The Unborn

I rose at night, and visited

   The Cave of the Unborn:

And crowding shapes surrounded me

For tidings of the life to be,

Who long had prayed the silent Head

   To haste its advent morn.

Their eyes were lit with artless trust,

   Hope thrilled their every tone;

"A scene the loveliest, is it not?

A pure delight, a beauty-spot

Where all is gentle, true and just,

   And darkness is unknown?"

My heart was anguished for their sake,

   I could not frame a word;

And they descried my sunken face,

And seemed to read therein, and trace

The news that pity would not break,

   Nor truth leave unaverred.

And as I silently retired

   I turned and watched them still,

And they came helter-skelter out,

Driven forward like a rabble rout

Into the world they had so desired

   By the all-immanent Will.

-o0o-

Just the Same

I sat.  It all was past;

Hope never would hail again;

Fair days had ceased at a blast,

The world was a darkened den.

The beauty and dream were gone,

And the halo in which I had hied

So gaily gallantly on

Had suffered blot and died!

I went forth, heedless whither,

In a cloud too black for name:

- People frisked hither and thither;

The world was just the same.

-o0o-

Epeisodia

I 

Past the hills that peep 

Where the leaze is smiling, 

On and on beguiling 

Crisply-cropping sheep; 

Under boughs of brushwood 

Linking tree and tree 

In a shade of lushwood, 

There caressed we! 

II 

Hemmed by city walls 

That outshut the sunlight, 

In a foggy dun light, 

Where the footstep falls 

With a pit-pat wearisome 

In its cadency 

On the flagstones drearisome 

There pressed we! 

III 

Where in wild-winged crowds 

Blown birds show their whiteness 

Up against the lightness 

Of the clammy clouds; 

By the random river 

Pushing to the sea, 

Under bents that quiver 

There rest we.

-o0o-

The Man He Killed

"Had he and I but met

By some old ancient inn,

We should have sat us down to wet

Right many a nipperkin!

"But ranged as infantry,

And staring face to face,

I shot at him as he at me,

And killed him in his place.

"I shot him dead because -

Because he was my foe,

Just so: my foe of course he was;

That's clear enough; although

"He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,

Off-hand like - just as I -

Was out of work - had sold his traps -

No other reason why.

"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."

A quote from a Hardy novel

“Rural solitude, which provides ample themes for the intellect and sweet occupations innumerable for the minor sentiments, often denies a ready object for those stronger passions that enter no less than the others into the human constitution. The suspended pathos finds its remedy in settling on the first intrusive shape that happens to be reasonably well organized for the purpose, disregarding social and other minor accessories. Where the solitude is shadowed by the secret melancholies of the solitary, this natural law is still surer in operation.”  (Two on a Tower)

-o0o-

The Trampwoman's Tragedy

I

From Wynyard's Gap the livelong day,

The livelong day,

We beat afoot the northward way

We had travelled times before.

The sun-blaze burning on our backs,

Our shoulders sticking to our packs,

By fosseway, fields, and turnpike tracks

We skirted sad Sedge-Moor.

II

Full twenty miles we jaunted on,

We jaunted on, — 

My fancy-man, and jeering John,

And Mother Lee, and I.

And, as the sun drew down to west,

We climbed the toilsome Polden crest,

And saw, of landskip sights the best,

The inn that beamed thereby.

 III

Ay, side by side

Through the Great Forest, Blackmoor wide,

And where the Parret ran.

We'd faced the gusts on Mendip ridge,

Had crossed the Yeo unhelped by bridge,

Been stung by every Marshwood midge,

I and my fancy-man.

  IV

Lone inns we loved, my man and I,

My man and I;

'King's Stag', 'Windwhistle' high and dry,

'The Horse' on Hintock Green,

The cosy house at Wynyard's Gap,

'The Hut', renowned on Bredy Knap,

And many another wayside tap

Where folk might sit unseen.

  V

O deadly day,

O deadly day! — 

I teased my fancy man in play

And wanton idleness.

I walked alongside jeering John,

I laid his hand my waist upon;

I would not bend my glances on

My lover's dark distress.

                                 

  VI

Thus Poldon top at last we won,

At last we won,

And gained the inn at sink of sun

Far-famed as 'Marshal's Elm'.

Beneath us figured tor and lea,

From Mendip to the western sea — 

I doubt if any finer sight there be

Within this royal realm.

  VII

Inside the settle all a-row — 

All four a-row 

We sat, I next to John, to show

That he had wooed and won.

And then he took me on his knee,

And swore it was his turn to be

My favoured mate, and Mother Lee

Passed to my former one.

                                

 VIII

Then in a voice I had never heard,

I had never heard,

My only love to me: 'One word,

My lady, if you please!

Whose is the child you are like to bear? — 

His? After all my months o' care?'

God knows 'twas not! But, O despair!

I nodded — still to tease.

 IX

Then he sprung, and with his knife — 

And with his knife,

He let out jeering Johnny's life,

Yes; there at set of sun.

The slant ray through the window nigh

Gilded John's blood and glazing eye,

Ere scarcely Mother Lee and I

Knew that the deed was done.

  X

The taverns tell the gloomy tale,

The gloomy tale,

How that at Ivel-Chester jail

My love, my sweetheart swung;

Though stained till now by no misdeed

Save one horse ta'en in time of need;

(Blue Jimmy stole right many a steed

Ere his last fling he flung.)

   XI

Thereaft I walked the world alone

Alone, alone!

On his death-day I gave my groan

And dropt his dead-born child.

'Twas nigh the jail, beneath a tree,

None tending me; for Mother Lee

Had died at Glaston, leaving me

Unfriended on the wild.

  XII

And in the night as I lay weak,

As I lay weak,

The leaves a-falling on my cheek,

The red moon low declined — 

The ghost of him I'd die to kiss

Rose up and said: 'Ah, tell me this!

Was the child mine, or was it his?

Speak, that I my rest may find!'

 XIII

O doubt but I told him then,

I told him then,

That I had kept me from all men

Since we joined lips and swore.

Whereat he smiled, and thinned away

As the wind stirred to call up day . . .

— 'Tis past! And here alone I stray

Haunting the Western Moor.

-o=0=o-

Summer Schemes

When friendly summer calls again,

    Calls again

    Her little fifers to these hills,

    We'll go we two to that arched fane

    Of leafage where they prime their bills

    Before they start to flood the plain

    With quavers, minims, shakes, and trills.

    " We'll go," I sing; but who shall say

    What may not chance before that day!

    And we shall see the waters spring,

    Waters spring

    From chinks the scrubby copses crown;

    And we shall trace their oncreeping

    To where the cascade tumbles down

    And sends the bobbing growths aswing,

    And ferns not quite but almost drown.

    " We shall," I say; but who may sing

    Of what another moon will bring!

A quote from a Hardy novel

“This good fellowship - camaraderie - usually occurring through the similarity of pursuits is unfortunately seldom super-added to love between the sexes, because men and women associate, not in their labours but in their pleasures merely. Where, however, happy circumstances permit its development, the compounded feeling proves itself to be the only love which is strong as death - that love which many waters cannot quench, nor the floods drown, besides which the passion usually called by the name is as evanescent as steam.”  (Far from the Madding Crowd)

-o0o-

Growth in May

 I enter a daisy-and-buttercup land,

   And thence thread a jungle of grass:

Hurdles and stiles scarce visible stand

   Above the lush stems as I pass.

Hedges peer over, and try to be seen,

   And seem to reveal a dim sense

That amid such ambitious and elbow-high green

   They make a mean show as a fence.

Elsewhere the mead is possessed of the neats,

   That range not greatly above

The rich rank thicket which brushes their teats,

   And HER gown, as she waits for her Love.

A quote from a Hardy novel

"Why didn’t you tell me there was danger? Why didn’t you warn me? Ladies know what to guard against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks; but I never had the chance of discovering in that way; and you did not help me!” 

(Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

-o0o-