At Madame Tussaud's in Victorian Years

That same first fiddler who leads the orchestra to-night

Here fiddled four decades of years ago;

He bears the same babe-like smile of self-centred delight,

Same trinket on watch-chain, same ring on the hand with the bow.

But his face, if regarded, is woefully wanner, and drier,

And his once dark beard has grown straggling and gray;

Yet a blissful existence he seems to have led with his lyre,

In a trance of his own, where no wearing or tearing had sway.

Mid these wax figures, who nothing can do, it may seem

That to do but a little thing counts a great deal;

To be watched by kings, councillors, queens, may be flattering to him

With their glass eyes longing they too could wake notes that appeal.

* * *

Ah, but he played staunchly - that fiddler - whoever he was,

With the innocent heart and the soul-touching string:

May he find the Fair Haven! For did he not smile with good cause?

Yes; gamuts that graced forty years'-flight were not a small thing!

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Sometimes a woman's love of being loved gets the better of her conscience, and though she is agonized at the thought of treating a man cruelly, she encourages him to love her while she doesn't love him at all. Then, when she sees him suffering, her remorse sets in, and she does what she can to repair the wrong.” (Jude the Obscure)

Side by Side

So there sat they,

The estranged two,

Thrust in one pew

By chance that day;

Placed so, breath-nigh,

Each comer unwitting

Who was to be sitting

In touch close by.

Thus side by side

Blindly alighted,

They seemed united

As groom and bride,

Who'd not communed

For many years -

Lives from twain spheres

With hearts distuned.

Her fringes brushed

His garment's hem

As the harmonies rushed

Through each of them:

Her lips could be heard

In the creed and psalms,

And their fingers neared

At the giving of alms.

And women and men,

The matins ended,

By looks commended

Them, joined again.

Quickly said she,

"Don't undeceive them -

Better thus leave them:"

"Quite so," said he.

Slight words! the last

Between them said,

Those two, once wed,

Who had not stood fast.

Diverse their ways

From the western door,

To meet no more

In their span of days.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“He knelt and bent lower, till her breath warmed his face, and in a moment his cheek was in contact with hers. She was sleeping soundly, and upon her eyelashes there lingered tears...” (Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

-o0o-

Shut out that Moon

Close up the casement, draw the blind,

Shut out that stealing moon,

She wears too much the guise she wore

Before our lutes were strewn

With years-deep dust, and names we read

On a white stone were hewn.

Step not out on the dew-dashed lawn

To view the Lady's Chair,

Immense Orion's glittering form,

The Less and Greater Bear:

Stay in; to such sights we were drawn

When faded ones were fair.

Brush not the bough for midnight scents

That come forth lingeringly,

And wake the same sweet sentiments

They breathed to you and me

When living seemed a laugh, and love

All it was said to be.

Within the common lamp-lit room

Prison my eyes and thought;

Let dingy details crudely loom,

Mechanic speech be wrought:

Too fragrant was Life's early bloom,

Too tart the fruit it brought!

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Every woman who makes a permanent impression on a man is usually recalled to his mind's eye as she appeared in one particular scene, which seems ordained to be her special form of manifestation throughout the pages of his memory.” ( A Pair of Blue Eyes)

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In Church

"And now to God the Father," he ends,

And his voice thrills up to the topmost tiles:

Each listener chokes as he bows and bends,

And emotion pervades the crowded aisles.

Then the preacher glides to the vestry-door,

And shuts it, and thinks he is seen no more.

The door swings softly ajar meanwhile,

And a pupil of his in the Bible class,

Who adores him as one without gloss or guile,

Sees her idol stand with a satisfied smile

And re-enact at the vestry-glass

Each pulpit gesture in deft dumb-show

That had moved the congregation so.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“I have been looking at the marriage service in the Prayer-book, and it seems to me very humiliating that a giver-away should be required at all. According to the ceremony as there printed, my bridegroom chooses me of his own will and pleasure; but I don’t choose him. Somebody gives me to him, like a she-ass or she-goat, or any other domestic animal.”  (Jude the Obscure)

Amabel

I marked her ruined hues,

Her custom-straitened views,

And asked, "Can there indwell

My Amabel?"

I looked upon her gown,

Once rose, now earthen brown;

The change was like the knell

Of Amabel.

Her step's mechanic ways

Had lost the life of May's;

Her laugh, once sweet in swell,

Spoilt Amabel.

I mused: "Who sings the strain

I sang ere warmth did wane?

Who thinks its numbers spell

His Amabel?"

Knowing that, though Love cease,

Love's race shows undecrease;

All find in dorp or dell

An Amabel.

I felt that I could creep

To some housetop and weep,

That Time the tyrant fell

Ruled Amabel!

I said (the while I sighed

That love like ours had died)

"Fond things I'll no more tell

To Amabel.

"But leave her to her fate,

And fling across the gate,

Till the Last Trump, farewell,

O Amabel!"

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Their gauzy skirts had brushed up from the grass innumerable flies and butterflies which, unable to escape, remained caged in the transparent tissue as in an aviary.” (Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

-o0o-

A Two-Years' Idyll

Yes; such it was;

Just those two seasons unsought,

Sweeping like summertide wind on our ways;

Moving, as straws,

Hearts quick as ours in those days;

Going like wind, too, and rated as nought

Save as the prelude to plays

Soon to come larger, life-fraught:

Yes; such it was.

"Nought" it was called,

Even by ourselves that which springs

Out of the years for all flesh, first or last,

Commonplace, scrawled

Dully on days that go past.

Yet, all the while, it upbore us like wings

Even in hours overcast:

Aye, though this best thing of things,

"Nought" it was called!

What seems it now?

Lost: such beginning was all;

Nothing came after: romance straight forsook

Quickly somehow

Life when we sped from our nook,

Primed for new scenes with designs smart and tall . . .

A preface without any book,

A trumpet uplipped, but no call;

That seems it now.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“The cow and horse tracks in the road were full of water, the rain having been enough to charge them, but not enough to wash them away. Across these minute pools the reflected stars flitted in a quick transit as she passed; she would not have known they were shining overhead if she had not seen them there—the vastest things of the universe imaged in objects so mean.”  (Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

-o0o-

The Sunshade

Ah - it's the skeleton of a lady's sunshade,

Here at my feet in the hard rock's chink,

Merely a naked sheaf of wires! -

Twenty years have gone with their livers and diers

Since it was silked in its white or pink.

Noonshine riddles the ribs of the sunshade,

No more a screen from the weakest ray;

Nothing to tell us the hue of its dyes,

Nothing but rusty bones as it lies

In its coffin of stone, unseen till to-day.

Where is the woman who carried that sun-shade

Up and down this seaside place? -

Little thumb standing against its stem,

Thoughts perhaps bent on a love-stratagem,

Softening yet more the already soft face!

Is the fair woman who carried that sunshade

A skeleton just as her property is,

Laid in the chink that none may scan?

And does she regret - if regret dust can -

The vain things thought when she flourished this?

A quote from a Hardy novel

“When you've made up your mind to marry, take the first respectable body that comes to hand- she's as good as any other; they'll be all alike in the groundwork; 'tis only in the flourishes there's a difference.” (Under the Greenwood Tree)

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