Satires of Circumstance No.2
in 15 glimpses

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.

-o0o-

This blog will come to an end in a fortnight. Until then, the series Satires of Circumstance will be posted, one poem each day. A new blog of Thomas Hardy poems is now being planned.

-o=0=o-

SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCE

in 15 glimpses

At Tea

The kettle descants in a cosy drone,

And the young wife looks in her husband's face,

And then at her guest's, and shows in her own

Her sense that she fills an envied place;

And the visiting lady is all abloom,

And says there was never so sweet a room.

And the happy young housewife does not know

That the woman beside her was first his choice,

Till the fates ordained it could not be so....

Betraying nothing in look or voice

The guest sits smiling and sips her tea,

And he throws her a stray glance yearningly.

-o0o-

This blog will come to an end in a fortnight. Until then, the series Satires of Circumstance will be posted, one poem each day. A new blog of Thomas Hardy poems is now being planned.

-o=0=o-

The Country Wedding

A Fiddler's Story

Little fogs were gathered in every hollow,

But the purple hillocks enjoyed fine weather

As we marched with our fiddles over the heather

- How it comes back! to their wedding that day.

Our getting there brought our neighbours and all, O!

Till, two and two, the couples stood ready.

And her father said: "Souls, for God's sake, be steady!"

And we strung up our fiddles, and sounded out "A."

The groomsman he stared, and said, "You must follow!"

But we'd gone to fiddle in front of the party,

(Our feelings as friends being true and hearty)

And fiddle in front we did all the way.

Yes, from their door by Mill-tail-Shallow,

And up Styles-Lane, and by Front-Street houses,

Where stood maids, bachelors, and spouses,

Who cheered the songs that we knew how to play.

I bowed the treble before her father,

Michael the tenor in front of the lady,

The bass-viol Reub and right well played he! -

The serpent Jim; ay, to church and back.

I thought the bridegroom was flurried rather,

As we kept up the tune outside the chancel,

While they were swearing things none can cancel

Inside the walls to our drumstick's whack.

"Too gay!" she pleaded. "Clouds may gather,

And sorrow come." But she gave in, laughing,

And by supper-time when we'd got to the quaffing

Her fears were forgot, and her smiles weren't slack.

A grand wedding 'twas! And what would follow

We never thought. Or that we should have buried her

On the same day with the man that married her,

A day like the first, half hazy, half clear.

Yes: little fogs were in every hollow,

Though the purple hillocks enjoyed fine weather,

When we went to play 'em to church together,

And carried 'em there in an after year.

-o0o-

The Walk

You did not walk with me

Of late to the hill-top tree

By the gated ways,

As in earlier days;

You were weak and lame,

So you never came,

And I went alone, and I did not mind,

Not thinking of you as left behind.

I walked up there to-day

Just in the former way:

Surveyed around

The familiar ground

By myself again:

What difference, then?

Only that underlying sense

Of the look of a room on returning thence.

-o0o-

Saying Good-Bye 

We are always saying

"Good-bye, good-bye!"

In work, in playing,

In gloom, in gaying:

At many a stage

Of pilgrimage

From youth to age

We say, "Good-bye,

Good-bye!"

We are undiscerning

Which go to sigh,

Which will be yearning

For soon returning;

And which no more

Will dark our door,

Or tread our shore,

But go to die,

To die.

Some come from roaming

With joy again;

Some, who come homing

By stealth at gloaming,

Had better have stopped

Till death, and dropped

By strange hands propped,

Than come so fain,

So fain.

So, with this saying,

"Good-bye, good-bye,"

We speed their waying

Without betraying

Our grief, our fear

No more to hear

From them, close, clear,

Again: "Good-bye,

Good-bye!"

-o0o-

We Sat At The Window

We sat at the window looking out,

And the rain came down like silken strings

That Swithin's day. Each gutter and spout

Babbled unchecked in the busy way

Of witless things:

Nothing to read, nothing to see

Seemed in that room for her and me

On Swithin's day.

We were irked by the scene, by our own selves; yes,

For I did not know, nor did she infer

How much there was to read and guess

By her in me, and to see and crown

By me in her.

Wasted were two souls in their prime,

And great was the waste, that July time

When the rain came down.

-o0o-

A Woman's Fancy

"Ah Madam; you've indeed come back here?

'Twas sad your husband's so swift death,

And you away! You shouldn't have left him:

It hastened his last breath."

"Dame, I am not the lady you think me;

I know not her, nor know her name;

I've come to lodge here a friendless woman;

My health my only aim."

She came; she lodged. Wherever she rambled

They held her as no other than

The lady named; and told how her husband

Had died a forsaken man.

So often did they call her thuswise

Mistakenly, by that man's name,

So much did they declare about him,

That his past form and fame

Grew on her, till she pitied his sorrow

As if she truly had been the cause 

Yea, his deserter; and came to wonder

What mould of man he was.

"Tell me my history!" would exclaim she;

"OUR history," she said mournfully.

"But YOU know, surely, Ma'am?" they would answer,

Much in perplexity.

Curious, she crept to his grave one evening,

And a second time in the dusk of the morrow;

Then a third time, with crescent emotion

Like a bereaved wife's sorrow.

No gravestone rose by the rounded hillock;

"I marvel why this is?" she said.

- "He had no kindred, Ma'am, but you near."

She set a stone at his head.

She learnt to dream of him, and told them:

"In slumber often uprises he,

And says: 'I am joyed that, after all, Dear,

You've not deserted me!"

At length died too this kinless woman,

As he had died she had grown to crave;

And at her dying she besought them

To bury her in his grave.

Such said, she had paused; until she added:

"Call me by his name on the stone,

As I were, first to last, his dearest,

Not she who left him lone!"

And this they did. And so it became there

That, by the strength of a tender whim,

The stranger was she who bore his name there,

Not she who wedded him.

-o0o-