Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with Miscellaneous Pieces. Томас Харди

“Titanic”)

      I

      In a solitude of the sea

       Deep from human vanity,

       And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

      II

      Steel chambers, late the pyres

       Of her salamandrine fires,

       Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

      III

      Over the mirrors meant

       To glass the opulent

       The sea-worm crawls—grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

      IV

      Jewels in joy designed

       To ravish the sensuous mind

       Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

      V

      Dim moon-eyed fishes near

       Gaze at the gilded gear

       And query: “What does this vaingloriousness down here?” …

      VI

      Well: while was fashioning

       This creature of cleaving wing,

       The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

      VII

      Prepared a sinister mate

       For her—so gaily great—

       A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.

      VIII

      And as the smart ship grew

       In stature, grace, and hue,

       In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

      IX

      Alien they seemed to be:

       No mortal eye could see

       The intimate welding of their later history,

      X

      Or sign that they were bent

       By paths coincident

       On being anon twin halves of one august event,

      XI

      Till the Spinner of the Years

       Said “Now!” And each one hears,

       And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

THE GHOST OF THE PAST

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      We two kept house, the Past and I,

       The Past and I;

       I tended while it hovered nigh,

       Leaving me never alone.

       It was a spectral housekeeping

       Where fell no jarring tone,

       As strange, as still a housekeeping

       As ever has been known.

      As daily I went up the stair

       And down the stair,

       I did not mind the Bygone there—

       The Present once to me;

       Its moving meek companionship

       I wished might ever be,

       There was in that companionship

       Something of ecstasy.

      It dwelt with me just as it was,

       Just as it was

       When first its prospects gave me pause

       In wayward wanderings,

       Before the years had torn old troths

       As they tear all sweet things,

       Before gaunt griefs had torn old troths

       And dulled old rapturings.

      And then its form began to fade,

       Began to fade,

       Its gentle echoes faintlier played

       At eves upon my ear

       Than when the autumn’s look embrowned

       The lonely chambers here,

       The autumn’s settling shades embrowned

       Nooks that it haunted near.

      And so with time my vision less,

       Yea, less and less

       Makes of that Past my housemistress,

       It dwindles in my eye;

       It looms a far-off skeleton

       And not a comrade nigh,

       A fitful far-off skeleton

       Dimming as days draw by.

AFTER THE VISIT

       (To F. E. D.)

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      Come again to the place

       Where your presence was as a leaf that skims

       Down a drouthy way whose ascent bedims

       The bloom on the farer’s face.

      Come again, with the feet

       That were light on the green as a thistledown ball,

       And those mute ministrations to one and to all

       Beyond a man’s saying sweet.

      Until then the faint scent

       Of the bordering flowers swam unheeded away,

       And I marked not the charm in the changes of day

       As the cloud-colours came and went.

      Through the dark corridors

       Your walk was so soundless I did not know

       Your form from a phantom’s of long ago

       Said to pass on the ancient floors,

      Till you drew from the shade,

       And I saw the large luminous living eyes

       Regard me in fixed inquiring-wise

       As those of a soul that weighed,

      Scarce consciously,

       The eternal question of what Life was,

       And why we were there, and by whose strange laws

       That which mattered most could not be.

TO MEET, OR OTHERWISE

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      Whether to sally and see thee, girl of my dreams,

       Or whether to stay

       And see thee not! How vast the difference seems

       Of Yea from Nay

       Just now. Yet this same sun will slant its beams

       At no far day

       On our two mounds, and then what will the difference weigh!

      Yet I will see thee, maiden dear, and make

       The most I can

       Of what remains to us amid this brake Cimmerian

       Through which we