The Rambler

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 on either hand,

The whirr that shakes the nighthawk's throat

When eve's brown awning hoods the land.

Some say each songster, tree, and mead -

All eloquent of love divine -

Receives their constant careful heed:

Such keen appraisement is not mine.

The tones around me that I hear,

The aspects, meanings, shapes I see,

Are those far back ones missed when near,

And now perceived too late by me!

A quote by Thomas Hardy

“Time changes everything except something within us which is always surprised by change.” 

Next post here - Tuesday

-o=0=o-

I said to Love

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 beneath the sun,"

I said to Love.

I said to him,

"We now know more of thee than then;

We were but weak in judgment when,

With hearts abrim,

We clamoured thee that thou would'st please

Inflict on us thine agonies,"

I said to him.

I said to Love,

"Thou art not young, thou art not fair,

No faery darts, no cherub air,

Nor swan, nor dove

Are thine; but features pitiless,

And iron daggers of distress,"

I said to Love.

"Depart then, Love! . . .

- Man's race shall end, dost threaten thou?

The age to come the man of now

Know nothing of? -

We fear not such a threat from thee;

We are too old in apathy!

Mankind shall cease. - So let it be,"

I said to Love.

A quote by Thomas Hardy

"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."

-o0o-

The Last Performance

"I am playing my oldest tunes," declared she,

"All the old tunes I know, -

Those I learnt ever so long ago."

- Why she should think just then she'd play them

Silence cloaks like snow.

When I returned from the town at nightfall

Notes continued to pour

As when I had left two hours before:

It's the very last time," she said in closing;

"From now I play no more."

A few morns onward found her fading,

And, as her life outflew,

I thought of her playing her tunes right through;

And I felt she had known of what was coming,

And wondered how she knew.

A quote by Thomas Hardy

“ - we know very well women scarcely ever jilt men; ‘tis men who jilt us.” 

-o0o-

Great Things

Sweet cyder is a great thing,

A great thing to me,

Spinning down to Weymouth town

By Ridgway thirstily,

And maid and mistress summoning

Who tend the hostelry:

O cyder is a great thing,

A great thing to me!

The dance it is a great thing,

A great thing to me,

With candles lit and partners fit

For night-long revelry;

And going home when day-dawning

Peeps pale upon the lea:

O dancing is a great thing,

A great thing to me!

Love is, yea, a great thing,

A great thing to me,

When, having drawn across the lawn

In darkness silently,

A figure flits like one a-wing

Out from the nearest tree:

O love is, yes, a great thing,

A great thing to me!

Will these be always great things,

Great things to me? . . .

Let it befall that One will call,

"Soul, I have need of thee:"

What then? Joy-jaunts, impassioned flings,

Love, and its ecstasy,

Will always have been great things,

Great things to me!

A quote by Thomas Hardy

“The business of the poet and the novelist is to show the sorriness underlying the grandest things and the grandeur underlying the sorriest things.” 

-o0o-

The Old Workman

"Why are you so bent down before your time,

Old mason? Many have not left their prime

So far behind at your age, and can still

Stand full upright at will."

He pointed to the mansion-front hard by,

And to the stones of the quoin against the sky;

"Those upper blocks," he said, "that there you see,

It was that ruined me."

There stood in the air up to the parapet

Crowning the corner height, the stones as set

By him - ashlar whereon the gales might drum

For centuries to come.

"I carried them up," he said, "by a ladder there;

The last was as big a load as I could bear;

But on I heaved; and something in my back

Moved, as 'twere with a crack.

"So I got crookt. I never lost that sprain;

And those who live there, walled from wind and rain

By freestone that I lifted, do not know

That my life's ache came so.

"They don't know me, or even know my name,

But good I think it, somehow, all the same

To have kept 'em safe from harm, and right and tight,

Though it has broke me quite.

"Yes; that I fixed it firm up there I am proud,

Facing the hail and snow and sun and cloud,

And to stand storms for ages, beating round

When I lie underground."

-o0o-

He never expected much

A consideration on my eighty-sixth birthday

Well, World, you have kept faith with me,

Kept faith with me;

Upon the whole you have proved to be

Much as you said you were.

Since as a child I used to lie

Upon the leaze and watch the sky,

Never, I own, expected I

That life would all be fair.

'Twas then you said, and since have said,

Times since have said,

In that mysterious voice you shed

From clouds and hills around;

"Many have loved me desperately,

Many with smooth serenity,

While some have shown contempt of me

Till they dropped underground.

"I do not promise overmuch,

Child; overmuch;

Just neutral-tinted haps and such,"

You said to minds like mine.

Wise warning for your credit's sake!

Which I for one failed not to take,

And hence could stem such strain and ache

As each year might assign.

A quote by Thomas Hardy

“We discern a grand force in the lover which he lacks whilst a free man, but there is a breadth of vision in the free man which in the lover we vainly seek.” 

-o0o-

A Woman Driving

How she held up the horses' heads,

Firm-lipped, with steady rein,

Down that grim steep the coastguard treads,

Till all was safe again!

With form erect and keen contour

She passed against the sea,

And, dipping into the chine's obscure,

Was seen no more by me.

To others she appeared anew

At times of dusky light,

But always, so they told, withdrew

From close and curious sight.

Some said her silent wheels would roll

Rutless on softest loam,

And even that her steeds' footfall

Sank not upon the foam.

Where drives she now? It may be where

No mortal horses are,

But in a chariot of the air

Towards some radiant star.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“If men only knew the staleness of the freshest of us! that nine times out of ten the "first love" they think they are winning from a woman is but the hulk of an old wrecked affection, fitted with new sails and re-used.” 

( Desperate Remedies) 

-o0o-

The Night of the Dance

The cold moon hangs to the sky by its horn,

And centres its gaze on me;

The stars, like eyes in reverie,

Their westering as for a while forborne,

Quiz downward curiously.

Old Robert draws the backbrand in,

The green logs steam and spit;

The half-awakened sparrows flit

From the riddled thatch; and owls begin

To whoo from the gable-slit.

Yes; far and nigh things seem to know

Sweet scenes are impending here;

That all is prepared; that the hour is near

For welcomes, fellowships, and flow

Of sally, song, and cheer;

That spigots are pulled and viols strung;

That soon will arise the sound

Of measures trod to tunes renowned;

That She will return in Love's low tongue

My vows as we wheel around.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“My dear Sue,—Of course I wish you joy! And also of course I will give you away. What I suggest is that, as you have no house of your own, you do not marry from your school friend's, but from mine. It would be more proper, I think, since I am, as you say, the person nearest related to you in this part of the world. I don't see why you sign your letter in such a new and terribly formal way? Surely you care a bit about me still!—Ever your affectionate, Jude.” (Jude the Obscure)

-o0o-

Song to an Old Burden

The feet have left the wormholed flooring,

That danced to the ancient air,

The fiddler, all-ignoring,

Sleeps by the grey-grassed cello-player;

Shall I then foot around around around, 

As once I footed there!

The voice is heard to the room no longer

That trilled, none sweetlier,

To gentle steps or stronger,

Where now the dust-draped cobwebs stir;

Shall I then sing again again again,

As once I sang with her!

The eyes that beamed out rapid brightness

Have longtime found their close,

The cheeks have wanned to whiteness

That used to sort with summer rose;

Shall I then joy anew anew anew,

As once I joyed in those!

O what's to me this tedious Maying,

What's to me this June?

O why should viols be playing

To catch and reel and rigadoon?

Shall I sing, dance around around around,

When phantoms call the tune!

A quote from a Hardy novel

"What is it, Angel?" she said, starting up. "Have they come for me?"

"Yes, dearest," he said. "They have come."

"It is as it should be," she murmured. "Angel, I am almost glad—yes, glad! This happiness could not have lasted. It was too much. I have had enough; and now I shall not live for you to despise me!"

She stood up, shook herself, and went forward, neither of the men having moved.

"I am ready," she said quietly.” (Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

-o0o-

The Strange House

"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 care

Who loved, laughed, wept, or died here,

Knew joy, or despair."

-o0o-

The Dark-eyed Gentleman

I pitched my day’s leazings in Crimmercrock Lane,    

To tie up my garter and jog on again,    

When a dear dark-eyed gentleman passed there and said,    

In a way that made all o’ me colour rose-red,    

                “What do I see -           

                O pretty knee!”    

And he came and he tied up my garter for me.    

’Twixt sunset and moonrise it was, I can mind:    

Ah, ’tis easy to lose what we nevermore find! -    

Of the dear stranger’s home, of his name, I knew nought,            

But I soon knew his nature and all that it brought.    

                Then bitterly    

                Sobbed I that he    

Should ever have tied up my garter for me!    

Yet now I’ve beside me a fine lissom lad,            

And my slip’s nigh forgot, and my days are not sad;    

My own dearest joy is he, comrade, and friend,    

He it is who safe-guards me, on him I depend;    

                No sorrow brings he,    

                And thankful I be            

That his daddy once tied up my garter for me!    

A quote by Thomas Hardy

“Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.” 

(The Personal Notebooks Of Thomas Hardy)

-o0o-

I Knew a Lady

I knew a lady when the days

Grew long, and evenings goldened;

But I was not emboldened

By her prompt eyes and winning ways.

And when old Winter nipt the haws,

"Another's wife I'll be,

And then you'll care for me,"

She said, "and think how sweet I was!"

And soon she shone as another's wife:

As such I often met her,

And sighed, "How I regret her!

My folly cuts me like a knife!"

And then, today, her husband came,

And moaned, "Why did you flout her?

Well could I do without her!

For both our burdens you are to blame!"

A quote from a Hardy novel

“But I wish to be enlightened.'
'Let me caution you against it.'
'Is enlightenment on the subject, then, so terrible?'
'Yes, indeed.'
She laughingly declared that nothing could have so piqued her curiosity as his statement. (Two on a Tower)

-o0o-

A Kiss

By a wall the stranger now calls his,

Was born of old a particular kiss,

Without forethought in its genesis;

Which in a trice took wing on the air.

And where that spot is nothing shows:

There ivy calmly grows,

And no one knows

What a birth was there!

That kiss is gone where none can tell -

Not even those who felt its spell:

It cannot have died; that know we well.

Somewhere it pursues its flight,

One of a long procession of sounds

Travelling aethereal rounds

Far from earth's bounds

In the infinite.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Did you say the stars were worlds, Tess?"
"Yes."
"All like ours?"
"I don't know, but I think so. They sometimes seem to be like the apples on our stubbard-tree. Most of them splendid and sound - a few blighted."
"Which do we live on - a splendid one or a blighted one?"
"A blighted one.”  (Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

-o0o-

Who's in the Next Room?

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

I seemed to see

Somebody in the dawning passing through,

Unknown to me."

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

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

I seem to hear

Somebody muttering firm in a language new

That chills the ear."

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

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

I seem to feel

His breath like a clammy draught, as if it drew

From the Polar Wheel."

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

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

A figure wan

With a message to one in there of something due?

Shall I know him anon?"

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

A Thomas Hardy quote

No one can read with profit that which he cannot learn to read with pleasure.

-o0o-

The Night of the Dance

The cold moon hangs to the sky by its horn,

And centres its gaze on me;

The stars, like eyes in reverie,

Their westering as for a while forborne,

Quiz downward curiously.

Old Robert draws the backbrand in,

The green logs steam and spit;

The half-awakened sparrows flit

From the riddled thatch; and owls begin

To whoo from the gable-slit.

Yes; far and nigh things seem to know

Sweet scenes are impending here;

That all is prepared; that the hour is near

For welcomes, fellowships, and flow

Of sally, song, and cheer;

That spigots are pulled and viols strung;

That soon will arise the sound

Of measures trod to tunes renowned;

That She will return in Love's low tongue

My vows as we wheel around.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Beautiful city! so venerable, so lovely, so unravaged by the fierce intellectual life of our century, so serene!… Her ineffable charm keeps ever calling us to the true goal of all of us, to the ideal, to perfection”  (Jude the Obscure)

-o0o-

Drawing Details in an Old Church

I hear the bell-rope sawing,

And the oil-less axle grind,

As I sit alone here drawing

What some Gothic brain designed;

And I catch the toll that follows

From the lagging bell,

Ere it spreads to hills and hollows

Where the parish people dwell.

I ask not whom it tolls for,

Incurious who he be;

So, some morrow, when those knolls for

One unguessed, sound out for me,

A stranger, loitering under

In nave or choir,

May think, too, "Whose, I wonder?"

But care not to inquire.

A quote from a Hardy novel

"A strong woman who recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.”  (Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

-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

“Tess was awake before dawn — at the marginal minute of the dark when the grove is still mute, save for one prophetic bird who sings with a clear-voiced conviction that he at least knows the correct time of day, the rest preserving silence as if equally convinced that he is mistaken.” 

(Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

-o0o-

Mad Judy

When the hamlet hailed a birth

Judy used to cry:

When she heard our christening mirth

She would kneel and sigh.

She was crazed, we knew, and we

Humoured her infirmity.

When the daughters and the sons

Gathered them to wed,

And we like-intending ones

Danced till dawn was red,

She would rock and mutter, "More

Comers to this stony shore!"

When old Headsman Death laid hands

On a babe or twain,

She would feast, and by her brands

Sing her songs again.

What she liked we let her do,

Judy was insane, we knew.

A quote from a Hardy novel

"And so, standing before the aforesaid officiator, the two swore that at every other time of their lives till death took them, they would assuredly believe, feel, and desire precisely as they had believed, felt, and desired during the few preceding weeks. What was as remarkable as the undertaking itself was the fact that nobody seemed at all surprised at what they swore.”  (Jude the Obscure)

-o0o-

Lonely Days

Lonely her fate was,

Environed from sight

In the house where the gate was

Past finding at night.

None there to share it,

No one to tell:

Long she'd to bear it,

And bore it well.

Elsewhere just so she

Spent many a day;

Wishing to go she

Continued to stay.

And people without

Basked warm in the air,

But none sought her out,

Or knew she was there.

Even birthdays were passed so,

Sunny and shady:

Years did it last so

For this sad lady.

Never declaring it,

No one to tell,

Still she kept bearing it -

Bore it well.

The days grew chillier,

And then she went

To a city, familiar

In years forespent,

When she walked gaily

Far to and fro,

But now, moving frailly,

Could nowhere go.

The cheerful colour

Of houses she'd known

Had died to a duller

And dingier tone.

Streets were now noisy

Where once had rolled

A few quiet coaches,

Or citizens strolled.

Through the party-wall

Of the memoried spot

They danced at a ball

Who recalled her not.

Tramlines lay crossing

Once gravelled slopes,

Metal rods clanked,

And electric ropes.

So she endured it all,

Thin, thinner wrought,

Until time cured it all,

And she knew nought.

-o0o-

Best Times

We went a day's excursion to the stream,

Basked by the bank, and bent to the ripple-gleam,

And I did not know

That life would show,

However it might flower, no finer glow.

I walked in the Sunday sunshine by the road

That wound towards the wicket of your abode,

And I did not think

That life would shrink

To nothing ere it shed a rosier pink.

Unlooked for I arrived on a rainy night,

And you hailed me at the door by the swaying light,

And I full forgot

That life might not

Again be touching that ecstatic height.

And that calm eve when you walked up the stair,

After a gaiety prolonged and rare,

No thought soever

That you might never

Walk down again, struck me as I stood there.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“You, and those like you, take your fill of pleasure on earth by making the life of such as me bitter and black with sorrow; and then it is a fine thing, when you have had enough of that, to think of securing your pleasure in heaven by becoming converted!” (Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

-o0o-

The Second Visit

Clack, clack, clack, went the mill-wheel as I came,

And she was on the bridge with the thin hand-rail,

And the miller at the door, and the ducks at mill-tail;

I come again years after, and all there seems the same.

And so indeed it is: the apple-tree'd old house,

And the deep mill-pond, and the wet wheel clacking,

And a woman on the bridge, and white ducks quacking,

And the miller at the door, powdered pale from boots to brows.

But it's not the same miller whom long ago I knew,

Nor are they the same apples, nor the same drops that dash

Over the wet wheel, nor the ducks below that splash,

Nor the woman who to fond plaints replied, "You know I do!"

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Because nobody could love 'ee more than Tess did! … She would have laid down her life for 'ee. I could do no more.”  (Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

-o0o-

The Announcement

They came, the brothers, and took two chairs

In their usual quiet way;

And for a time we did not think

They had much to say.

And they began and talked awhile

Of ordinary things,

Till spread that silence in the room

A pent thought brings.

And then they said: "The end has come.

Yes: it has come at last."

And we looked down, and knew that day

A spirit had passed.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Little towns are like little children in this respect, that they interest most when they are enacting native peculiarities unconscious of beholders. Discovering themselves to be watched they attempt to be entertaining by putting on an antic, and produce disagreeable caricatures which spoil them.” (Desperate Remedies)

-o0o-

At Madame Tussaud's in Victorian Years

That same first fiddler who leads the orchestra to-night

Here fiddled four decades of years ago;

He bears the same babe-like smile of self-centred delight,

Same trinket on watch-chain, same ring on the hand with the bow.

But his face, if regarded, is woefully wanner, and drier,

And his once dark beard has grown straggling and gray;

Yet a blissful existence he seems to have led with his lyre,

In a trance of his own, where no wearing or tearing had sway.

Mid these wax figures, who nothing can do, it may seem

That to do but a little thing counts a great deal;

To be watched by kings, councillors, queens, may be flattering to him

With their glass eyes longing they too could wake notes that appeal.

* * *

Ah, but he played staunchly - that fiddler - whoever he was,

With the innocent heart and the soul-touching string:

May he find the Fair Haven! For did he not smile with good cause?

Yes; gamuts that graced forty years'-flight were not a small thing!

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Sometimes a woman's love of being loved gets the better of her conscience, and though she is agonized at the thought of treating a man cruelly, she encourages him to love her while she doesn't love him at all. Then, when she sees him suffering, her remorse sets in, and she does what she can to repair the wrong.” (Jude the Obscure)

Side by Side

So there sat they,

The estranged two,

Thrust in one pew

By chance that day;

Placed so, breath-nigh,

Each comer unwitting

Who was to be sitting

In touch close by.

Thus side by side

Blindly alighted,

They seemed united

As groom and bride,

Who'd not communed

For many years -

Lives from twain spheres

With hearts distuned.

Her fringes brushed

His garment's hem

As the harmonies rushed

Through each of them:

Her lips could be heard

In the creed and psalms,

And their fingers neared

At the giving of alms.

And women and men,

The matins ended,

By looks commended

Them, joined again.

Quickly said she,

"Don't undeceive them -

Better thus leave them:"

"Quite so," said he.

Slight words! the last

Between them said,

Those two, once wed,

Who had not stood fast.

Diverse their ways

From the western door,

To meet no more

In their span of days.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“He knelt and bent lower, till her breath warmed his face, and in a moment his cheek was in contact with hers. She was sleeping soundly, and upon her eyelashes there lingered tears...” (Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

-o0o-

Shut out that Moon

Close up the casement, draw the blind,

Shut out that stealing moon,

She wears too much the guise she wore

Before our lutes were strewn

With years-deep dust, and names we read

On a white stone were hewn.

Step not out on the dew-dashed lawn

To view the Lady's Chair,

Immense Orion's glittering form,

The Less and Greater Bear:

Stay in; to such sights we were drawn

When faded ones were fair.

Brush not the bough for midnight scents

That come forth lingeringly,

And wake the same sweet sentiments

They breathed to you and me

When living seemed a laugh, and love

All it was said to be.

Within the common lamp-lit room

Prison my eyes and thought;

Let dingy details crudely loom,

Mechanic speech be wrought:

Too fragrant was Life's early bloom,

Too tart the fruit it brought!

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Every woman who makes a permanent impression on a man is usually recalled to his mind's eye as she appeared in one particular scene, which seems ordained to be her special form of manifestation throughout the pages of his memory.” ( A Pair of Blue Eyes)

-o0o-

In Church

"And now to God the Father," he ends,

And his voice thrills up to the topmost tiles:

Each listener chokes as he bows and bends,

And emotion pervades the crowded aisles.

Then the preacher glides to the vestry-door,

And shuts it, and thinks he is seen no more.

The door swings softly ajar meanwhile,

And a pupil of his in the Bible class,

Who adores him as one without gloss or guile,

Sees her idol stand with a satisfied smile

And re-enact at the vestry-glass

Each pulpit gesture in deft dumb-show

That had moved the congregation so.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“I have been looking at the marriage service in the Prayer-book, and it seems to me very humiliating that a giver-away should be required at all. According to the ceremony as there printed, my bridegroom chooses me of his own will and pleasure; but I don’t choose him. Somebody gives me to him, like a she-ass or she-goat, or any other domestic animal.”  (Jude the Obscure)

Amabel

I marked her ruined hues,

Her custom-straitened views,

And asked, "Can there indwell

My Amabel?"

I looked upon her gown,

Once rose, now earthen brown;

The change was like the knell

Of Amabel.

Her step's mechanic ways

Had lost the life of May's;

Her laugh, once sweet in swell,

Spoilt Amabel.

I mused: "Who sings the strain

I sang ere warmth did wane?

Who thinks its numbers spell

His Amabel?"

Knowing that, though Love cease,

Love's race shows undecrease;

All find in dorp or dell

An Amabel.

I felt that I could creep

To some housetop and weep,

That Time the tyrant fell

Ruled Amabel!

I said (the while I sighed

That love like ours had died)

"Fond things I'll no more tell

To Amabel.

"But leave her to her fate,

And fling across the gate,

Till the Last Trump, farewell,

O Amabel!"

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Their gauzy skirts had brushed up from the grass innumerable flies and butterflies which, unable to escape, remained caged in the transparent tissue as in an aviary.” (Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

-o0o-