See“The Trumpet-Major”
In Memory of one of the Writer’s Family who was aVolunteer during the War with Napoleon
Ina ferny bywayNear the great South-Wessex Highway,A homestead raised its breakfast-smoke aloft;The dew-damps still lay steamless, for the sun had made no sky-way,And twilight cloaked the croft.
’Twas hard to realize onThis snug side the mute horizonThat beyond it hostile armaments might steer,Save from seeing in the porchway a fair woman weep with eyes onA harnessed Volunteer.
In haste he’d flown thereTo his comely wife alone there,While marching south hard by, to still her fears,For she soon would be a mother, and few messengers were known thereIn these campaigning years.
’Twas time to be Good-bying,Since the assembly-hour was nighingIn royal George’s town at six that morn;And betwixt its wharves and this retreat were ten good miles of hieingEre ring of bugle-horn.
“I’ve laid in food, Dear,And broached the spiced and brewed, Dear;And if our July hope should antedate,Let the char-wench mount and gallop by the halterpath and wood, Dear,And fetch assistance straight.
“As for Buonaparte, forget him;He’s not like to land! But let him,Those strike with aim who strike for wives and sons!And the war-boats built to float him; ’twere but wanted to upset himA slat from Nelson’s guns!
“But, to assure thee,And of creeping fears to cure thee,If heshouldbe rumoured anchoring in the Road,Drive with the nurse to Kingsbere; and let nothing thence allure theeTill we’ve him safe-bestowed.
“Now, to turn to marching matters:—I’ve my knapsack, firelock, spatters,Crossbelts, priming-horn, stock, bay’net, blackball, clay,Pouch, magazine, flints, flint-box that at every quick-step clatters;. . . My heart, Dear; that must stay!”
—With breathings brokenFarewell was kissed unspoken,And they parted there as morning stroked the panes;And the Volunteer went on, and turned, and twirled his glove for token,And took the coastward lanes.
When above He’th Hills he found him,He saw, on gazing round him,The Barrow-Beacon burning—burning low,As if, perhaps, uplighted ever since he’d homeward bound him;And it meant: Expect the Foe!
Sketch of person riding with wide landscape behind
Leaving the byway,And following swift the highway,Car and chariot met he, faring fast inland;“He’s anchored, Soldier!” shouted some: “God save thee, marching thy way,Th’lt front him on the strand!”
He slowed; he stopped; he palteredAwhile with self, and faltered,“Why courting misadventure shoreward roam?To Molly, surely! Seek the woods with her till times have altered;Charity favours home.
“Else, my denyingHe would come she’ll read as lying—Think the Barrow-Beacon must have met my eyes—That my words were not unwareness, but deceit of her, while tryingMy life to jeopardize.
“At home is stocked provision,And to-night, without suspicion,We might bear it with us to a covert near;Such sin, to save a childing wife, would earn it Christ’s remission,Though none forgive it here!”
While thus he, thinking,A little bird, quick drinkingAmong the crowfoot tufts the river bore,Was tangled in their stringy arms, and fluttered, well-nigh sinking,Near him, upon the moor.
He stepped in, reached, and seized it,And, preening, had released itBut that a thought of Holy Writ occurred,And Signs Divine ere battle, till it seemed him Heaven had pleased itAs guide to send the bird.
“O Lord, direct me! . . .Doth Duty now expect meTo march a-coast, or guard my weak ones near?Give this bird a flight according, that I thence know to elect meThe southward or the rear.”
He loosed his clasp; when, rising,The bird—as if surmising—Bore due to southward, crossing by the Froom,And Durnover Great-Field and Fort, the soldier clear advising—Prompted he wist by Whom.
Then on he pantedBy grim Mai-Don, and slantedUp the steep Ridge-way, hearkening betwixt whiles;Till, nearing coast and harbour, he beheld the shore-line plantedWith Foot and Horse for miles.
Mistrusting not the omen,He gained the beach, where Yeomen,Militia, Fencibles, and Pikemen bold,With Regulars in thousands, were enmassed to meet the Foemen,Whose fleet had not yet shoaled.
Captain and Colonel,Sere Generals, Ensigns vernal,Were there; of neighbour-natives, Michel, Smith,Meggs, Bingham, Gambier, Cunningham, roused by the hued nocturnalSwoop on their land and kith.
But Buonaparte still tarried;His project had miscarried;At the last hour, equipped for victory,The fleet had paused; his subtle combinations had been parriedBy British strategy.
Homeward returningAnon, no beacons burning,No alarms, the Volunteer, in modest bliss,Te Deum sang with wife and friends: “We praise Thee, Lord, discerningThat Thou hast helped in this!”
’Twasa death-bed summons, and forth I wentBy the way of the Western Wall, so drearOn that winter night, and sought a gate—The home, by Fate,Of one I had long held dear.
And there, as I paused by her tenement,And the trees shed on me their rime and hoar,I thought of the man who had left her lone—Him who made her his ownWhen I loved her, long before.
The rooms within had the piteous shineThat home-things wear when there’s aught amiss;From the stairway floated the rise and fallOf an infant’s call,Whose birth had brought her to this.
Her life was the price she would pay for that whine—For a child by the man she did not love.“But let that rest for ever,” I said,And bent my treadTo the chamber up above.
She took my hand in her thin white own,And smiled her thanks—though nigh too weak—And made them a sign to leave us thereThen faltered, ereShe could bring herself to speak.
“’Twas to see you before I go—he’ll condoneSuch a natural thing now my time’s not much—When Death is so near it hustles henceAll passioned senseBetween woman and man as such!
“My husband is absent. As heretoforeThe City detains him. But, in truth,He has not been kind . . . I will speak no blame,But—the child is lame;O, I pray she may reach his ruth!
“Forgive past days—I can say no more—Maybe if we’d wedded you’d now repine! . . .But I treated you ill. I was punished. Farewell!—Truth shall I tell?Would the child were yours and mine!
“As a wife I was true. But, such my uneaseThat, could I insert a deed back in Time,I’d make her yours, to secure your care;And the scandal bear,And the penalty for the crime!”
—When I had left, and the swinging treesRang above me, as lauding her candid say,Another was I. Her words were enough:Came smooth, came rough,I felt I could live my day.
Next night she died; and her obsequiesIn the Field of Tombs, by the Via renowned,Had her husband’s heed. His tendance spent,I often wentAnd pondered by her mound.
All that year and the next year whiled,And I still went thitherward in the gloam;But the Town forgot her and her nook,And her husband tookAnother Love to his home.
And the rumour flew that the lame lone childWhom she wished for its safety child of mine,Was treated ill when offspring cameOf the new-made dame,And marked a more vigorous line.
Sketch of cemetery
A smarter grief within me wroughtThan even at loss of her so dear;Dead the being whose soul my soul suffused,Her child ill-used,I helpless to interfere!
One eve as I stood at my spot of thoughtIn the white-stoned Garth, brooding thus her wrong,Her husband neared; and to shun his viewBy her hallowed mewI went from the tombs among
To the Cirque of the Gladiators which faced—That haggard mark of Imperial Rome,Whose Pagan echoes mock the chimeOf our Christian time:It was void, and I inward clomb.
Scarce night the sun’s gold touch displacedFrom the vast Rotund and the neighbouring deadWhen her husband followed; bowed; half-passed,With lip upcast;Then, halting, sullenly said:
“It is noised that you visit my first wife’s tomb.Now, I gave her an honoured name to bearWhile living, when dead. So I’ve claim to askBy what right you taskMy patience by vigiling there?
“There’s decency even in death, I assume;Preserve it, sir, and keep away;For the mother of my first-born youShow mind undue!—Sir, I’ve nothing more to say.”
A desperate stroke discerned I then—God pardon—or pardon not—the lie;She had sighed that she wished (lest the child should pineOf slights) ’twere mine,So I said: “But the father I.
“That you thought it yours is the way of men;But I won her troth long ere your day:You learnt how, in dying, she summoned me?’Twas in fealty.—Sir, I’ve nothing more to say,
“Save that, if you’ll hand me my little maid,I’ll take her, and rear her, and spare you toil.Think it more than a friendly act none can;I’m a lonely man,While you’ve a large pot to boil.
“If not, and you’ll put it to ball or blade—To-night, to-morrow night, anywhen—I’ll meet you here . . . But think of it,And in season fitLet me hear from you again.”
—Well, I went away, hoping; but nought I heardOf my stroke for the child, till there greeted meA little voice that one day cameTo my window-frameAnd babbled innocently:
“My father who’s not my own, sends wordI’m to stay here, sir, where I belong!”Next a writing came: “Since the child was the fruitOf your lawless suit,Pray take her, to right a wrong.”
And I did. And I gave the child my love,And the child loved me, and estranged us none.But compunctions loomed; for I’d harmed the deadBy what I’d saidFor the good of the living one.
—Yet though, God wot, I am sinner enough,And unworthy the woman who drew me so,Perhaps this wrong for her darling’s goodShe forgives, or would,If only she could know!
Sketch of tree-lined path
Sketch of a decorative stave of music
ToJenny came a gentle youthFrom inland leazes lone,His love was fresh as apple-bloothBy Parrett, Yeo, or Tone.And duly he entreated herTo be his tender minister,And call him aye her own.
Fair Jenny’s life had hardly beenA life of modesty;At Casterbridge experience keenOf many loves had sheFrom scarcely sixteen years above;Among them sundry troopers ofThe King’s-Own Cavalry.
But each with charger, sword, and gun,Had bluffed the Biscay wave;And Jenny prized her gentle oneFor all the love he gave.She vowed to be, if they were wed,His honest wife in heart and headFrom bride-ale hour to grave.
Wedded they were. Her husband’s trustIn Jenny knew no bound,And Jenny kept her pure and just,Till even malice foundNo sin or sign of ill to beIn one who walked so decentlyThe duteous helpmate’s round.
Two sons were born, and bloomed to men,And roamed, and were as not:Alone was Jenny left againAs ere her mind had soughtA solace in domestic joys,And ere the vanished pair of boysWere sent to sun her cot.
She numbered near on sixty years,And passed as elderly,When, in the street, with flush of fears,One day discovered she,From shine of swords and thump of drum.Her early loves from war had come,The King’s-Own Cavalry.
She turned aside, and bowed her headAnigh Saint Peter’s door;“Alas for chastened thoughts!” she said;“I’m faded now, and hoar,And yet those notes—they thrill me through,And those gay forms move me anewAs in the years of yore!” . . .
’Twas Christmas, and the Phœnix InnWas lit with tapers tall,For thirty of the trooper menHad vowed to give a ballAs “Theirs” had done (’twas handed down)When lying in the selfsame townEre Buonaparté’s fall.
That night the throbbing “Soldier’s Joy,”The measured tread and swayOf “Fancy-Lad” and “Maiden Coy,”Reached Jenny as she layBeside her spouse; till springtide bloodSeemed scouring through her like a floodThat whisked the years away.
She rose, and rayed, and decked her headWhere the bleached hairs ran thin;Upon her cap two bows of redShe fixed with hasty pin;Unheard descending to the street,She trod the flags with tune-led feet,And stood before the Inn.
Save for the dancers’, not a soundDisturbed the icy air;No watchman on his midnight roundOr traveller was there;But over All-Saints’, high and bright,Pulsed to the music Sirius white,The Wain by Bullstake Square.
She knocked, but found her further strideChecked by a sergeant tall:“Gay Granny, whence come you?” he cried;“This is a private ball.”—“No one has more right here than me!Ere you were born, man,” answered she,“I knew the regiment all!”
“Take not the lady’s visit ill!”Upspoke the steward free;“We lack sufficient partners still,So, prithee let her be!”They seized and whirled her ’mid the maze,And Jenny felt as in the daysOf her immodesty.
Hour chased each hour, and night advanced;She sped as shod with wings;Each time and every time she danced—Reels, jigs, poussettes, and flings:They cheered her as she soared and swooped,(She’d learnt ere art in dancing droopedFrom hops to slothful swings).
The favourite Quick-step “Speed the Plough”—(Cross hands, cast off, and wheel)—“The Triumph,” “Sylph,” “The Row-dow-dow,”Famed “Major Malley’s Reel,”“The Duke of York’s,” “The Fairy Dance,”“The Bridge of Lodi” (brought from France),She beat out, toe and heel.
The “Fall of Paris” clanged its close,And Peter’s chime told four,When Jenny, bosom-beating, roseTo seek her silent door.They tiptoed in escorting her,Lest stroke of heel or clink of spurShould break her goodman’s snore.
The fire that late had burnt fell slackWhen lone at last stood she;Her nine-and-fifty years came back;She sank upon her kneeBeside the durn, and like a dartA something arrowed through her heartIn shoots of agony.
Their footsteps died as she leant there,Lit by the morning starHanging above the moorland, whereThe aged elm-rows are;And, as o’ernight, from Pummery RidgeTo Maembury Ring and Standfast BridgeNo life stirred, near or far.
Though inner mischief worked amain,She reached her husband’s side;Where, toil-weary, as he had lainBeneath the patchwork piedWhen yestereve she’d forthward crept,And as unwitting, still he sleptWho did in her confide.
A tear sprang as she turned and viewedHis features free from guile;She kissed him long, as when, just wooed,She chose his domicile.She felt she could have given her lifeTo be the single-hearted wifeThat she had been erstwhile.
Time wore to six. Her husband roseAnd struck the steel and stone;He glanced at Jenny, whose reposeSeemed deeper than his own.With dumb dismay, on closer sight,He gathered sense that in the night,Or morn, her soul had flown.
When told that some too mighty strainFor one so many-yearedHad burst her bosom’s master-vein,His doubts remained unstirred.His Jenny had not left his sideBetwixt the eve and morning-tide:—The King’s said not a word.
Well! times are not as times were then,Nor fair ones half so free;And truly they were martial men,The King’s-Own Cavalry.And when they went from CasterbridgeAnd vanished over Mellstock Ridge,’Twas saddest morn to see.
Two lines of military men on horses
Sketch of wooden panel
ATradition ofJ. B. L—, T. G. B—, AND J. L—.
Threecaptains went to Indian wars,And only one returned:Their mate of yore, he singly woreThe laurels all had earned.
At home he sought the ancient aisleWherein, untrumped of fame,The three had sat in pupilage,And each had carved his name.
The names, rough-hewn, of equal size,Stood on the panel still;Unequal since.—“’Twas theirs to aim,Mine was it to fulfil!”
—“Who saves his life shall lose it, friends!”Outspake the preacher then,Unweeting he his listener, whoLooked at the names again.
That he had come and they’d been stayed,’Twas but the chance of war:Another chance, and they’d sat here,And he had lain afar.
Yet saw he something in the livesOf those who’d ceased to liveThat sphered them with a majestyWhich living failed to give.
Transcendent triumph in returnNo longer lit his brain;Transcendence rayed the distant urnWhere slept the fallen twain.
Sketch of comet
Imarkthe months in liveries dank and dry,The noontides many-shaped and hued;I see the nightfall shades subtrude,And hear the monotonous hours clang negligently by.
I view the evening bonfires of the sunOn hills where morning rains have hissed;The eyeless countenance of the mistPallidly rising when the summer droughts are done.
I have seen the lightning-blade, the leaping star,The cauldrons of the sea in storm,Have felt the earthquake’s lifting arm,And trodden where abysmal fires and snow-cones are.
I learn to prophesy the hid eclipse,The coming of eccentric orbs;To mete the dust the sky absorbs,To weigh the sun, and fix the hour each planet dips.
I witness fellow earth-men surge and strive;Assemblies meet, and throb, and part;Death’s soothing finger, sorrow’s smart;—All the vast various moils that mean a world alive.
But that I fain would wot of shuns my sense—Those sights of which old prophets tell,Those signs the general word so well,Vouchsafed to their unheed, denied my long suspense.
In graveyard green, behind his monumentTo glimpse a phantom parent, friend,Wearing his smile, and “Not the end!”Outbreathing softly: that were blest enlightenment;
Or, if a dead Love’s lips, whom dreams revealWhen midnight imps of King DecayDelve sly to solve me back to clay,Should leave some print to prove her spirit-kisses real;
Or, when Earth’s Frail lie bleeding of her Strong,If some Recorder, as in Writ,Near to the weary scene should flitAnd drop one plume as pledge that Heaven inscrolls the wrong.
—There are who, rapt to heights of trancéd trust,These tokens claim to feel and see,Read radiant hints of times to be—Of heart to heart returning after dust to dust.
Such scope is granted not to lives like mine . . .I have lain in dead men’s beds, have walkedThe tombs of those with whom I’d talked,Called many a gone and goodly one to shape a sign,
And panted for response. But none replies;No warnings loom, nor whisperingsTo open out my limitings,And Nescience mutely muses: When a man falls he lies.
Sketch of person on horseback in wide landscape
“Alive?”—And I leapt in my wonder,Was faint of my joyance,And grasses and grove shone in garmentsOf glory to me.
“She lives, in a plenteous well-being,To-day as aforehand;The dead bore the name—though a rare one—The name that bore she.”
She lived . . . I, afar in the cityOf frenzy-led factions,Had squandered green years and maturerIn bowing the knee
To Baals illusive and specious,Till chance had there voiced meThat one I loved vainly in nonageHad ceased her to be.
The passion the planets had scowled on,And change had let dwindle,Her death-rumour smartly reliftedTo full apogee.
I mounted a steed in the dawningWith acheful remembrance,And made for the ancient West HighwayTo far Exonb’ry.
Passing heaths, and the House of Long Sieging,I neared the thin steepleThat tops the fair fane of Poore’s oldenEpiscopal see;
And, changing anew my onbearer,I traversed the downlandWhereon the bleak hill-graves of ChieftainsBulge barren of tree;
And still sadly onward I followedThat Highway the Icen,Which trails its pale riband down WessexO’er lynchet and lea.
Along through the Stour-bordered Forum,Where Legions had wayfared,And where the slow river upglassesIts green canopy,
And by Weatherbury Castle, and thencefromThrough Casterbridge held IStill on, to entomb her my visionSaw stretched pallidly.
No highwayman’s trot blew the night-windTo me so life-weary,But only the creak of the gibbetsOr waggoners’ jee.
Triple-ramparted Maidon gloomed graylyAbove me from southward,And north the hill-fortress of Eggar,And square Pummerie.
The Nine-Pillared Cromlech, the Bride-streams,The Axe, and the OtterI passed, to the gate of the cityWhere Exe scents the sea;
Till, spent, in the graveacre pausing,I learnt ’twas not my LoveTo whom Mother Church had just murmuredA last lullaby.
—“Then, where dwells the Canon’s kinswoman,My friend of aforetime?”—(’Twas hard to repress my heart-heavingsAnd new ecstasy.)
“She wedded.”—“Ah!”—“Wedded beneath her—She keeps the stage-hostelTen miles hence, beside the great Highway—The famed Lions-Three.
“Her spouse was her lackey—no option’Twixt wedlock and worse things;A lapse over-sad for a ladyOf her pedigree!”
I shuddered, said nothing, and wanderedTo shades of green laurel:Too ghastly had grown those first tidingsSo brightsome of blee!
For, on my ride hither, I’d haltedAwhile at the Lions,And her—her whose name had once openedMy heart as a key—
I’d looked on, unknowing, and witnessedHer jests with the tapsters,Her liquor-fired face, her thick accentsIn naming her fee.
“O God, why this seeming derision!”I cried in my anguish:“O once Loved, O fair Unforgotten—That Thing—meant it thee!
“Inurned and at peace, lost but sainted,Were grief I could compass;Depraved—’tis for Christ’s poor dependentA cruel decree!”
I backed on the Highway; but passed notThe hostel. Within thereToo mocking to Love’s re-expressionWas Time’s repartee!
Uptracking where Legions had wayfared,By cromlechs unstoried,And lynchets, and sepultured Chieftains,In self-colloquy,
A feeling stirred in me and strengthenedThatshewas not my Love,But she of the garth, who lay rapt inHer long reverie.
And thence till to-day I persuade meThat this was the true one;That Death stole intact her young dearnessAnd innocency.
Frail-witted, illuded they call me;I may be. ’Tis betterTo dream than to own the debasementOf sweet Cicely.
Moreover I rate it unseemlyTo hold that kind HeavenCould work such device—to her ruinAnd my misery.
So, lest I disturb my choice vision,I shun the West Highway,Even now, when the knaps ring with rhythmsFrom blackbird and bee;
And feel that with slumber half-consciousShe rests in the church-hay,Her spirit unsoiled as in youth-timeWhen lovers were we.
Sketch of top of church tower
Sketch of fields with trees
Upona noon I pilgrimed throughA pasture, mile by mile,Unto the place where I last sawMy dead Love’s living smile.
And sorrowing I lay me downUpon the heated sod:It seemed as if my body pressedThe very ground she trod.
I lay, and thought; and in a tranceShe came and stood me by—The same, even to the marvellous rayThat used to light her eye.
“You draw me, and I come to you,My faithful one,” she said,In voice that had the moving toneIt bore ere breath had fled.
She said: “’Tis seven years since I died:Few now remember me;My husband clasps another bride;My children’s love has she.
“My brethren, sisters, and my friendsCare not to meet my sprite:Who prized me most I did not knowTill I passed down from sight.”
I said: “My days are lonely here;I need thy smile alway:I’ll use this night my ball or blade,And join thee ere the day.”
A tremor stirred her tender lips,Which parted to dissuade:“That cannot be, O friend,” she cried;“Think, I am but a Shade!
“A Shade but in its mindful onesHas immortality;By living, me you keep alive,By dying you slay me.
“In you resides my single powerOf sweet continuance here;On your fidelity I countThrough many a coming year.”
—I started through me at her plight,So suddenly confessed:Dismissing late distaste for life,I craved its bleak unrest.
“I will not die, my One of all!—To lengthen out thy daysI’ll guard me from minutest harmsThat may invest my ways!”
She smiled and went. Since then she comesOft when her birth-moon climbs,Or at the seasons’ ingressesOr anniversary times;
But grows my grief. When I surcease,Through whom alone lives she,Ceases my Love, her words, her ways,Never again to be!
Ilongedto love a full-boughed beechAnd be as high as he:I stretched an arm within his reach,And signalled unity.But with his drip he forced a breach,And tried to poison me.
I gave the grasp of partnershipTo one of other race—A plane: he barked him strip by stripFrom upper bough to base;And me therewith; for gone my grip,My arms could not enlace.
In new affection next I stroveTo coll an ash I saw,And he in trust received my love;Till with my soft green clawI cramped and bound him as I wove . . .Such was my love: ha-ha!
By this I gained his strength and heightWithout his rivalry.But in my triumph I lost sightOf afterhaps. Soon he,Being bark-bound, flagged, snapped, fell outright,And in his fall felled me!
Asevening shaped I found me on a moorWhich sight could scarce sustain:The black lean land, of featureless contour,Was like a tract in pain.
“This scene, like my own life,” I said, “is oneWhere many glooms abide;Toned by its fortune to a deadly dun—Lightless on every side.
I glanced aloft and halted, pleasure-caughtTo see the contrast there:The ray-lit clouds gleamed glory; and I thought,“There’s solace everywhere!”
Then bitter self-reproaches as I stoodI dealt me silentlyAs one perverse—misrepresenting GoodIn graceless mutiny.
Against the horizon’s dim-discernèd wheelA form rose, strange of mould:That he was hideous, hopeless, I could feelRather than could behold.
“’Tis a dead spot, where even the light lies spentTo darkness!” croaked the Thing.“Not if you look aloft!” said I, intentOn my new reasoning.
“Yea—but await awhile!” he cried. “Ho-ho!—Look now aloft and see!”I looked. There, too, sat night: Heaven’s radiant showHad gone. Then chuckled he.
When, soul in soul reflected,We breathed an æthered air,When we neglectedAll things elsewhere,And left the friendly friendlessTo keep our love aglow,We deemed it endless . . .—We did not know!
When, by mad passion goaded,We planned to hie away,But, unforeboded,The storm-shafts graySo heavily down-patteredThat none could forthward go,Our lives seemed shattered . . .—We did not know!
When I found you, helpless lying,And you waived my deep misprise,And swore me, dying,In phantom-guiseTo wing to me when grieving,And touch away my woe,We kissed, believing . . .—We did not know!
But though, your powers outreckoning,You hold you dead and dumb,Or scorn my beckoning,And will not come;And I say, “’Twere mood ungainlyTo store her memory so:”I say it vainly—I feel and know!
William Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,Robert’s kin, and John’s, and Ned’s,And the Squire, and Lady Susan, lie in Mellstock churchyard now!
“Gone,” I call them, gone for good, that group of local hearts and heads;Yet at mothy curfew-tide,And at midnight when the noon-heat breathes it back from walls and leads,
They’ve a way of whispering to me—fellow-wight who yet abide—In the muted, measured noteOf a ripple under archways, or a lone cave’s stillicide:
“We have triumphed: this achievement turns the bane to antidote,Unsuccesses to success,—Many thought-worn eves and morrows to a morrow free of thought.
“No more need we corn and clothing, feel of old terrestrial stress;Chill detraction stirs no sigh;Fear of death has even bygone us: death gave all that we possess.”
W. D.—“Ye mid burn the wold bass-viol that I set such vallie by.”Squire.—“You may hold the manse in fee,You may wed my spouse, my children’s memory of me may decry.”
Lady.—“You may have my rich brocades, my laces; take each household key;Ransack coffer, desk, bureau;Quiz the few poor treasures hid there, con the letters kept by me.”
Far.—“Ye mid zell my favourite heifer, ye mid let the charlock grow,Foul the grinterns, give up thrift.”Wife.—“If ye break my best blue china, children, I shan’t care or ho.”
All. —“We’ve no wish to hear the tidings, how the people’s fortunes shift;What your daily doings are;Who are wedded, born, divided; if your lives beat slow or swift.
“Curious not the least are we if our intents you make or mar,If you quire to our old tune,If the City stage still passes, if the weirs still roar afar.”
—Thus, with very gods’ composure, freed those crosses late and soonWhich, in life, the Trine allow(Why, none witteth), and ignoring all that haps beneath the moon,
William Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,Robert’s kin, and John’s, and Ned’s,And the Squire, and Lady Susan, murmur mildly to me now.
Sketch of vase with dead flowers
Showthee as I thought theeWhen I early sought thee,Omen-scouting,All undoubtingLove alone had wrought thee—
Wrought thee for my pleasure,Planned thee as a measureFor expoundingAnd resoundingGlad things that men treasure.
O for but a momentOf that old endowment—Light to gailySee thy dailyIrisèd embowment!
But such re-adorningTime forbids with scorning—Makes me see thingsCease to be thingsThey were in my morning.
Fad’st thou, glow-forsaken,Darkness-overtaken!Thy first sweetness,Radiance, meetness,None shall re-awaken.
Why not sempiternalThou and I? Our vernalBrightness keeping,Time outleaping;Passed the hodiernal!
Nota line of her writing have I,Not a thread of her hair,No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, wherebyI may picture her there;And in vain do I urge my unsightTo conceive my lost prizeAt her close, whom I knew when her dreams were upbrimming with light,And with laughter her eyes.
What scenes spread around her last days,Sad, shining, or dim?Did her gifts and compassions enray and enarch her sweet waysWith an aureate nimb?Or did life-light decline from her years,And mischances controlHer full day-star; unease, or regret, or forebodings, or fearsDisennoble her soul?
Thus I do but the phantom retainOf the maiden of yoreAs my relic; yet haply the best of her—fined in my brainIt maybe the moreThat no line of her writing have I,Nor a thread of her hair,No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, wherebyI may picture her there.
March1890.
Sketch of woman cover in sheet lying on couch
Wepassed where flag and flowerSignalled a jocund throng;We said: “Go to, the hourIs apt!”—and joined the song;And, kindling, laughed at life and care,Although we knew no laugh lay there.
We walked where shy birds stoodWatching us, wonder-dumb;Their friendship met our mood;We cried: “We’ll often come:We’ll come morn, noon, eve, everywhen!”—We doubted we should come again.
We joyed to see strange sheensLeap from quaint leaves in shade;A secret light of greensThey’d for their pleasure made.We said: “We’ll set such sorts as these!”—We knew with night the wish would cease.
“So sweet the place,” we said,“Its tacit tales so dear,Our thoughts, when breath has sped,Will meet and mingle here!” . . .“Words!” mused we. “Passed the mortal door,Our thoughts will reach this nook no more.”
Palebeech and pine-tree blue,Set in one clay,Bough to bough cannot youBide out your day?When the rains skim and skip,Why mar sweet comradeship,Blighting with poison-dripNeighbourly spray?
Heart-halt and spirit-lame,City-opprest,Unto this wood I cameAs to a nest;Dreaming that sylvan peaceOffered the harrowed ease—Nature a soft releaseFrom men’s unrest.
But, having entered in,Great growths and smallShow them to men akin—Combatants all!Sycamore shoulders oak,Bines the slim sapling yoke,Ivy-spun halters chokeElms stout and tall.
Touches from ash, O wych,Sting you like scorn!You, too, brave hollies, twitchSidelong from thorn.Even the rank poplars bearIlly a rival’s air,Cankering in black despairIf overborne.
Since, then, no grace I findTaught me of trees,Turn I back to my kind,Worthy as these.There at least smiles abound,There discourse trills around,There, now and then, are foundLife-loyalties.
1887: 1896.
Nowthat my page upcloses, doomed, maybe,Never to press thy cosy cushions more,Or wake thy ready Yeas as heretofore,Or stir thy gentle vows of faith in me:
Knowing thy natural receptivity,I figure that, as flambeaux banish eve,My sombre image, warped by insidious heaveOf those less forthright, must lose place in thee.
So be it. I have borne such. Let thy dreamsOf me and mine diminish day by day,And yield their space to shine of smugger things;Till I shape to thee but in fitful gleams,And then in far and feeble visitings,And then surcease. Truth will be truth alway.
Ah, child, thou art but half thy darling mother’s;Hers couldst thou wholly be,My light in thee would outglow all in others;She would relive to me.But niggard Nature’s trick of birthBars, lest she overjoy,Renewal of the loved on earthSave with alloy.
The Dame has no regard, alas, my maiden,For love and loss like mine—No sympathy with mind-sight memory-laden;Only with fickle eyne.To her mechanic artistryMy dreams are all unknown,And why I wish that thou couldst beBut One’s alone!
Sketch of broken key?
WhenI look forth at dawning, pool,Field, flock, and lonely tree,All seem to gaze at meLike chastened children sitting silent in a school;
Their faces dulled, constrained, and worn,As though the master’s waysThrough the long teaching daysTheir first terrestrial zest had chilled and overborne.
And on them stirs, in lippings mere(As if once clear in call,But now scarce breathed at all)—“We wonder, ever wonder, why we find us here!
“Has some Vast Imbecility,Mighty to build and blend,But impotent to tend,Framed us in jest, and left us now to hazardry?
“Or come we of an AutomatonUnconscious of our pains? . . .Or are we live remainsOf Godhead dying downwards, brain and eye now gone?
“Or is it that some high Plan betides,As yet not understood,Of Evil stormed by Good,We the Forlorn Hope over which Achievement strides?”
Thus things around. No answerer I . . .Meanwhile the winds, and rains,And Earth’s old glooms and painsAre still the same, and gladdest Life Death neighbours nigh.
Thatfrom this bright believing bandAn outcast I should be,That faiths by which my comrades standSeem fantasies to me,And mirage-mists their Shining Land,Is a drear destiny.
Why thus my soul should be consignedTo infelicity,Why always I must feel as blindTo sights my brethren see,Why joys they’ve found I cannot find,Abides a mystery.
Since heart of mine knows not that easeWhich they know; since it beThat He who breathes All’s Well to theseBreathes no All’s-Well to me,My lack might move their sympathiesAnd Christian charity!
I am like a gazer who should markAn inland companyStanding upfingered, with, “Hark! hark!The glorious distant sea!”And feel, “Alas, ’tis but yon darkAnd wind-swept pine to me!”
Yet I would bear my shortcomingsWith meet tranquillity,But for the charge that blessed thingsI’d liefer have unbe.O, doth a bird deprived of wingsGo earth-bound wilfully!
* * * * *
Enough. As yet disquiet clingsAbout us. Rest shall we.
Sketch of inside of church
Whenwe as strangers soughtTheir catering care,Veiled smiles bespoke their thoughtOf what we were.They warmed as they opinedUs more than friends—That we had all resignedFor love’s dear ends.
And that swift sympathyWith living loveWhich quicks the world—maybeThe spheres above,Made them our ministers,Moved them to say,“Ah, God, that bliss like theirsWould flush our day!”
And we were left aloneAs Love’s own pair;Yet never the love-light shoneBetween us there!But that which chilled the breathOf afternoon,And palsied unto deathThe pane-fly’s tune.
The kiss their zeal foretold,And now deemed come,Came not: within his holdLove lingered-numb.Why cast he on our portA bloom not ours?Why shaped us for his sportIn after-hours?
As we seemed we were notThat day afar,And now we seem not whatWe aching are.O severing sea and land,O laws of men,Ere death, once let us standAs we stood then!
“Thyhusband—poor, poor Heart!—is dead—Dead, out by Moreford Rise;A bull escaped the barton-shed,Gored him, and there he lies!”
—“Ha, ha—go away! ’Tis a tale, methink,Thou joker Kit!” laughed she.“I’ve known thee many a year, Kit Twink,And ever hast thou fooled me!”
—“But, Mistress Damon—I can swearThy goodman John is dead!And soon th’lt hear their feet who bearHis body to his bed.”
So unwontedly sad was the merry man’s face—That face which had long deceived—That she gazed and gazed; and then could traceThe truth there; and she believed.
She laid a hand on the dresser-ledge,And scanned far Egdon-side;And stood; and you heard the wind-swept sedgeAnd the rippling Froom; till she cried:
“O my chamber’s untidied, unmade my bedThough the day has begun to wear!‘What a slovenly hussif!’ it will be said,When they all go up my stair!”
She disappeared; and the joker stoodDepressed by his neighbour’s doom,And amazed that a wife struck to widowhoodThought first of her unkempt room.
But a fortnight thence she could take no food,And she pined in a slow decay;While Kit soon lost his mournful moodAnd laughed in his ancient way.
1894.
Theyears have gathered graylySince I danced upon this leazeWith one who kindled gailyLove’s fitful ecstasies!But despite the term as teacher,I remain what I was thenIn each essential featureOf the fantasies of men.
Yet I note the little chiselOf never-napping Time,Defacing ghast and grizzelThe blazon of my prime.When at night he thinks me sleeping,I feel him boring slyWithin my bones, and heapingQuaintest pains for by-and-by.
Still, I’d go the world with Beauty,I would laugh with her and sing,I would shun divinest dutyTo resume her worshipping.But she’d scorn my brave endeavour,She would not balm the breezeBy murmuring “Thine for ever!”As she did upon this leaze.
1890.
Sketch of pair of glasses on sketch of landscape