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)

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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)

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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

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The next post here will be on Tuesday.

A new daily blog

WHO SAYS POEMS HAVE TO RHYME

begins on Tuesday.

whosayspoemshavetorhyme.blogspot.com

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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.” 

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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

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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)

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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)

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