Today's post concludes this collection of Thomas Hardy poems.

However, a new blog

The Thomas Hardy Poetry Path

will begin tomorrow 4th November at

thethomashardypoetrypath.blogspot.com

Satires of Circumstance No15

in 15 glimpses

In the Moonlight

'O lonely workman, standing there

In a dream, why do you stare and stare

At her grave, as no other grave there were?

'If your great gaunt eyes so importune

Her soul by the shine of this corpse-cold moon

Maybe you'll raise her phantom soon!'

'Why, fool, it is what I would rather see

Than all the living folk there be;

But alas, there is no such joy for me!'

'Ah -- she was one you loved, no doubt,

Through good and evil, through rain and drought,

And when she passed, all your sun went out?

'Nay: she was the woman I did not love,

Whom all the others were ranked above,

Whom during her life I thought nothing of.'

-o0o-

Satires of Circumstance No.14

in 15 glimpses

Over the Coffin

They stand confronting. the coffin between,

His wife of old, and his wife of late,

And the dead man whose they both had been

Seems listening aloof, as to things past date.

-- I have called,' says the first. 'Do you marvel or not?'

'In truth,' says the second, 'I do -- somewhat.'

'Well, there was a word to be said by me!...

I divorced that man because of you --

It seemed I must do it, boundenly;

But now I am older, and tell you true,

For life is little, and dead lies he;

I would I had let alone you two!

And both of us, scorning parochial ways,

Had lived like the wives in the patriarch's days.

-o0o-

Satires of Circumstance No.13

in 15 glimpses

On the Death-bed

'I'll tell -- being past all praying for --

Then promptly die.... He was out at the war,

And got some scent of the intimacy

That was under way between her and me;

And he stole back home, and appeared like a ghost

One night, at the very time almost

That I reached her house. Well, I shot him dead,

And secretly buried him. Nothing was said.

'The news of the battle came next day;

He was scheduled missing. I hurried away,

Got out there, visited the field,

And sent home word that a search revealed

He was one of the slain; though, lying alone

And stript, his body had not been known.

'But she suspected. I lost her love,

Yea, my hope, of earth, and of Heaven above;

And my time's now come, and I'll pay the score,

Though it be burning for evermore.'

-o0o-