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.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Once let a maiden admit the possibility of her being stricken with love for some one at a certain hour and place, and the thing is as good as done.”  (The Return of the Native)

-o0o-

The Clock of the Years

"A spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up."

And the Spirit said,

"I can make the clock of the years go backward,

But am loth to stop it where you will."

And I cried, "Agreed

To that. Proceed:

It's better than dead!"

He answered, "Peace";

And called her up - as last before me;

Then younger, younger she freshed, to the year

I first had known

Her woman-grown,

And I cried, "Cease! -

"Thus far is good -

It is enough - let her stay thus always!"

But alas for me. He shook his head:

No stop was there;

And she waned child-fair,

And to babyhood.

Still less in mien

To my great sorrow became she slowly,

And smalled till she was nought at all

In his checkless griff;

And it was as if

She had never been.

"Better," I plained,

"She were dead as before! The memory of her

Had lived in me; but it cannot now!"

And coldly his voice:

"It was your choice

To mar the ordained."

A quote from a Hardy novel

“I may do some good before I am dead - be a sort of success as a frightful example of what not to do; and so illustrate a moral story.”  (Jude the Obscure)

-o0o-

The Ballad-Singer

Sing, Ballad-singer, raise a hearty tune;

Make me forget that there was ever a one

I walked with in the meek light of the moon

When the day's work was done.

Rhyme, Ballad-rhymer, start a country song;

Make me forget that she whom I loved well

Swore she would love me dearly, love me long,

Then - what I cannot tell!

Sing, Ballad-singer, from your little book;

Make me forget those heart-breaks, achings, fears;

Make me forget her name, her sweet sweet look -

Make me forget her tears.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“No; the charm is worked by common sense, and the spell can only be broke by your acting stupidly.” (Under the Greenwood Tree)

-o0o-l

His Visitor

I come across from Mellstock while the moon wastes weaker

To behold where I lived with you for twenty years and more:

I shall go in the gray, at the passing of the mail-train,

And need no setting open of the long familiar door

As before.

The change I notice in my once own quarters!

A brilliant budded border where the daisies used to be,

The rooms new painted, and the pictures altered,

And other cups and saucers, and no cozy nook for tea

As with me.

I discern the dim faces of the sleep-wrapt servants;

They are not those who tended me through feeble hours and strong,

But strangers quite, who never knew my rule here,

Who never saw me painting, never heard my softling song

Float along.

So I don't want to linger in this re-decked dwelling,

I feel too uneasy at the contrasts I behold,

And I make again for Mellstock to return here never,

And rejoin the roomy silence, and the mute and manifold

Souls of old.

-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.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“He began to see that the town life was a book of humanity infinitely more palpitating, varied, and compendious than the gown life. These struggling men and women before him were the reality of Christminster, though they knew little of Christ or Minster. That was one of the humours of things. The floating population of students and teachers, who did know both in a way, were not Christminster in a local sense at all.”  (Jude the Obscure)

-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?"

From a Hardy novel

“It was still early, and though the sun's lower limb was just free of the hill, his rays, ungenial and peering, addressed the eye rather than the touch as yet. There was not a human soul near. Sad October and her sadder self seemed the only two existences haunting that lane.”  (Tess of the d'Urbervilles)

-o0o-

A House with a 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.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“To see persons looking with children's eyes at any ordinary scenery, is a proof that they possess the charming faculty of drawing new sensations from an old experience...” (Desperate Remedies)

-o0o-

The Caged Goldfinch

Within a churchyard, on a recent grave,

I saw a little cage

That jailed a goldfinch. All was silence save

Its hops from stage to stage.

There was inquiry in its wistful eye,

And once it tried to sing;

Of him or her who placed it there, and why,

No one knew anything.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Under the trees several pheasants lay about, their rich plumage dabbled with blood; some were dead, some feebly twitching a wing, some staring up at the sky, some pulsating quickly, some contorted, some stretched out - all of them writhing in agony except the fortunate ones whose tortures had ended during the night by the inability of nature to bear more. With the impulse of a soul who could feel for kindred sufferers as much as for herself, Tess’s first thought was to put the still living birds out of their torture, and to this end with her own hands she broke the necks of as many as she could find, leaving them to lie where she had found them till the gamekeepers should come, as they probably would come, to look for them a second time. “Poor darlings - to suppose myself the most miserable being on earth in the sight o’ such misery as yours!” she exclaimed, her tears running down as she killed the birds tenderly.”  (Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

-o0o-

Starlings on the Roof

"No smoke spreads out of this chimney-pot,

The people who lived here have left the spot,

And others are coming who knew them not.

If you listen anon, with an ear intent,

The voices, you'll find, will be different

From the well-known ones of those who went."

"Why did they go? Their tones so bland

Were quite familiar to our band;

The comers we shall not understand."

"They look for a new life, rich and strange;

They do not know that, let them range

Wherever they may, they will get no change.

"They will drag their house-gear ever so far

In their search for a home no miseries mar;

They will find that as they were they are,

"That every hearth has a ghost, alack,

And can be but the scene of a bivouac

Till they move perforce no time to pack!"

A quote from a Hardy novel

“She is one of those people who are known, as one may say, by subscription: everybody knows a little, till she is astonishingly well known altogether; but nobody knows her entirely.” (The Hand of Ethelberta)

-o0o-

Life Laughs Onward

Rambling I looked for an old abode

Where, years back, one had lived I knew;

Its site a dwelling duly showed,

But it was new.

I went where, not so long ago,

The sod had riven two breasts asunder;

Daisies throve gaily there, as though

No grave were under.

I walked along a terrace where

Loud children gambolled in the sun;

The figure that had once sat there

Was missed by none.

Life laughed and moved on unsubdued,

I saw that Old succumbed to Young:

'Twas well. My too regretful mood

Died on my tongue.

Quote from a Hardy novel

“No average man will molest a woman by day or night, at home or abroad, unless she invites him. Until she says by a look "Come on" he is always afraid to, and if you never say it, or look it, he never comes.” (Jude the Obscure)

-o0o-

Her Love-Birds

When I looked up at my love-birds

That Sunday afternoon,

There was in their tiny tune

A dying fetch like broken words,

When I looked up at my love-birds

That Sunday afternoon.

When he, too, scanned the love-birds

On entering there that day,

'Twas as if he had nought to say

Of his long journey citywards,

When he, too, scanned the love-birds,

On entering there that day.

And billed and billed the love-birds,

As 'twere in fond despair

At the stress of silence where

Had once been tones in tenor thirds,

And billed and billed the love-birds

As 'twere in fond despair.

O, his speech that chilled the love-birds,

And smote like death on me,

As I learnt what was to be,

And knew my life was broke in sherds!

O, his speech that chilled the love-birds,

And smote like death on me!

Quote from a Hardy novel

“Don't think of what's past!" said she. "I am not going to think outside of now. Why should we! Who knows what tomorrow has in store? ”  (Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

-o0o-

The Tenant-For-Life

The sun said, watching my watering-pot

"Some morn you'll pass away;

These flowers and plants I parch up hot -

Who'll water them that day?

"Those banks and beds whose shape your eye

Has planned in line so true,

New hands will change, unreasoning why

Such shape seemed best to you.

"Within your house will strangers sit,

And wonder how first it came;

They'll talk of their schemes for improving it,

And will not mention your name.

"They'll care not how, or when, or at what

You sighed, laughed, suffered here,

Though you feel more in an hour of the spot

Than they will feel in a year

"As I look on at you here, now,

Shall I look on at these;

But as to our old times, avow

No knowledge - hold my peace! . . .

"O friend, it matters not, I say;

Bethink ye, I have shined

On nobler ones than you, and they

Are dead men out of mind!"

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Durbeyfield was what was locally called a slack-twisted fellow; he had good strength to work at times; but the times could not be relied on to coincide with the hours of requirement; and, having been unaccustomed to the regular toil of the day-labourer, he was not particularly persistent when they did so coincide.” - (Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

-o0o-

On a Fine Morning

Whence comes Solace? - Not from seeing

What is doing, suffering, being,

Not from noting Life's conditions,

Nor from heeding Time's monitions;

But in cleaving to the Dream,

And in gazing at the gleam

Whereby grey things golden seem.

Thus do I this heyday, holding

Shadows but as lights unfolding,

As no specious show this moment

With its irised embowment;

But as nothing other than

Part of a benignant plan;

Proof that earth was made for man.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Everybody must be managed. Queens must be managed. Kings must be managed, for men want managing almost as much as women, and that's saying a good deal.” (Under the Greenwood Tree)

-o0o-

After the Fair

The singers are gone from the Cornmarket-place

With their broadsheets of rhymes,

The street rings no longer in treble and bass

With their skits on the times,

And the Cross, lately thronged, is a dim naked space

That but echoes the stammering chimes.

From Clock-corner steps, as each quarter ding-dongs,

Away the folk roam

By the "Hart" and Grey's Bridge into byways and "drongs,"

Or across the ridged loam;

The younger ones shrilling the lately heard songs,

The old saying, "Would we were home."

The shy-seeming maiden so mute in the fair

Now rattles and talks,

And that one who looked the most swaggering there

Grows sad as she walks,

And she who seemed eaten by cankering care

In statuesque sturdiness stalks.

And midnight clears High Street of all but the ghosts

Of its buried burghees,

From the latest far back to those old Roman hosts

Whose remains one yet sees,

Who loved, laughed, and fought, hailed their friends, drank their toasts

At their meeting-times here, just as these!

-o0o-

BLOG CHANGES

From now on RENOIR AND THE IMPRESSIONISTS will be updated every week day Monday to Friday.

NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL ART 

will return and post 3 paintings every Saturday

nowthatswhaticallart.blogspot.com

Why be at Pains? -A Wooer's Song

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.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“The chief pleasure connected with asking an opinion lies in not adopting it.”  (Desperate Remedies)

-o0o-

I looked up from my Writing

I looked up from my writing,

And gave a start to see,

As if rapt in my inditing,

The moon's full gaze on me.

Her meditative misty head

Was spectral in its air,

And I involuntarily said,

"What are you doing there?"

"Oh, I've been scanning pond and hole

And waterway hereabout

For the body of one with a sunken soul

Who has put his life-light out.

"Did you hear his frenzied tattle?

It was sorrow for his son

Who is slain in brutish battle,

Though he has injured none.

"And now I am curious to look

Into the blinkered mind

Of one who wants to write a book

In a world of such a kind."

Her temper overwrought me,

And I edged to shun her view,

For I felt assured she thought me

One who should drown him too.

Quote from a Hardy novel

“His parted lips were lips which spoke, not of love, but of millions of miles; those were eyes which habitually gazed, not into the depths of other eyes, but into other worlds. Within his temples dwelt thoughts, not of woman's looks, but of stellar aspects and the configuration of constellations.” (Two on a Tower)

-o0o-

A Backward Spring

The trees are afraid to put forth buds,

And there is timidity in the grass;

The plots lie gray where gouged by spuds,

And whether next week will pass

Free of sly sour winds is the fret of each bush

Of barberry waiting to bloom.

Yet the snowdrop's face betrays no gloom,

And the primrose pants in its heedless push,

Though the myrtle asks if it's worth the fight

This year with frost and rime

To venture one more time

On delicate leaves and buttons of white

From the selfsame bough as at last year's prime,

And never to ruminate on or remember

What happened to it in mid-December.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“It may have been observed that there is no regular path for getting out of love as there is for getting in." (Far from the Madding Crowd)

-o0o-

The Sigh

Little head against my shoulder,

Shy at first, then somewhat bolder,

And up-eyed;

Till she, with a timid quaver,

Yielded to the kiss I gave her;

But, she sighed.

That there mingled with her feeling

Some sad thought she was concealing

It implied.

- Not that she had ceased to love me,

None on earth she set above me;

But she sighed.

She could not disguise a passion,

Dread, or doubt, in weakest fashion

If she tried:

Nothing seemed to hold us sundered,

Hearts were victors; so I wondered

Why she sighed.

Afterwards I knew her throughly,

And she loved me staunchly, truly,

Till she died;

But she never made confession

Why, at that first sweet concession,

She had sighed.

It was in our May, remember;

And though now I near November,

And abide

Till my appointed change, unfretting,

Sometimes I sit half regretting

That she sighed.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“You are Joseph the dreamer of dreams, dear Jude. And a tragic Don Quixote. And sometimes you are St. Stephen, who, while they were stoning him, could see Heaven opened. Oh, my poor friend and comrade, you'll suffer yet!”  (Jude the Obscure)

-o0o-

The Colour

Those lines are partly made up, partly 

remembered from a Wessex folk-rhyme - T.H.

"What shall I bring you?

Please will white do

Best for your wearing

The long day through?"

" White is for weddings,

Weddings, weddings,

White is for weddings,

And that won't do."

"What shall I bring you?

Please will red do

Best for your wearing

The long day through?"

" Red is for soldiers,

Soldiers, soldiers,

Red is for soldiers,

And that won't do."

"What shall I bring you?

Please will blue do

Best for your wearing

The long day through?"

" Blue is for sailors,

Sailors, sailors,

Blue is for sailors,

And that won't do.

"What shall I bring you?

Please will green do

Best for your wearing

The long day through?"

" Green is for mayings,

Mayings, mayings,

Green is for mayings,

And that won't do."

"What shall I bring you

Then? Will black do

Best for your wearing

The long day through?"

" Black is for mourning,

Mourning, mourning,

Black is for mourning,

And black will do."

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Meanwhile, the trees were just as green as before; the birds sang and the sun shone as clearly now as ever. The familiar surroundings had not darkened because of her grief, nor sickened because of her pain." (Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

-o0o-

Imaginings

She saw herself a lady

With fifty frocks in wear,

And rolling wheels, and rooms the best,

And faithful maidens' care,

And open lawns and shady

For weathers warm or drear.

She found herself a striver,

All liberal gifts debarred,

With days of gloom, and movements stressed,

And early visions marred,

And got no man to wive her

But one whose lot was hard.

Yet in the moony night-time

She steals to stile and lea

During his heavy slumberous rest

When homecome wearily,

And dreams of some blest bright-time

She knows can never be.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Well, what I mean is that I shouldn't mind being a bride at a wedding, if I could be one without having a husband.” (Far from the Madding Crowd)

-o0o-

The Impercipient

 At a cathedral service

That from this bright believing band

An outcast I should be,

That faiths by which my comrades stand

Seem fantasies to me,

And mirage-mists their Shining Land,

Is a drear destiny.

Why thus my soul should be consigned

To infelicity,

Why always I must feel as blind

To sights my brethren see,

Why joys they've found I cannot find,

Abides a mystery.

Since heart of mine knows not that ease

Which they know; since it be

That He who breathes All's Well to these

Breathes no All's Well to me,

My lack might move their sympathies

And Christian charity!

I am like a gazer who should mark

An inland company

Standing upfingered, with, "Hark! hark!

The glorious distant sea!"

And feel, "Alas, 'tis but yon dark

And wind-swept pine to me!"

Yet I would bear my shortcomings

With meet tranquillity,

But for the charge that blessed things

I'd liefer have unbe.

O, doth a bird deprived of wings

Go earth-bound wilfully!

Enough. As yet disquiet clings

About us. Rest shall we.

A quote from a Hardy novel

There are disappointments which wring us, and there are those which inflict a wound whose mark we bear to our graves. Such are so keen that no future gratification of the same desire can ever obliterate them: they become registered as a permanent loss of happiness.”  - (A  Pair of Blue Eyes)

-o=0=o-

A January Night

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 to-day?

We do not know.

And a quote from a Hardy novel

“Everybody must be managed. Queens must be managed. Kings must be managed, for men want managing almost as much as women, and that's saying a good deal.” - (Under the Greenwood Tree)

-o0o-

The Clock-Winder

It is dark as a cave,

Or a vault in the nave

When the iron door

Is closed, and the floor

Of the church relaid

With trowel and spade.

But the parish-clerk

Cares not for the dark

As he winds in the tower

At a regular hour

The rheumatic clock,

Whose dilatory knock

You can hear when praying

At the day's decaying,

Or at any lone while

From a pew in the aisle.

Up, up from the ground

Around and around

In the turret stair

He clambers, to where

The wheelwork is,

With its tick, click, whizz,

Reposefully measuring

Each day to its end

That mortal men spend

In sorrowing and pleasuring

Nightly thus does he climb

To the trackway of Time.

Him I followed one night

To this place without light,

And, ere I spoke, heard

Him say, word by word,

At the end of his winding,

The darkness unminding:-

"So I wipe out one more,

My Dear, of the sore

Sad days that still be,

Like a drying Dead Sea,

Between you and me!"

Who she was no man knew:

He had long borne him blind

To all womankind;

And was ever one who

Kept his past out of view.

And a quote from a Hardy novel:-

"Backlock, a poet blind from his birth, could describe visual objects with accuracy; Professor Sanderson, who was also blind, gave excellent lectures on colour, and taught others the theory of ideas which they had and he had not. In the social sphere these gifted ones are mostly women; they can watch a world which they never saw, and estimate forces of which they have only heard. We call it intuition.” - (The Return of the Native)

-o=0=o-

Hereditry

I am the family face;

Flesh perishes, I live on,

Projecting trait and trace

Through time to times anon,

And leaping from place to place

Over oblivion.

The years-heired feature that can

In curve and voice and eye

Despise the human span

Of durance - that is I;

The eternal thing in man,

That heeds no call to die.

And a quote from one of Hardy's novels:-

“Why is it that a woman can see from a distance what a man cannot see close?”  (The Return of the Native)

-o=0=o-

The Orphaned Old Maid

I wanted to marry, but father said, "No -

'Tis weakness in women to give themselves so;

If you care for your freedom you'll listen to me,

Make a spouse in your pocket, and let the men be."

I spake on't again and again: father cried,

"Why - if you go husbanding, where shall I bide?

For never a home's for me elsewhere than here!"

And I yielded; for father had ever been dear.

But now father's gone, and I feel growing old,

And I'm lonely and poor in this house on the wold,

And my sweetheart that was found a partner elsewhere,

And nobody flings me a thought or a care.

and a quote from one of Hardy's novels:-

“He looked and smelt like Autumn's very brother, his face being sunburnt to wheat-colour, his eyes blue as corn-flowers, his sleeves and leggings dyed with fruit-stains, his hands clammy with the sweet juice of apples, his hat sprinkled with pips, and everywhere about him the sweet atmosphere of cider which at its first return each season has such an indescribable fascination for those who have been born and bred among the orchards.” (The Woodlanders)

-o0o-

WELCOME

to the new blog.

There are two poems in today's post.

The blog will normally be updated daily and show one poem.

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.

*inurn - verb. to put into an urn, especially ashes

-o-

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 to-day,

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.

-o=0=o-