The Last Chrysanthemum

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 each frond and whorl

That all he could for flowers was being done,

Why did it not uncurl?

It must have felt that fervid call

Although it took no heed,

Waking but now, when leaves like corpses fall,

And saps all retrocede.

Too late its beauty, lonely thing,

The season's shine is spent,

Nothing remains for it but shivering

In tempests turbulent.

Had it a reason for delay,

Dreaming in witlessness

That for a bloom so delicately gay

Winter would stay its stress?

- I talk as if the thing were born

With sense to work its mind;

Yet it is but one mask of many worn

By the Great Face behind.

-o0o-

Song of Hope

O sweet To-morrow! -

After to-day

There will away

This sense of sorrow.

Then let us borrow

Hope, for a gleaming

Soon will be streaming,

Dimmed by no grey -

No grey!

While the winds wing us

Sighs from The Gone,

Nearer to dawn

Minute-beats bring us;

When there will sing us

Larks of a glory

Waiting our story

Further anon -

Anon!

Doff the black token,

Don the red shoon,

Right and retune

Viol-strings broken;

Null the words spoken

In speeches of rueing,

The night cloud is hueing,

To-morrow shines soon -

Shines soon!

-o0o-

The Fallow Deer at the Lonely House

One without looks in to-night

Through the curtain-chink

From the sheet of glistening white;

One without looks in to-night

As we sit and think

By the fender-brink.

We do not discern those eyes

Watching in the snow;

Lit by lamps of rosy dyes

We do not discern those eyes

Wondering, aglow,

Fourfooted, tiptoe.

-o0o-

Middle-aged Enthusiasms

We passed where flag and flower

  Signalled a jocund throng;

  We said: "Go to, the hour

  Is apt!" - and joined the song;

And, kindling, laughed at life and care,

Although we knew no laugh lay there.

  We walked where shy birds stood

  Watching us, wonder-dumb;

  Their friendship met our mood;

  We cried: "We'll often come:

We'll come morn, noon, eve, everywhen!"

- We doubted we should come again.

  We joyed to see strange sheens

  Leap from quaint leaves in shade;

  A secret light of greens

  They'd for their pleasure made.

We said: "We'll set such sorts as these!"

- We knew with night the wish would cease.

  "So sweet the place," we said,

  "Its tacit tales so dear,

  Our thoughts, when breath has sped,

  Will meet and mingle here!" . . .

"Words!" mused we. "Passed the mortal door,

Our thoughts will reach this nook no more."

-o0o-

The Fiddler

The fiddler knows what's brewing

To the lilt of his lyric wiles:

The fiddler knows what rueing

Will come of this night's smiles!

He sees couples join them for dancing,

And afterwards joining for life,

He sees them pay high for their prancing

By a welter of wedded strife.

He twangs: "Music hails from the devil,

Though vaunted to come from heaven,

For it makes people do at a revel

What multiplies sins by seven.

"There's many a heart now mangled,

And waiting its time to go,

Whose tendrils were first entangled

By my sweet viol and bow!"

-o0o-

We sat at the Window

We sat at the window looking out,

And the rain came down like silken strings

That Swithin's day. Each gutter and spout

Babbled unchecked in the busy way

Of witless things:

Nothing to read, nothing to see

Seemed in that room for her and me

On Swithin's day.

We were irked by the scene, by our own selves; yes,

For I did not know, nor did she infer

How much there was to read and guess

By her in me, and to see and crown

By me in her.

Wasted were two souls in their prime,

And great was the waste, that July time

When the rain came down.

-o0o-

Paying Calls

I went by footpath and by stile

    Beyond where bustle ends,

Strayed here a mile and there a mile

    And called upon some friends.

On certain ones I had not seen

    For years past did I call,

And then on others who had been

    The oldest friends of all.

It was the time of midsummer

    When they had used to roam;

But now, though tempting was the air,

    I found them all at home.

I spoke to one and other of them

    By mound and stone and tree

Of things we had done ere days were dim,

    But they spoke not to me.

-o0o-

Autumn in King's Hintock Park

Here by the baring bough

   Raking up leaves,

Often I ponder how

   Springtime deceives, -

I, an old woman now,

   Raking up leaves.

Here in the avenue

   Raking up leaves,

Lords' ladies pass in view,

   Until one heaves

Sighs at life's russet hue,

   Raking up leaves!

Just as my shape you see

   Raking up leaves,

I saw, when fresh and free,

   Those memory weaves

Into grey ghosts by me,

   Raking up leaves.

Yet, Dear, though one may sigh,

   Raking up leaves,

New leaves will dance on high -

   Earth never grieves! -

Will not, when missed am I

   Raking up leaves.

-o0o-

The Woman in the Rye

Why do you stand in the dripping rye,

Cold-lipped, unconscious, wet to the knee,

When there are firesides near?" said I.

"I told him I wished him dead," said she.

"Yea, cried it in my haste to one

Whom I had loved, whom I well loved still;

And die he did. And I hate the sun,

And stand here lonely, aching, chill;

"Stand waiting, waiting under skies

That blow reproach, the while I see

The rooks sheer off to where he lies

Wrapt in a peace withheld from me."

-o0o-

I need not go

I need not go

Through sleet and snow

To where I know

She waits for me;

She will wait me there

Till I find it fair,

And have time to spare

From company.

When I've overgot

The world somewhat,

When things cost not

Such stress and strain,

Is soon enough

By cypress sough

To tell my Love

I am come again.

And if some day,

When none cries nay,

I still delay

To seek her side,

(Though ample measure

Of fitting leisure

Await my pleasure)

She will riot chide.

What - not upbraid me

That I delayed me,

Nor ask what stayed me

So long? Ah, no! -

New cares may claim me,

New loves inflame me,

She will not blame me,

But suffer it so.

-o0o-

Wagtail and Baby

A baby watched a ford, whereto

   A wagtail came for drinking;

A blaring bull went wading through,

   The wagtail showed no shrinking.

A stallion splashed his way across,

   The birdie nearly sinking;

He gave his plumes a twitch and toss,

   And held his own unblinking.

Next saw the baby round the spot

   A mongrel slowly slinking;

The wagtail gazed, but faltered not

   In dip and sip and prinking.

A perfect gentleman then neared;

   The wagtail, in a winking,

With terror rose and disappeared;

   The baby fell a-thinking.

-o0o-

On a discovered curl of hair

When your soft welcomings were said,

This curl was waving on your head,

And when we walked where breakers dinned

It sported in the sun and wind,

And when I had won your words of grace

It brushed and clung about my face.

Then, to abate the misery

Of absentness, you gave it me.

Where are its fellows now?  Ah, they

For brightest brown have donned a grey,

And gone into a caverned ark,

Ever unopened, always dark!

Yet this one curl, untouched of time,

Beams with live brown as in its prime,

So that it seems I even could now

Restore it to the living brow

By bearing down the western road

Till I had reached your old abode.

-o0o-

A Meeting with Despair

As evening shaped I found me on a moor

   Which sight could scarce sustain:

The black lean land, of featureless contour,

   Was like a tract in pain.

"This scene, like my own life," I said, "is one

   Where many glooms abide;

Toned by its fortune to a deadly dun -

   Lightless on every side."

I glanced aloft and halted, pleasure-caught

   To see the contrast there:

The ray-lit clouds gleamed glory; and I thought,

   "There's solace everywhere!"

Then bitter self-reproaches as I stood

   I dealt me silently

As one perverse - misrepresenting Good

   In graceless mutiny.

Against the horizon's dim-discerned wheel

   A form rose, strange of mould:

That he was hideous, hopeless, I could feel

   Rather than could behold.

"'Tis a dead spot, where even the light lies spent

   To darkness!" croaked the Thing.

"Not if you look aloft!" said I, intent

   On my new reasoning.

 "Yea - but await awhile!" he cried.  "Ho-ho! -

   Look now aloft and see!"

I looked.  There, too, sat night:  Heaven's radiant show

   Had gone.  Then chuckled he.

-o0o-

The Wedding Morning

  Tabitha dressed for her wedding:-

   "Tabby, why look so sad?"

"- O I feel a great gloominess spreading, spreading,

   Instead of supremely glad! . . .

   "I called on Carry last night,

   And he came whilst I was there,

Not knowing I'd called.  So I kept out of sight,

   And I heard what he said to her:

   "- Ah, I'd far liefer marry

   YOU, Dear, tomorrow!" he said,

"But that cannot be." O I'd give him to Carry,

   And willingly see them wed,

   But how can I do it when

   His baby will soon be born?

After that I hope I may die.  And then

   She can have him.  I shall not mourn!"

-o0o-

I was the Midmost of my World

I was the midmost of my world

   When first I frisked me free,

For though within its circuit gleamed

   But a small company,

And I was immature, they seemed

   To bend their looks on me.

She was the midmost of my world

   When I went further forth,

And hence it was that, whether I turned

   To south, east, west, or north,

Beams of an all-day Polestar burned

   From that new axe of earth.

Where now is midmost in my world?

   I trace it not at all:

No midmost shows it here, or there,

   When wistful voices call

"We are fain!  We are fain!" from everywhere

   On Earth's bewildering ball!

-o0o-

The Unborn

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 haste its advent morn.

Their eyes were lit with artless trust,

   Hope thrilled their every tone;

"A scene the loveliest, is it not?

A pure delight, a beauty-spot

Where all is gentle, true and just,

   And darkness is unknown?"

My heart was anguished for their sake,

   I could not frame a word;

And they descried my sunken face,

And seemed to read therein, and trace

The news that pity would not break,

   Nor truth leave unaverred.

And as I silently retired

   I turned and watched them still,

And they came helter-skelter out,

Driven forward like a rabble rout

Into the world they had so desired

   By the all-immanent Will.

-o0o-

Just the Same

I sat.  It all was past;

Hope never would hail again;

Fair days had ceased at a blast,

The world was a darkened den.

The beauty and dream were gone,

And the halo in which I had hied

So gaily gallantly on

Had suffered blot and died!

I went forth, heedless whither,

In a cloud too black for name:

- People frisked hither and thither;

The world was just the same.

-o0o-

Epeisodia

I 

Past the hills that peep 

Where the leaze is smiling, 

On and on beguiling 

Crisply-cropping sheep; 

Under boughs of brushwood 

Linking tree and tree 

In a shade of lushwood, 

There caressed we! 

II 

Hemmed by city walls 

That outshut the sunlight, 

In a foggy dun light, 

Where the footstep falls 

With a pit-pat wearisome 

In its cadency 

On the flagstones drearisome 

There pressed we! 

III 

Where in wild-winged crowds 

Blown birds show their whiteness 

Up against the lightness 

Of the clammy clouds; 

By the random river 

Pushing to the sea, 

Under bents that quiver 

There rest we.

-o0o-

The Man He Killed

"Had he and I but met

By some old ancient inn,

We should have sat 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."

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Rural solitude, which provides ample themes for the intellect and sweet occupations innumerable for the minor sentiments, often denies a ready object for those stronger passions that enter no less than the others into the human constitution. The suspended pathos finds its remedy in settling on the first intrusive shape that happens to be reasonably well organized for the purpose, disregarding social and other minor accessories. Where the solitude is shadowed by the secret melancholies of the solitary, this natural law is still surer in operation.”  (Two on a Tower)

-o0o-

The Trampwoman's Tragedy

I

From Wynyard's Gap the livelong day,

The livelong day,

We beat afoot the northward way

We had travelled times before.

The sun-blaze burning on our backs,

Our shoulders sticking to our packs,

By fosseway, fields, and turnpike tracks

We skirted sad Sedge-Moor.

II

Full twenty miles we jaunted on,

We jaunted on, — 

My fancy-man, and jeering John,

And Mother Lee, and I.

And, as the sun drew down to west,

We climbed the toilsome Polden crest,

And saw, of landskip sights the best,

The inn that beamed thereby.

 III

Ay, side by side

Through the Great Forest, Blackmoor wide,

And where the Parret ran.

We'd faced the gusts on Mendip ridge,

Had crossed the Yeo unhelped by bridge,

Been stung by every Marshwood midge,

I and my fancy-man.

  IV

Lone inns we loved, my man and I,

My man and I;

'King's Stag', 'Windwhistle' high and dry,

'The Horse' on Hintock Green,

The cosy house at Wynyard's Gap,

'The Hut', renowned on Bredy Knap,

And many another wayside tap

Where folk might sit unseen.

  V

O deadly day,

O deadly day! — 

I teased my fancy man in play

And wanton idleness.

I walked alongside jeering John,

I laid his hand my waist upon;

I would not bend my glances on

My lover's dark distress.

                                 

  VI

Thus Poldon top at last we won,

At last we won,

And gained the inn at sink of sun

Far-famed as 'Marshal's Elm'.

Beneath us figured tor and lea,

From Mendip to the western sea — 

I doubt if any finer sight there be

Within this royal realm.

  VII

Inside the settle all a-row — 

All four a-row 

We sat, I next to John, to show

That he had wooed and won.

And then he took me on his knee,

And swore it was his turn to be

My favoured mate, and Mother Lee

Passed to my former one.

                                

 VIII

Then in a voice I had never heard,

I had never heard,

My only love to me: 'One word,

My lady, if you please!

Whose is the child you are like to bear? — 

His? After all my months o' care?'

God knows 'twas not! But, O despair!

I nodded — still to tease.

 IX

Then he sprung, and with his knife — 

And with his knife,

He let out jeering Johnny's life,

Yes; there at set of sun.

The slant ray through the window nigh

Gilded John's blood and glazing eye,

Ere scarcely Mother Lee and I

Knew that the deed was done.

  X

The taverns tell the gloomy tale,

The gloomy tale,

How that at Ivel-Chester jail

My love, my sweetheart swung;

Though stained till now by no misdeed

Save one horse ta'en in time of need;

(Blue Jimmy stole right many a steed

Ere his last fling he flung.)

   XI

Thereaft I walked the world alone

Alone, alone!

On his death-day I gave my groan

And dropt his dead-born child.

'Twas nigh the jail, beneath a tree,

None tending me; for Mother Lee

Had died at Glaston, leaving me

Unfriended on the wild.

  XII

And in the night as I lay weak,

As I lay weak,

The leaves a-falling on my cheek,

The red moon low declined — 

The ghost of him I'd die to kiss

Rose up and said: 'Ah, tell me this!

Was the child mine, or was it his?

Speak, that I my rest may find!'

 XIII

O doubt but I told him then,

I told him then,

That I had kept me from all men

Since we joined lips and swore.

Whereat he smiled, and thinned away

As the wind stirred to call up day . . .

— 'Tis past! And here alone I stray

Haunting the Western Moor.

-o=0=o-

Summer Schemes

When friendly summer calls again,

    Calls again

    Her little fifers to these hills,

    We'll go we two to that arched fane

    Of leafage where they prime their bills

    Before they start to flood the plain

    With quavers, minims, shakes, and trills.

    " We'll go," I sing; but who shall say

    What may not chance before that day!

    And we shall see the waters spring,

    Waters spring

    From chinks the scrubby copses crown;

    And we shall trace their oncreeping

    To where the cascade tumbles down

    And sends the bobbing growths aswing,

    And ferns not quite but almost drown.

    " We shall," I say; but who may sing

    Of what another moon will bring!

A quote from a Hardy novel

“This good fellowship - camaraderie - usually occurring through the similarity of pursuits is unfortunately seldom super-added to love between the sexes, because men and women associate, not in their labours but in their pleasures merely. Where, however, happy circumstances permit its development, the compounded feeling proves itself to be the only love which is strong as death - that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, besides which the passion usually called by the name is as evanescent as steam.”  (Far from the Madding Crowd)

-o0o-

Growth in May

 I enter a daisy-and-buttercup land,

   And thence thread a jungle of grass:

Hurdles and stiles scarce visible stand

   Above the lush stems as I pass.

Hedges peer over, and try to be seen,

   And seem to reveal a dim sense

That amid such ambitious and elbow-high green

   They make a mean show as a fence.

Elsewhere the mead is possessed of the neats,

   That range not greatly above

The rich rank thicket which brushes their teats,

   And HER gown, as she waits for her Love.

A quote from a Hardy novel

"Why didn’t you tell me there was danger? Why didn’t you warn me? Ladies know what to guard against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks; but I never had the chance of discovering in that way; and you did not help me!” 

(Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

-o0o-

If it's ever Spring again

If it's ever spring again,

 Spring again,

 I shall go where went I when

 Down the moor-cock splashed, and hen,

 Seeing me not, amid their flounder,

 Standing with my arm around her;

 If it's ever spring again,

 Spring again,

 I shall go where went I then.

 If it's ever summer-time,

 Summer-time,

 With the hay crop at the prime,

 And the cuckoos - two - in rhyme,

 As they used to be, or seemed to,

 We shall do as long we've dreamed to,

 If it's ever summer-time,

 Summer-time,

 With the hay, and bees achime.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“A great statesman thinks several times, and acts; a young lady acts, and thinks several times.” (Desperate Remedies)

-o0o-

Logs on the Hearth

In Memory of a Sister

 The fire advances along the log

Of the tree we felled,

Which bloomed and bore striped apples by the peck

Till its last hour of bearing knelled.

The fork that first my hand would reach

And then my foot

In climbings upward inch by inch, lies now

Sawn, sapless, darkening with soot.

Where the bark chars is where, one year,

It was pruned, and bled -

Then overgrew the wound. But now, at last,

Its growings all have stagnated.

My fellow-climber rises dim

From her chilly grave -

Just as she was, her foot near mine on the bending limb,

Laughing, her young brown hand awave.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“And they will pause just for an instant, and give a sigh to me, and think, "Poor girl!" believing they do great justice to my memory by this. But they will never, never realize that it was my single opportunity of existence, as well as of doing my duty, which they are regarding; they will not feel that what to them is but a thought, easily held in those two words of pity, "Poor girl!" was a whole life to me, as full of hours, minutes, and peculiar minutes, of hopes and dreads, smiles, whisperings, tears, as theirs: that it was my world, what is to them their world, and that in that life of mine, however much I cared for them, only as the thought I seem to them to be. Nobody can enter into another's nature truly, that's what is so grievous.” (Desperate Remedies)

-o0o-

The Faithful Swallow

When summer shone

Its sweetest on

An August day,

"Here evermore,"

I said, "I'll stay;

Not go away

To another shore

As fickle they!"

December came:

'Twas not the same!

I did not know

Fidelity

Would serve me so.

Frost, hunger, snow;

And now, ah me,

Too late to go!

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Clare arose in the light of a dawn that was ashy and furtive, as though associated with crime. The fireplace confronted him with its extinct embers; the spread supper-table, whereon stood the two full glasses of untasted wine, now flat and filmy; her vacated seat and his own; the other articles of furniture, with their eternal look of not being able to help it, their intolerable inquiry what was to be done?” (Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

Who says poems have to rhyme
The first post of the new blog is now online
whosayspoemshavetorhyme.blogspot.com

-o0o-

The next post here will be on Tuesday.

A new daily blog

WHO SAYS POEMS HAVE TO RHYME

begins on Tuesday.

whosayspoemshavetorhyme.blogspot.com

-o0o-

THE MARKET GIRL  

Nobody took any notice of her as she stood on the causey kerb*,

All eager to sell her honey and apples and bunches of garden herb;

And if she had offered to give her wares and herself with them too that day,

I doubt if a soul would have cared to take a bargain so choice away.

But chancing to trace her sunburnt grace that morning as I passed nigh,

I went and I said "Poor maidy dear! - and will none of the people buy?"

And so it began; and soon we knew what the end of it all must be,

And I found that, though no others had bid, a prize had been won by me.

*causey - a paved pathway

A quote by Thomas Hardy

“In reprinting this story for a new edition I am reminded that it was in the chapters of "Far from the Madding Crowd," as they appeared month by month in a popular magazine, that I first ventured to adopt the word "Wessex" from the pages of early English history, and give it a fictitious significance as the existing name of the district once included in that extinct kingdom. The series of novels I projected being mainly of the kind called local, they seemed to require a territorial definition of some sort to lend unity to their scene.” 

-o0o-

A Week

On Monday night I closed my door,

And thought you were not as heretofore,

And little cared if we met no more.

I seemed on Tuesday night to trace

Something beyond mere commonplace

In your ideas, and heart, and face.

On Wednesday I did not opine

Your life would ever be one with mine,

Though if it were we should well combine.

On Thursday noon I liked you well,

And fondly felt that we must dwell

Not far apart, whatever befell.

On Friday it was with a thrill

In gazing towards your distant vill*

I owned you were my dear one still.

I saw you wholly to my mind

On Saturday even one who shrined

All that was best of womankind.

As wing-clipt sea-gull for the sea

On Sunday night I longed for thee,

Without whom life were waste to me!

* a territorial division under the feudal system in England

-o0o-

Where the Picnic was

Where we made the fire,

In the summer time,

Of branch and briar

On the hill to the sea

I slowly climb

Through winter mire,

And scan and trace

The forsaken place

Quite readily.

Now a cold wind blows,

And the grass is grey,

But the spot still shows

As a burnt circle - aye,

And stick-ends, charred,

Still strew the sward

Whereon I stand,

Last relic of the band

Who came that day!

Yes, I am here

Just as last year,

And the sea breathes brine

From its strange straight line

Up hither, the same

As when we four came.

- But two have wandered far

From this grassy rise

Into urban roar

Where no picnics are,

And one - has shut her eyes

For evermore.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“The next morning, when Thomasin withdrew the curtains of her bedroom window, there stood the Maypole in the middle of the greek, its top cutting into the sky. It had sprung up in the night. or rather early morning, like Jack's bean-stalk. She opened the casement to get a better view of the garlands and posies that adored it. The sweet perfume of the flowers had already spread into the surrounding air, which being free from every taint, conducted to her lips a full measure of the fragrance received from the spire of blossom in its midst. At the top of the pole were crossed hoops decked with small flowers; beneath these came a milk-white zone of Maybloom;then a zone of bluebells, then of cowslips, then of lilacs, then of ragged-rosins, daffodils and so on, till the lowest stage was reached.Thomasin noticed all these, and was delighted that the May revel was to be so near.”  (The Return of the Native)

-o0o-

In the British Museum

What do you see in that time-touched stone,

When nothing is there

But ashen blankness, although you give it

A rigid stare?

You look not quite as if you saw,

But as if you heard,

Parting your lips, and treading softly

As mouse or bird.

It is only the base of a pillar, they'll tell you,

That came to us

From a far old hill men used to name

Areopagus."

"I know no art, and I only view

A stone from a wall,

But I am thinking that stone has echoed

The voice of Paul,

"Paul as he stood and preached beside it

Facing the crowd,

A small gaunt figure with wasted features,

Calling out loud

"Words that in all their intimate accents

Pattered upon

That marble front, and were far reflected,

And then were gone.

"I'm a labouring man, and know but little,

Or nothing at all;

But I can't help thinking that stone once echoed

The voice of Paul."

A quote from a Hardy novel

“The flowers in the bride’s hand are sadly like the garland which decked the heifers of sacrifice in old times!”
“Still, Sue, it is no worse for the woman than for the man. That’s what some women fail to see, and instead of protesting against the conditions they protest against the man, the other victim; just as a woman in a crowd will abuse the man who crushes against her, when he is only the helpless transmitter of the pressure put upon him.”  (Jude the Obscure)

-o0o-