Her Father

I met her, as we had privily planned,
Where passing feet beat busily:
She whispered: "Father is at hand!
He wished to walk with me."

His presence as he joined us there
Banished our words of warmth away;
We felt, with cloudings of despair,
What Love must lose that day.

Her crimson lips remained unkissed,
Our fingers kept no tender hold,
His lack of feeling made the tryst
Embarrassed, stiff, and cold.

A cynic ghost then rose and said,
"But is his love for her so small
That, nigh to yours, it may be read
As of no worth at all?

"You love her for her pink and white;
But what when their fresh splendours close?
His love will last her in despite
Of Time, and wrack, and foes."

A quote from a Hardy novel

“...and to his eyes, casually glancing upward, the silver and black-stemmed birches, with their characteristic tufts, the pale grey boughs of beech, the dark-creviced elm all appeared now as black and flat outlines upon the sky, wherein the white stars twinkled so vehemently that their flickering seemed like the flapping of wings.” 

(Under the Greenwood Tree)

-o0o-

At the Railway Station, Upway

"There is not much that I can do,

For I've no money that's quite my own!"

Spoke up the pitying child -

A little boy with a violin

At the station before the train came in, -

"But I can play my fiddle to you,

And a nice one 'tis, and good in tone!"

The man in the handcuffs smiled;

The constable looked, and he smiled, too,

As the fiddle began to twang;

And the man in the handcuffs suddenly sang

Uproariously:

"This life so free

Is the thing for me!"

And the constable smiled, and said no word,

As if unconscious of what he heard;

And so they went on till the train came in -

The convict, and boy with the violin.

A quote by Thomas Hardy

"Pessimism is, in brief, playing the sure game. You cannot lose at it; you may gain. It is the only view of life in which you can never be disappointed. Having reckoned what to do in the worst possible circumstances, when better arise, as they may, life becomes child's play.” 

-o0o-

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-