Thomas Hardy

A Load of brushes and baskets and cradles and chairs Labours along the street in the rain: With it a man, a woman, a pony with whiteybrown hairs. The man foots in front of

“No not where I shall make my own; But dig his grave just by The woman’s with the initialed stone – As near as he can lie – After whose death he seemed to

Some say the spot is banned; that the pillar Cross-and-Hand Attests to a deed of hell; But of else than of bale is the mystic tale That ancient Vale-folk tell. Ere Cernel’s Abbey ceased

A star looks down at me, And says: “Here I and you Stand each in our degree: What do you mean to do,- Mean to do?” I say: “For all I know, Wait, and

A bird sings the selfsame song, With never a fault in its flow, That we listened to here those long Long years ago. A pleasing marvel is how A strain of such rapturous rote

Knight, a true sister-love This heart retains; Ask me no other love, That way lie pains! Calm must I view thee come, Calm see thee go; Tale-telling tears of thine I must not know

‘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

UPON a noon I pilgrimed through A pasture, mile by mile, Unto the place where I last saw My dead Love’s living smile. And sorrowing I lay me down Upon the heated sod: It

SHOW thee as I thought thee When I early sought thee, Omen-scouting, All undoubting Love alone had wrought thee Wrought thee for my pleasure, Planned thee as a measure For expounding And resounding Glad

at news of her death Not a line of her writing have I Not a thread of her hair, No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby I may picture

I They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest Uncoffined just as found: His landmark is a kopje-crest That breaks the veldt around; And foreign constellations west Each night above his mound. II Young Hodge

I rose at night and visited The Cave of the Unborn, And crowding shapes surrounded me For tidings of the life to be, Who long had prayed the silent Head To speed their advent

Pale beech and pine-tree blue, Set in one clay, Bough to bough cannot you Bide out your day? When the rains skim and skip, Why mar sweet comradeship, Blighting with poison-drip Neighborly spray? Heart-halt

I sat in the Muses’ Hall at the mid of the day, And it seemed to grow still, and the people to pass away, And the chiselled shapes to combine in a haze of

I said to Love, “It is not now as in old days When men adored thee and thy ways All else above; Named thee the Boy, the Bright, the One Who spread a heaven

Queer are the ways of a man I know: He comes and stands In a careworn craze, And looks at the sands And in the seaward haze With moveless hands And face and gaze,

I My ardours for emprize nigh lost Since Life has bared its bones to me, I shrink to seek a modern coast Whose riper times have yet to be; Where the new regions claim

Here we broached the Christmas barrel, Pushed up the charred log-ends; Here we sang the Christmas carol, And called in friends. Time has tired me since we met here When the folk now dead

(E. L. G.) BENEATH a knap where flown Nestlings play, Within walls of weathered stone, Far away From the files of formal houses, By the bough the firstling browses, Lives a Sweet: no merchants

THOUGH I waste watches framing words to fetter Some spirit to mine own in clasp and kiss, Out of the night there looms a sense ’twere better To fail obtaining whom one fails to

The church flings forth a battled shade Over the moon-blanched sward: The church; my gift; whereto I paid My all in hand and hoard; Lavished my gains With stintless pains To glorify the Lord.

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

I There dwells a mighty pair – Slow, statuesque, intense – Amid the vague Immense: None can their chronicle declare, Nor why they be, nor whence. ,h II Mother of all things made, Matchless

I say, “She was as good as fair,” When standing by her mound; “Such passing sweetness,” I declare, “No longer treads the ground.” I say, “What living Love can catch Her bloom and bonhomie,

WHEN Lawyers strive to heal a breach, And Parsons practise what they preach; Then Little Boney he’ll pounce down, And march his men on London town! Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lorum, Rollicum-rorum, tol-lol-lay! When Justices hold equal

I He bends his travel-tarnished feet To where she wastes in clay: From day-dawn until eve he fares Along the wintry way; From day-dawn until eve repairs Unto her mound to pray. II “Are

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,

Why did you give no hint that night That quickly after the morrow’s dawn, And calmly, as if indifferent quite, You would close your term here, up and be gone Where I could not

O life with the sad seared face, I weary of seeing thee, And thy draggled cloak, and thy hobbling pace, And thy too-forced pleasantry! I know what thou would’st tell Of Death, Time, Destiny

I It bends far over Yell’ham Plain, And we, from Yell’ham Height, Stand and regard its fiery train, So soon to swim from sight. II It will return long years hence, when As now

Here is the ancient floor, Footworn and hollowed and thin, Here was the former door Where the dead feet walked in. She sat here in her chair, Smiling into the fire; He who played

Long have I framed weak phantasies of Thee, O Willer masked and dumb! Who makest Life become, – As though by labouring all-unknowingly, Like one whom reveries numb. How much of consciousness informs Thy

O epic-famed, god-haunted Central Sea, Heave careless of the deep wrong done to thee When from Torino’s track I saw thy face first flash on me. And multimarbled Genova the Proud, Gleam all unconscious

As I drive to the junction of lane and highway, And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette, I look behind at the fading byway, And see on its slope, now glistening wet, Distinctly yet Myself

I At last! In sight of home again, Of home again; No more to range and roam again As at that bygone time? No more to go away from us And stay from us?

“ALIVE?” And I leapt in my wonder, Was faint of my joyance, And grasses and grove shone in garments Of glory to me. “She lives, in a plenteous well-being, To-day as aforehand; The dead

I Last year I called this world of gain-givings The darkest thinkable, and questioned sadly If my own land could heave its pulse less gladly, So charged it seemed with circumstance whence springs The

Why should this flower delay so long To show its tremulous plumes? Now is the time of plaintive robin-song, When flowers are in their tombs. Through the slow summer, when the sun Called to

(After passing Sirmione, April 1887.) Sirmio, thou dearest dear of strands That Neptune strokes in lake and sea, With what high joy from stranger lands Doth thy old friend set foot on thee! Yea,

I MARK the months in liveries dank and dry, The day-tides many-shaped and hued; I see the nightfall shades subtrude, And hear the monotonous hours clang negligently by. I view the evening bonfires of

‘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

When the wasting embers redden the chimney-breast, And Life’s bare pathway looms like a desert track to me, And from hall and parlour the living have gone to their rest, My perished people who

The Fire at Tranter Sweatley’s THEY had long met o’ Zundays her true love and she And at junketings, maypoles, and flings; But she bode wi’ a thirtover uncle, and he Swore by noon

I Dear Lizbie Browne, Where are you now? In sun, in rain? – Or is your brow Past joy, past pain, Dear Lizbie Browne? II Sweet Lizbie Browne How you could smile, How you

When battles were fought With a chivalrous sense of should and ought, In spirit men said, “End we quick or dead, Honour is some reward! Let us fight fair for our own best or

Who, then, was Cestius, And what is he to me? – Amid thick thoughts and memories multitudinous One thought alone brings he. I can recall no word Of anything he did; For me he

I There is a house with ivied walls, And mullioned windows worn and old, And the long dwellers in those halls Have souls that know but sordid calls, And dote on gold. II In

“O lonely workman, standing there In a dream, why do you stare and stare At her grave, as no other grave where there?” “If your great gaunt eyes so importune Her soul by the

Child, were I king, I’d yield my royal rule, My chariot, sceptre, vassal-service due, My crown, my porphyry-basined waters cool, My fleets, whereto the sea is but a pool, For a glance from you!

I do not see the hills around, Nor mark the tints the copses wear; I do not note the grassy ground And constellated daisies there. I hear not the contralto note Of cuckoos hid