An Upbraiding

Now I am dead you sing to me

The songs we used to know,

But while I lived you had no wish

Or care for doing so.

Now I am dead you come to me

In the moonlight, comfortless;

Ah, what would I have given alive

To win such tenderness!

When you are dead, and stand to me

Not differenced, as now,

But like again, will you be cold

As when we lived, or how?

A quote from a Hardy novel

“I shan't forget you, Jude,' he said, smiling, as the cart moved off. Be a good boy, remember; and be kind to animals and birds, and read all you can.” 

(Jude the Obscure)

-o0o-

Midnight on the Great Western

In the third-class seat sat the journeying boy,

And the roof-lamp's oily flame

Played down on his listless form and face,

Bewrapt past knowing to what he was going,

Or whence he came.

In the band of his hat the journeying boy

Had a ticket stuck; and a string

Around his neck bore the key of his box,

That twinkled gleams of the lamp's sad beams

Like a living thing.

What past can be yours, O journeying boy

Towards a world unknown,

Who calmly, as if incurious quite

On all at stake, can undertake

This plunge alone?

Knows your soul a sphere, O journeying boy,

Our rude realms far above,

Whence with spacious vision you mark and mete

This region of sin that you find you in,

But are not of?  

A quote by Thomas Hardy 

“Though a good deal is too strange to be believed, nothing is too strange to have happened.” 

-o0o-

In The Small Hours

I lay in my bed and fiddled

With a dreamland viol and bow,

And the tunes flew back to my fingers

I had melodied years ago.

It was two or three in the morning

When I fancy-fiddled so

Long reels and country-dances,

And hornpipes swift and slow.

And soon anon came crossing

The chamber in the grey,

Figures of jigging fieldfolk –

Saviours of corn and hay –

To the air of ‘Haste to the Wedding.’

As after a wedding-day;

Yea, up and down the middle

In windless whirls went they!

There danced the bride and bridegroom,

And couples in a train,

Gay partners time and travail

Had longwhiles stilled amain -

It seemed a thing for weeping

To find, at slumber’s wane

And morning’s sly increeping,

That Now, not Then, held reign.

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Like all people who have known rough times, light-heartedness seemed to her too irrational and inconsequent to be indulged in except as a reckless dream now and then; for she had been too early habituated to anxious reasoning to drop the habit suddenly...Her triumph was tempered by circumspection, she had still that field-mouse fear of the coulter of destiny despite fair promise, which is common among the thoughtful who have suffered early from poverty and oppression.” (The Mayor of Casterbridge)

-o0o-

At the Dinner Table

I sat at dinner in my prime,
And glimpsed my face in the sideboard-glass,
And started as if I had seen a crime,
And prayed the ghastly show might pass.

Wrenched wrinkled features met my sight,
Grinning back to me as my own;
I well-nigh fainted with affright
At finding me a haggard crone.

My husband laughed. He had slily set
A warping mirror there, in whim
To startle me. My eyes grew wet;
I spoke not all the eve to him.

He was sorry, he said, for what he had done,
And took away the distorting glass,
Uncovering the accustomed one;
And so it ended? No, alas,

Fifty years later, when he died,
I sat me in the selfsame chair,
Thinking of him. Till, weary-eyed,
I saw the sideboard facing there;

And from its mirror looked the lean
Thing I'd become, each wrinkle and score
The image of me that I had seen
In jest there fifty years before.

Two quotes from a Hardy novel

“Close? ah, he is close! He can hold his tongue well. That man’s dumbness is wonderful to listen to.”

“There’s so much sense in it. Every moment of it is brimmen over wi’ sound understanding.” (Under the Greenwood Tree)

-o0o-

The House of Silence

"That is a quiet place -

That house in the trees with the shady lawn."

" - If, child, you knew what there goes on

You would not call it a quiet place.

Why, a phantom abides there, the last of its race,

And a brain spins there till dawn."

"But I see nobody there, -

Nobody moves about the green,

Or wanders the heavy trees between."

" - Ah, that's because you do not bear

The visioning powers of souls who dare

To pierce the material screen.

"Morning, noon, and night,

Mid those funereal shades that seem

The uncanny scenery of a dream,

Figures dance to a mind with sight,

And music and laughter like floods of light

Make all the precincts gleam.

"It is a poet's bower,

Through which there pass, in fleet arrays,

Long teams of all the years and days,

Of joys and sorrows, of earth and heaven,

That meet mankind in its ages seven,

An aeon in an hour."

A quote from a Hardy novel

“The landlord of the lodging, who had heard that they were a queer couple, had doubted if they were married at all, especially as he had seen Arabella kiss Jude one evening when she had taken a little cordial; and he was about to give them notice to quit, till by chance overhearing her one night haranguing Jude in rattling terms, and ultimately flinging a shoe at his head, he recognized the note of ordinary wedlock; and concluding that they must be respectable, said no more.”  (Jude The Obscure)

-o0o-

Are you digging on my grave?

”Ah, are you digging on my grave,

My Loved one? - planting rue?”

- “No: yesterday he went to wed

One of the brightest wealth has bred.

It cannot hurt her now, he said,

That I should not be true.”

“Then who is digging on my grave?

My nearest dearest kin?”

“Ah, no: they sit and think, What use!

What good will planting flowers produce?

No tendance of her mound can loose

Her spirit from Death’s gin.”

“But someone digs upon my grave?

My enemy? - prodding sly?”

- “Nay, when she heard you had passed the Gate

That shuts on all flesh soon or late,

She thought you no more worth her hate,

And cares not where you lie.”

“Then, who is digging on my grave?

Say, since I have not guessed!”

- “O it is I, my mistress dear,

Your little dog, who still lives near,

And much I hope my movements here

Have not disturbed your rest?”

“Ah, yes! YOU dig upon my grave. . .

Why flashed it not on me

That one true heart was left behind!

What feeling do we ever find

To equal among human kind

A dog’s fidelity!”

“Mistress, I dug upon your grave

To bury a bone, in case

I should be hungry near this spot

When passing on my daily trot.

I am sorry but I quite forgot

It was your resting-place.”

A quote from a Hardy novel

"Emotions would be half starved if there were no candle-light.” (Desperate Remedies)

-o0o-

Penance

"Why do you sit, O pale thin man,

At the end of the room

By that harpsichord, built on the quaint old plan?

- It is cold as a tomb,

And there's not a spark within the grate;

And the jingling wires

Are vain desires

That have lagged too late."

"Why do I? Alas, far times ago

A woman lyred here

In the evenfall; one who fain did so

From year to year;

And, in loneliness bending wistfully,

Would wake each note

In sick sad rote,

None to listen or see.

"I would not join. I would not stay,

But drew away,

Though the winter fire beamed brightly - Aye!

I do today

What I would not then; and the chill old keys,

Like a skull's brown teeth

Loose in their sheath,

Freeze my touch; yes, freeze."

A quote from a Hardy novel

“I am now about to enter on my normal condition. For people are almost always in their graves. When we survey the long race of men, it is strange and still more strange to find that they are mainly dead men, who have scarcely ever been otherwise.” (Desperate Remedies)

-o0o-