fall above.

No lip has touched it since his and mine

In turns therefrom sipped lovers' wine.'

THOMAS HARDY

"The Man He Killed"

____________________

Had he and I but met

By some old ancient inn,

We should have set us down to wet

Right many a nipperkin!

But ranged as infantry,

And staring face to face,

I shot at him as he at me,

And killed him in his place.

I shot him dead because--

Because he was my foe,

Just so: my foe of course he was;

That's clear enough; although

He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,

Off-hand like--just as I--

Was out of work--had sold his traps--

No other reason why.

Yes; quaint and curious war is!

You shoot a fellow down

You'd treat, if met where any bar is,

Or help to half a crown.

THOMAS HARDY

"In Tenebris"

____________________

Wintertime nighs;

But my bereavement-pain

It cannot bring again:

Twice no one dies.

Flower-petals flee;

But since it once hath been,

No more that severing scene

Can harrow me.

Birds faint in dread:

I shall not lose old strength

In the lone frost's black length:

Strength long since fled!

Leaves freeze to dun;

But friends cannot turn cold

This season as of old

For him with none.

Tempests may scath;

But love cannot make smart

Again this year his heart

Who no heart hath.

Black is night's cope;

But death will not appal

One, who past doubtings all,

Waits in unhope.

THOMAS HARDY

"Convergence of the Twain"

____________________

I

In a solitude of the sea

Deep from human vanity,

And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

II

Steel chambers, late the pyres

Of her salamandrine fires,

Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

III

Over the mirrors meant

To glass the opulent

The sea-worm crawls -- grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

IV

Jewels in joy designed

To ravish the sensuous mind

Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

V

Dim moon-eyed fishes near

Gaze at the gilded gear

And query: 'What does this vaingloriousness down here?'. . .

VI

Well: while was fashioning

This creature of cleaving wing,

The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

VII

Prepared a sinister mate

For her -- so gaily great --

A Shape of Ice, for the time fat and dissociate.

VIII

And as the smart ship grew

In stature, grace, and hue

In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

IX

Alien they seemed to be:

No mortal eye could see

The intimate welding of their later history.

X

Or sign that they were bent

By paths coincident

On being anon twin halves of one August event,

XI

Till the Spinner of the Years

Said 'Now!' And each one hears,

And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

THOMAS HARDY

“Between Us Now”

____________________

Between us now and here -

   Two thrown together

Who are not wont to wear

   Life's flushest feather -

Who see the scenes slide past,

The daytimes dimming fast,

Let there be truth at last,

   Even if despair.

So thoroughly and long

   Have you now known me,

So real in faith and strong

   Have I now shown me,

That nothing needs disguise

Further in any wise,

Or asks or justifies

   A guarded tongue.

Face unto face, then, say,

   Eyes mine own meeting,

Is your heart far away,

   Or with mine beating?

When false things are brought low,

And swift things have grown slow,

Feigning like froth shall go,

   Faith be for aye.

THOMAS HARDY

"His Immortality"

____________________

I

   I saw a dead man's finer part

Shining within each faithful heart

Of those bereft. Then said I: "This must be

   His immortality."

II

   I looked there as the seasons wore,

And still his soul continuously upbore

Its life in theirs. But less its shine excelled

   Than when I first beheld.

III

   His fellow-yearsmen passed, and then

In later hearts I looked for him again;

And found him--shrunk, alas! into a thin

   And spectral mannikin.

IV

   Lastly I ask--now old and chill -

If aught of him remain unperished still;

And find, in me alone, a feeble spark,

   Dying amid the dark.

THOMAS HARDY
"I Have Lived with Shades"
____________________

I

I have lived with shades so long,
And talked to them so oft,
Since forth from cot and croft
I went mankind among,
   That sometimes they
   In their dim style
   Will pause awhile
   To hear my say;

II

And take me by the hand,
And lead me through their rooms
In the To-be, where Dooms
Half-wove and shapeless stand:
   And show from there
   The dwindled dust
   And rot and rust
   Of things that were.

III

"Now turn," spake they to me
One day: "Look whence we came,
And signify his name
Who gazes thence at thee." -
   --"Nor name nor race
   Know I, or can,"
   I said, "Of man
   So commonplace.

IV

"He moves me not at all;
I note no ray or jot
Of rareness in his lot,
Or star exceptional.
   Into the dim
   Dead throngs around
   He'll sink, nor sound
   Be left of him."

V

"Yet," said they, "his frail speech,
Hath accents pitched like thine -
Thy mould and his define
A likeness each to each -
   But go! Deep pain
   Alas, would be
   His name to thee,
   And told in vain!"

"O memory, where is now my youth,
Who used to say that life was truth?"

"I saw him in a crumbled cot
   Beneath a tottering tree;
That he as phantom lingers there
   Is only known to me."

"O Memory, where is now my joy,
Who lived with me in sweet employ?"

"I saw him in gaunt gardens lone,
   Where laughter used to be;
That he as phantom wanders there
   Is known to none but me."

"O Memory, where is now my hope,
Who charged with deeds my skill and scope?"

"I saw her in a tomb of tomes,
   Where dreams are wont to be;
That she as spectre haunteth there
   Is only known to me."

"O Memory, where is now my faith,
One time a champion, now a wraith?"

"I saw her in a ravaged aisle,
   Bowed down on bended knee;
That her poor ghost outflickers there
   Is known to none but me."

"O Memory, where is now my love,
That rayed me as a god above?"

"I saw him by an ageing shape
   Where beauty used to be;
That his fond phantom lingers there
   Is only known to me."