A Parting Scene

The two pale women cried,

But the man seemed to suffer more,

Which he strove hard to hide,

They stayed in the waiting-room, behind the door,

Till startled by the entering engine-roar,

As if they could not bear to have unfurled

Their misery to the eyes of all the world.

A soldier and his young wife

Were the couple; his mother the third,

Who had seen the seams of life.

He was sailing for the East I later heard.

They kissed long, but they did not speak a word;

Then, strained, he went. To the elder the wife in tears

"Too long; too long!" burst out. ('Twas for five years,)

A quote by Thomas Hardy 

“A story must be exceptional enough to justify its telling. We storytellers are all ancient mariners, and none of us is justified in stopping wedding guests, unless he has something more unusual to relate than the ordinary experiences of every average man and woman.”

-o0o-

Something Tapped

Something tapped on the pane of my room

When there was never a trace

Of wind or rain, and I saw in the gloom

My weary Belovèd's face.

"O I am tired of waiting," she said,

"Night, morn, noon, afternoon;

So cold it is in my lonely bed,

And I thought you would join me soon!"

I rose and neared the window-glass,

But vanished thence had she:

Only a pallid moth, alas,

Tapped at the pane for me.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Some folks want their luck buttered.”  (The Mayor of Casterbridge)

-o0o-

A Maiden's Pledge

I do not wish to win your vow

To take me soon or late as bride,

And lift me from the nook where now

I tarry your farings to my side.

I am blissful ever to abide

In this green labyrinth - let all be,

If but, whatever may betide,

You do not leave off loving me!

Your comet-comings I will wait

With patience time shall not wear through;

The yellowing years will not abate

My largened love and truth to you,

Nor drive me to complaint undue

Of absence, much as I may pine,

If never another 'twixt us two

Shall come, and you stand wholly mine.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“How I have tried and tried to be a splendid woman, and how destiny has been against me! ...I do not deserve my lot! ...O, the cruelty of putting me into this ill-conceived world! I was capable of much; but I have been injured and blighted and crushed by things beyond my control! O, how hard it is of Heaven to devise such tortures for me, who have done no harm to heaven at all!”  

(The Return of the Native)

-o0o-

Channel Firing

That night your great guns, unawares, 

Shook all our coffins as we lay, 

And broke the chancel window-squares, 

We thought it was the Judgement-day 

And sat upright,  While drearisome 

Arose the howl of wakened hounds: 

The mouse let fall the altar-crumb, 

The worm drew back into the mounds, 

The glebe cow drooled. Till God cried, 

"No; It's gunnery practice out at sea 

Just as before you went below; 

The world is as it used to be: 

"All nations striving strong to make 

Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters 

They do no more for Christés sake 

Than you who are helpless in such matters.

"That this is not the judgment-hour 

For some of them's a blessed thing, 

For if it were they'd have to scour 

Hell's floor for so much threatening. . . . 

"Ha, ha. It will be warmer when 

I blow the trumpet (if indeed 

I ever do; for you are men, 

And rest eternal sorely need)." 

So down we lay again. "I wonder, 

Will the world ever saner be," 

Said one, "than when He sent us under 

In our indifferent century!" 

And many a skeleton shook his head. 

"Instead of preaching forty year," 

My neighbour Parson Thirdly said, 

"I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer." 

Again the guns disturbed the hour, 

Roaring their readiness to avenge, 

As far inland as Stourton Tower, 

And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge. 

-o0o-

He Revisits His First School

I should not have shown in the flesh,

I ought to have gone as a ghost;

It was awkward, unseemly almost,

Standing solidly there as when fresh,

Pink, tiny, crisp-curled,

My pinions yet furled

From the winds of the world.

After waiting so many a year

To wait longer, and go as a sprite

From the tomb at the mid of some night

Was the right, radiant way to appear;

Not as one wanzing weak

From life's roar and reek,

His rest still to seek:

Yea, beglimpsed through the quaint quarried glass

Of green moonlight, by me greener made,

When they'd cry, perhaps, "There sits his shade

In his olden haunt - just as he was

When in Walkingame he

Conned the grand Rule-of-Three

With the bent of a bee."

But to show in the afternoon sun,

With an aspect of hollow-eyed care,

When none wished to see me come there,

Was a garish thing, better undone.

Yes; wrong was the way;

But yet, let me say,

I may right it - some day.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Like all people who have known rough times, light-heartedness seemed to her too irrational and inconsequent to be indulged in except as a reckless dram now and then; for she had been too early habituated to anxious reasoning to drop the habit suddenly...Her triumph was tempered by circumspection, she had still that field-mouse fear of the coulter of destiny despite fair promise, which is common among the thoughtful who have suffered early from poverty and oppression.” 

(The Mayor of Casterbridge)

-o0o-

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.

A quote from a Hardy novel

"Such poor liquor do make a man's throat feel very melancholy - and is a disgrace to the name of stimmilent.” 

(Under the Greenwood Tree)

-o0o-

Silences

There is a silence of a copse or croft

When the wind sinks dumb,

And of a belfry-loft

When the tenor after tolling stops its hum.

And there's the silence of a lonely pond

Where a man was drowned,

Nor nigh nor yond

A newt, frog, toad, to make the merest sound.

But the rapt silence of an empty house

Where oneself was born,

Dwelt, held carouse

With friends, is of all silences most forlorn!

Past are remembered songs and music-strains

Once audible there:

Roof, rafters, panes

Look absent-thoughted, tranced, or locked in prayer.

It seems no power on earth can waken it

Or rouse its rooms,

Or its past permit

The present to stir a torpor like a tomb's.

-o0o-

Shortening Days at the Homestead

The first fire since the summer is lit, and is smoking into the room:

The sun-rays thread it through, like woof-lines in a loom.

Sparrows spurt from the hedge, whom misgivings appal

That winter did not leave last year for ever, after all.

Like shock-headed urchins, spiny-haired,

Stand pollard willows, their twigs just bared.

Who is this coming with pondering pace,

Black and ruddy, with white embossed,

His eyes being black, and ruddy his face

And the marge of his hair like morning frost?

It's the cider-maker,

And apple-treeshaker,

And behind him on wheels, in readiness,

His mill, and tubs, and vat, and press.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Everybody is so talented nowadays that the only people I care to honour as deserving real distinction are those who remain in obscurity.” (Under the Greenwood Tree)

-o0o-

The Farm-Woman's Winter

If seasons all were summers,

And leaves would never fall,

And hopping casement-comers

Were foodless not at all,

And fragile folk might be here

That white winds bid depart;

Then one I used to see here

Would warm my wasted heart!

One frail, who, bravely tilling

Long hours in gripping gusts,

Was mastered by their chilling,

And now his ploughshare rusts,

So savage winter catches

The breath of limber things,

And what I love he snatches,

And what I love not, brings.

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-

Unrealised

Down comes the winter rain -

Spoils my hat and bow -

Runs into the poll of me;

But mother won't know.

We've been out and caught a cold,

Knee-deep in snow;

Such a lucky thing it is

That mother won't know!

Rosy lost herself last night -

Couldn't tell where to go.

Yes - it rather frightened her,

But mother didn't know.

Somebody made Willy drunk

At the Christmas show:

O 'twas fun! It's well for him

That mother won't know!

Howsoever wild we are,

Late at school or slow,

Mother won't be cross with us,

Mother won't know.

How we cried the day she died!

Neighbours whispering low . . .

But we now do what we will -

Mother won't know.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“her hand trembled, the ardour of his affection being so palpable that she seemed to flinch under it like a plant in too burning a sun.”  (Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

-o0o-

The Old Gown

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 water-browed.

And once or twice she has cast me

As she pomped along the street

Court-clad, ere quite she has passed me,

A glance from her chariot seat.

But in my memoried passion

For evermore stands she

In 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 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 new series of

MY CHOICE MY DELIGHT

will be posted tomorrow and the updates made 

EVERY FRIDAY

-o0o-

THE GLIMPSE

She sped through the door

And, following in haste,

And stirred to the core,

I entered hot-faced;

But I could not find her,

No sign was behind her.

"Where is she?" I said:

"Who?" they asked that sat there;

"Not a soul's come in sight."

"A maid with red hair."

"Ah." They paled. "She is dead.

People see her at night,

But you are the first

On whom she has burst

In the keen common light."

It was ages ago,

When I was quite strong:

I have waited since, - O,

I have waited so long!

- Yea, I set me to own

The house, where now lone

I dwell in void rooms

Booming hollow as tombs!

But I never come near her,

Though nightly I hear her.

And my cheek has grown thin

And my hair has grown gray

With this waiting therein;

But she still keeps away!

A quote from a Hardy novel

“So the baby was carried in a small deal box, under an ancient woman's shawl, to the churchyard that night, and buried by lantern-light, at the cost of a shilling and a pint of beer to the sexton, in that shabby corner of God's allotment where He lets the nettles grow, and where all unbaptized infants, notorious drunkards, suicides, and others of the conjecturally damned are laid.” (Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

-o0o-

Proud Songsters

The thrushes sing as the sun is going,

And the finches whistle in ones and pairs,

And as it gets dark loud nightingales

In bushes

Pipe, as they can when April wears,

As if all Time were theirs.

These are brand new birds of twelvemonths' growing,

Which a year ago, or less than twain,

No finches were, nor nightingales,

Nor thrushes,

But only particles of grain,

And earth and air and rain.

Quotes from a Hardy novel

“He is as good as anybody in this parish! He is very particular, too, about going to church-yes, he is!'

'I am afeard nobody ever saw him there. I never did, certainly.'

'The reason of that is,' she said eagerly, 'that he goes in privately by the old tower door, just when the service commences, and sits at the back of the gallery. He told me so.'

This supreme instance of Troy's goodness fell upon Gabriel's ears like the thirteenth stroke of a crazy clock. It was not only received with utter incredulity as regarded itself, but threw doubt on all the assurances that had preceded it.” (Far from the Madding Crowd)

-o0o-

The Spell of the Rose

"I mean to build a hall anon,

And shape two turrets there,

And a broad newelled stair,

And a cool well for crystal water;

Yes; I will build a hall anon,

Plant roses love shall feed upon,

And apple trees and pear."

He set to build the manor-hall,

And shaped the turrets there,

And the broad newelled stair,

And the cool well for crystal water;

He built for me that manor-hall,

And planted many trees withal,

But no rose anywhere.

And as he planted never a rose

That bears the flower of love,

Though other flowers throve

A frost-wind moved our souls to sever

Since he had planted never a rose;

And misconceits raised horrid shows,

And agonies came thereof.

"I'll mend these miseries," then said I,

And so, at dead of night,

I went and, screened from sight,

That nought should keep our souls in severance,

I set a rose-bush."This," said I,

"May end divisions dire and wry,

And long-drawn days of blight."

But I was called from earth - yea, called

Before my rose-bush grew;

And would that now I knew

What feels he of the tree I planted,

And whether, after I was called

To be a ghost, he, as of old,

Gave me his heart anew!

Perhaps now blooms that queen of trees

I set but saw not grow,

And he, beside its glow -

Eyes couched of the mis-vision that blurred me -

Ay, there beside that queen of trees

He sees me as I was, though sees

Too late to tell me so!

A quote from a Hardy collection

“Her face too was fresh in colour, but it was of a totally different quality - soft and evanescent, like the light under a heap of rose-petals.” 

 (The Withered Arm and Other Stories)

-o0o-

An Unkindly May

A shepherd stands by a gate in a white smock-frock;
He holds the gate ajar, intently counting his flock.

The sour spring wind is blurting boisterous-wise,
And bears on it dirty clouds across the skies;
Plantation timbers creak like rusty cranes,
And pigeons and rooks, dishevelled by late rains,
Are like gaunt vultures, sodden and unkempt,
And songbirds do not end what they attempt;
The buds have tried to open, but quite failing
Have pinched themselves together in their quailing.
The sun frowns whitely in eye-trying flaps
Through passing cloud-holes, mimicking audible taps.
"Nature, you're not commendable today!"
I think, "Better tomorrow," she seems to say.

That shepherd still stands in that white smock-frock,
Unnoting all things save the counting his flock.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Bygones would never be complete bygones till she was a bygone herself.”  (Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

-o0o-

The Face at the Casement

If ever joy leave

An abiding sting of sorrow,

So befell it on the morrow

Of that May eve . . .

The travelled sun dropped

To the north-west, low and lower,

The pony's trot grew slower,

And then we stopped.

"This cosy house just by

I must call at for a minute,

A sick man lies within it

Who soon will die.

"He wished to marry me,

So I am bound, when I drive near him,

To inquire, if but to cheer him,

How he may be."

A message was sent in,

And wordlessly we waited,

Till some one came and stated

The bulletin.

And that the sufferer said,

For her call no words could thank her;

As his angel he must rank her

Till life's spark fled.

Slowly we drove away,

When I turned my head, although not

Called; why so I turned I know not

Even to this day.

And lo, there in my view

Pressed against an upper lattice

Was a white face, gazing at us

As we withdrew.

And well did I divine

It to be the man's there dying,

Who but lately had been sighing

For her pledged mine.

Then I deigned a deed of hell;

It was done before I knew it;

What devil made me do it

I cannot tell!

Yes, while he gazed above,

I put my arm about her

That he might see, nor doubt her

My plighted Love.

The pale face vanished quick,

As if blasted, from the casement,

And my shame and self-abasement

Began their prick.

And they prick on, ceaselessly,

For that stab in Love's fierce fashion

Which, unfired by lover's passion,

Was foreign to me.

She smiled at my caress,

But why came the soft embowment

Of her shoulder at that moment

She did not guess.

Long long years has he lain

In thy garth, O sad Saint Cleather:

What tears there, bared to weather,

Will cleanse that stain!

Love is long-suffering, brave,

Sweet, prompt, precious as a jewel;

But O, too, Love is cruel,

Cruel as the grave.

-o0o-

Former Beauties

(At Casterbridge Fair)

These market-dames, mid-aged, with lips thin-drawn,

And tissues sere,

Are they the ones we loved in years agone,

And courted here?

Are these the muslined pink young things to whom

We vowed and swore

In nooks on summer Sundays by the Froom,

Or Budmouth shore?

Do they remember those gay tunes we trod

Clasped on the green;

Aye; trod till moonlight set on the beaten sod

A satin sheen?

They must forget, forget! They cannot know

What once they were,

Or memory would transfigure them, and show

Them always fair.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“There is a loquacity that tells nothing, which was Bathsheba's; and there is a silence which says much: that was Gabriel's.” - (Far from the Madding Crowd)

-o0o-

Old Furniture

I know not how it may be with others

   Who sit amid relics of householdry

That date from the days of their mothers' mothers,

   But well I know how it is with me

      Continually.

I see the hands of the generations

That owned each shiny familiar thing

In play on its knobs and indentations,

And with its ancient fashioning

Still dallying:

Hands behind hands, growing paler and paler,

As in a mirror a candle-flame

Shows images of itself, each frailer

As it recedes, though the eye may frame

Its shape the same.

On the clock's dull dial a foggy finger,

Moving to set the minutes right

With tentative touches that lift and linger

In the wont of a moth on a summer night,

Creeps to my sight.

On this old viol, too, fingers are dancing -

As *whilom - just over the strings by the nut,

The tip of a bow receding, advancing

In airy quivers, as if it would cut

The plaintive gut.

And I see a face by that box for tinder,

Glowing forth in fits from the dark,

And fading again, as the linten cinder

Kindles to red at the flinty spark,

Or goes out stark.

Well, well. It is best to be up and doing,

The world has no use for one to-day

Who eyes things thus - no aim pursuing!

He should not continue in this stay,

But sink away.

*whilom = formerly, in the past

-o0o-

In the Servants' Quarters

"Man, you too, aren't you, one of these rough followers of the criminal?

All hanging hereabout to gather how he's going to bear

Examination in the hall." She flung disdainful glances on

The shabby figure standing at the fire with others there,

Who warmed them by its flare.

"No indeed, my skipping maiden: I know nothing of the trial here,

Or criminal, if so he be. I chanced to come this way,

And the fire shone out into the dawn, and morning airs are cold now;

I, too, was drawn in part by charms I see before me play,

That I see not every day."

"Ha, ha!" then laughed the constables who also stood to warm themselves,

The while another maiden scrutinized his features hard,

As the blaze threw into contrast every line and knot that wrinkled them,

Exclaiming, "Why, last night when he was brought in by the guard,

You were with him in the yard!"

"Nay, nay, you teasing wench, I say! You know you speak mistakenly.

Cannot a tired pedestrian who has footed it afar

Here on his way from northern parts, engrossed in humble marketings,

Come in and rest awhile, although judicial doings are

Afoot by morning star?"

"O, come, come!" laughed the constables. "Why, man, you speak the dialect

He uses in his answers; you can hear him up the stairs.

So own it. We sha'n't hurt ye. There he's speaking now! His syllables

Are those you sound yourself when you are talking unawares,

As this pretty girl declares."

"And you shudder when his chain clinks!" she rejoined. "O yes, I noticed it.

And you winced, too, when those cuffs they gave him echoed to us here.

They'll soon be coming down, and you may then have to defend yourself

Unless you hold your tongue, or go away and keep you clear

When he's led to judgment near!"

"No! I'll be damned in hell if I know anything about the man!

No single thing about him more than everybody knows!

Must not I even warm my hands but I am charged with blasphemies?" 

. .

- His face convulses as the morning cock that moment crows,

And he stops, and turns, and goes.

-o0o-

An Upbraiding

Now I am dead you sing to me

The songs we used to know,

But while I lived you had no wish

Or care for doing so.

Now I am dead you come to me

In the moonlight, comfortless;

Ah, what would I have given alive

To win such tenderness!

When you are dead, and stand to me

Not differenced, as now,

But like again, will you be cold

As when we lived, or how?

A quote from a Hardy novel

“I shan't forget you, Jude,' he said, smiling, as the cart moved off. Be a good boy, remember; and be kind to animals and birds, and read all you can.” 

(Jude the Obscure)

-o0o-

Midnight on the Great Western

In the third-class seat sat the journeying boy,

And the roof-lamp's oily flame

Played down on his listless form and face,

Bewrapt past knowing to what he was going,

Or whence he came.

In the band of his hat the journeying boy

Had a ticket stuck; and a string

Around his neck bore the key of his box,

That twinkled gleams of the lamp's sad beams

Like a living thing.

What past can be yours, O journeying boy

Towards a world unknown,

Who calmly, as if incurious quite

On all at stake, can undertake

This plunge alone?

Knows your soul a sphere, O journeying boy,

Our rude realms far above,

Whence with spacious vision you mark and mete

This region of sin that you find you in,

But are not of?  

A quote by Thomas Hardy 

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

-o0o-

In The Small Hours

I lay in my bed and fiddled

With a dreamland viol and bow,

And the tunes flew back to my fingers

I had melodied years ago.

It was two or three in the morning

When I fancy-fiddled so

Long reels and country-dances,

And hornpipes swift and slow.

And soon anon came crossing

The chamber in the grey,

Figures of jigging fieldfolk –

Saviours of corn and hay –

To the air of ‘Haste to the Wedding.’

As after a wedding-day;

Yea, up and down the middle

In windless whirls went they!

There danced the bride and bridegroom,

And couples in a train,

Gay partners time and travail

Had longwhiles stilled amain -

It seemed a thing for weeping

To find, at slumber’s wane

And morning’s sly increeping,

That Now, not Then, held reign.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Like all people who have known rough times, light-heartedness seemed to her too irrational and inconsequent to be indulged in except as a reckless dream now and then; for she had been too early habituated to anxious reasoning to drop the habit suddenly...Her triumph was tempered by circumspection, she had still that field-mouse fear of the coulter of destiny despite fair promise, which is common among the thoughtful who have suffered early from poverty and oppression.” (The Mayor of Casterbridge)

-o0o-

At the Dinner Table

I sat at dinner in my prime,
And glimpsed my face in the sideboard-glass,
And started as if I had seen a crime,
And prayed the ghastly show might pass.

Wrenched wrinkled features met my sight,
Grinning back to me as my own;
I well-nigh fainted with affright
At finding me a haggard crone.

My husband laughed. He had slily set
A warping mirror there, in whim
To startle me. My eyes grew wet;
I spoke not all the eve to him.

He was sorry, he said, for what he had done,
And took away the distorting glass,
Uncovering the accustomed one;
And so it ended? No, alas,

Fifty years later, when he died,
I sat me in the selfsame chair,
Thinking of him. Till, weary-eyed,
I saw the sideboard facing there;

And from its mirror looked the lean
Thing I'd become, each wrinkle and score
The image of me that I had seen
In jest there fifty years before.

Two quotes from a Hardy novel

“Close? ah, he is close! He can hold his tongue well. That man’s dumbness is wonderful to listen to.”

“There’s so much sense in it. Every moment of it is brimmen over wi’ sound understanding.” (Under the Greenwood Tree)

-o0o-

The House of Silence

"That is a quiet place -

That house in the trees with the shady lawn."

" - If, child, you knew what there goes on

You would not call it a quiet place.

Why, a phantom abides there, the last of its race,

And a brain spins there till dawn."

"But I see nobody there, -

Nobody moves about the green,

Or wanders the heavy trees between."

" - Ah, that's because you do not bear

The visioning powers of souls who dare

To pierce the material screen.

"Morning, noon, and night,

Mid those funereal shades that seem

The uncanny scenery of a dream,

Figures dance to a mind with sight,

And music and laughter like floods of light

Make all the precincts gleam.

"It is a poet's bower,

Through which there pass, in fleet arrays,

Long teams of all the years and days,

Of joys and sorrows, of earth and heaven,

That meet mankind in its ages seven,

An aeon in an hour."

A quote from a Hardy novel

“The landlord of the lodging, who had heard that they were a queer couple, had doubted if they were married at all, especially as he had seen Arabella kiss Jude one evening when she had taken a little cordial; and he was about to give them notice to quit, till by chance overhearing her one night haranguing Jude in rattling terms, and ultimately flinging a shoe at his head, he recognized the note of ordinary wedlock; and concluding that they must be respectable, said no more.”  (Jude The Obscure)

-o0o-

Are you digging on my grave?

”Ah, are you digging on my grave,

My Loved one? - planting rue?”

- “No: yesterday he went to wed

One of the brightest wealth has bred.

It cannot hurt her now, he said,

That I should not be true.”

“Then who is digging on my grave?

My nearest dearest kin?”

“Ah, no: they sit and think, What use!

What good will planting flowers produce?

No tendance of her mound can loose

Her spirit from Death’s gin.”

“But someone digs upon my grave?

My enemy? - prodding sly?”

- “Nay, when she heard you had passed the Gate

That shuts on all flesh soon or late,

She thought you no more worth her hate,

And cares not where you lie.”

“Then, who is digging on my grave?

Say, since I have not guessed!”

- “O it is I, my mistress dear,

Your little dog, who still lives near,

And much I hope my movements here

Have not disturbed your rest?”

“Ah, yes! YOU dig upon my grave. . .

Why flashed it not on me

That one true heart was left behind!

What feeling do we ever find

To equal among human kind

A dog’s fidelity!”

“Mistress, I dug upon your grave

To bury a bone, in case

I should be hungry near this spot

When passing on my daily trot.

I am sorry but I quite forgot

It was your resting-place.”

A quote from a Hardy novel

"Emotions would be half starved if there were no candle-light.” (Desperate Remedies)

-o0o-

Penance

"Why do you sit, O pale thin man,

At the end of the room

By that harpsichord, built on the quaint old plan?

- It is cold as a tomb,

And there's not a spark within the grate;

And the jingling wires

Are vain desires

That have lagged too late."

"Why do I? Alas, far times ago

A woman lyred here

In the evenfall; one who fain did so

From year to year;

And, in loneliness bending wistfully,

Would wake each note

In sick sad rote,

None to listen or see.

"I would not join. I would not stay,

But drew away,

Though the winter fire beamed brightly - Aye!

I do today

What I would not then; and the chill old keys,

Like a skull's brown teeth

Loose in their sheath,

Freeze my touch; yes, freeze."

A quote from a Hardy novel

“I am now about to enter on my normal condition. For people are almost always in their graves. When we survey the long race of men, it is strange and still more strange to find that they are mainly dead men, who have scarcely ever been otherwise.” (Desperate Remedies)

-o0o-