The Complete Poetical Works. Томас Харди

Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

      1866.

      “In Vision I Roamed”

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      TO —

      In vision I roamed the flashing Firmament,

       So fierce in blazon that the Night waxed wan,

       As though with an awed sense of such ostent;

       And as I thought my spirit ranged on and on

      In footless traverse through ghast heights of sky,

       To the last chambers of the monstrous Dome,

       Where stars the brightest here to darkness die:

       Then, any spot on our own Earth seemed Home!

      And the sick grief that you were far away

       Grew pleasant thankfulness that you were near?

       Who might have been, set on some outstep sphere,

       Less than a Want to me, as day by day

       I lived unware, uncaring all that lay

       Locked in that Universe taciturn and drear.

      1866.

      At a Bridal

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      TO —

      When you paced forth, to wait maternity,

       A dream of other offspring held my mind,

       Compounded of us twain as Love designed;

       Rare forms, that corporate now will never be!

      Should I, too, wed as slave to Mode’s decree,

       And each thus found apart, of false desire,

       A stolid line, whom no high aims will fire

       As had fired ours could ever have mingled we;

      And, grieved that lives so matched should mis-compose,

       Each mourn the double waste; and question dare

       To the Great Dame whence incarnation flows.

       Why those high-purposed children never were:

       What will she answer? That she does not care

       If the race all such sovereign types unknows.

      1866.

      Postponement

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      Snow-bound in woodland, a mournful word,

       Dropt now and then from the bill of a bird,

       Reached me on wind-wafts; and thus I heard,

       Wearily waiting:—

      “I planned her a nest in a leafless tree,

       But the passers eyed and twitted me,

       And said: ‘How reckless a bird is he,

       Cheerily mating!’

      “Fear-filled, I stayed me till summer-tide,

       In lewth of leaves to throne her bride;

       But alas! her love for me waned and died,

       Wearily waiting.

      “Ah, had I been like some I see,

       Born to an evergreen nesting-tree,

       None had eyed and twitted me,

       Cheerily mating!”

      1866.

      A Confession to a Friend in Trouble

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      Your troubles shrink not, though I feel them less

       Here, far away, than when I tarried near;

       I even smile old smiles—with listlessness—

       Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries mere.

      A thought too strange to house within my brain

       Haunting its outer precincts I discern:

       —That I will not show zeal again to learn Your griefs, and sharing them, renew my pain . . .

      It goes, like murky bird or buccaneer

       That shapes its lawless figure on the main,

       And each new impulse tends to make outflee

       The unseemly instinct that had lodgment here;

       Yet, comrade old, can bitterer knowledge be

       Than that, though banned, such instinct was in me!

      1866.

      Neutral Tones

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      We stood by a pond that winter day,

       And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,

       And a few leaves lay on the starving sod,

       —They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

      Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove

       Over tedious riddles solved years ago;

       And some words played between us to and fro—

       On which lost the more by our love.

      The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing

       Alive enough to have strength to die;

       And a grin of bitterness swept thereby

       Like an ominous bird a-wing . . .

      Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,

       And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me

       Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,

       And a pond edged with grayish leaves.

      1867.

      She

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      AT HIS FUNERAL

      They bear him to his resting-place—

       In slow procession sweeping by;

       I follow at a stranger’s space;

       His kindred they, his sweetheart I.

       Unchanged my gown of garish dye,

       Though sable-sad is their attire;

       But they stand round with griefless eye,

       Whilst my regret consumes like fire!

      187–.