Drawing Details in an Old Church

I hear the bell-rope sawing,

And the oil-less axle grind,

As I sit alone here drawing

What some Gothic brain designed;

And I catch the toll that follows

From the lagging bell,

Ere it spreads to hills and hollows

Where the parish people dwell.

I ask not whom it tolls for,

Incurious who he be;

So, some morrow, when those knolls for

One unguessed, sound out for me,

A stranger, loitering under

In nave or choir,

May think, too, "Whose, I wonder?"

But care not to inquire.

A quote from a Hardy novel

"A strong woman who recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.”  (Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

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To a Well-Named Dwelling

Glad old house of lichened stonework,

What I owed you in my lone work,

   Noon and night!

Whensoever faint or ailing,

Letting go my grasp and failing,

   You lent light.

How by that fair title came you?

Did some forward eye so name you

   Knowing that one,

Sauntering down his century blindly,

Would remark your sound, so kindly,

   And be won?

Smile in sunlight, sleep in moonlight,

Bask in April, May, and June-light,

   Zephyr-fanned;

Let your chambers show no sorrow,

Blanching day, or stuporing morrow,

   While they stand.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Tess was awake before dawn — at the marginal minute of the dark when the grove is still mute, save for one prophetic bird who sings with a clear-voiced conviction that he at least knows the correct time of day, the rest preserving silence as if equally convinced that he is mistaken.” 

(Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

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Mad Judy

When the hamlet hailed a birth

Judy used to cry:

When she heard our christening mirth

She would kneel and sigh.

She was crazed, we knew, and we

Humoured her infirmity.

When the daughters and the sons

Gathered them to wed,

And we like-intending ones

Danced till dawn was red,

She would rock and mutter, "More

Comers to this stony shore!"

When old Headsman Death laid hands

On a babe or twain,

She would feast, and by her brands

Sing her songs again.

What she liked we let her do,

Judy was insane, we knew.

A quote from a Hardy novel

"And so, standing before the aforesaid officiator, the two swore that at every other time of their lives till death took them, they would assuredly believe, feel, and desire precisely as they had believed, felt, and desired during the few preceding weeks. What was as remarkable as the undertaking itself was the fact that nobody seemed at all surprised at what they swore.”  (Jude the Obscure)

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Lonely Days

Lonely her fate was,

Environed from sight

In the house where the gate was

Past finding at night.

None there to share it,

No one to tell:

Long she'd to bear it,

And bore it well.

Elsewhere just so she

Spent many a day;

Wishing to go she

Continued to stay.

And people without

Basked warm in the air,

But none sought her out,

Or knew she was there.

Even birthdays were passed so,

Sunny and shady:

Years did it last so

For this sad lady.

Never declaring it,

No one to tell,

Still she kept bearing it -

Bore it well.

The days grew chillier,

And then she went

To a city, familiar

In years forespent,

When she walked gaily

Far to and fro,

But now, moving frailly,

Could nowhere go.

The cheerful colour

Of houses she'd known

Had died to a duller

And dingier tone.

Streets were now noisy

Where once had rolled

A few quiet coaches,

Or citizens strolled.

Through the party-wall

Of the memoried spot

They danced at a ball

Who recalled her not.

Tramlines lay crossing

Once gravelled slopes,

Metal rods clanked,

And electric ropes.

So she endured it all,

Thin, thinner wrought,

Until time cured it all,

And she knew nought.

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Best Times

We went a day's excursion to the stream,

Basked by the bank, and bent to the ripple-gleam,

And I did not know

That life would show,

However it might flower, no finer glow.

I walked in the Sunday sunshine by the road

That wound towards the wicket of your abode,

And I did not think

That life would shrink

To nothing ere it shed a rosier pink.

Unlooked for I arrived on a rainy night,

And you hailed me at the door by the swaying light,

And I full forgot

That life might not

Again be touching that ecstatic height.

And that calm eve when you walked up the stair,

After a gaiety prolonged and rare,

No thought soever

That you might never

Walk down again, struck me as I stood there.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“You, and those like you, take your fill of pleasure on earth by making the life of such as me bitter and black with sorrow; and then it is a fine thing, when you have had enough of that, to think of securing your pleasure in heaven by becoming converted!” (Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

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The Second Visit

Clack, clack, clack, went the mill-wheel as I came,

And she was on the bridge with the thin hand-rail,

And the miller at the door, and the ducks at mill-tail;

I come again years after, and all there seems the same.

And so indeed it is: the apple-tree'd old house,

And the deep mill-pond, and the wet wheel clacking,

And a woman on the bridge, and white ducks quacking,

And the miller at the door, powdered pale from boots to brows.

But it's not the same miller whom long ago I knew,

Nor are they the same apples, nor the same drops that dash

Over the wet wheel, nor the ducks below that splash,

Nor the woman who to fond plaints replied, "You know I do!"

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Because nobody could love 'ee more than Tess did! … She would have laid down her life for 'ee. I could do no more.”  (Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

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The Announcement

They came, the brothers, and took two chairs

In their usual quiet way;

And for a time we did not think

They had much to say.

And they began and talked awhile

Of ordinary things,

Till spread that silence in the room

A pent thought brings.

And then they said: "The end has come.

Yes: it has come at last."

And we looked down, and knew that day

A spirit had passed.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Little towns are like little children in this respect, that they interest most when they are enacting native peculiarities unconscious of beholders. Discovering themselves to be watched they attempt to be entertaining by putting on an antic, and produce disagreeable caricatures which spoil them.” (Desperate Remedies)

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