Wessex Poems and Other Verses

Her Immortality

Upon a noon I pilgrimed through

A pasture, mile by mile,

Unto the place where last I saw

My dead Love's living smile.

And sorrowing I lay me down

Upon the heated sod:

It seemed as if my body pressed

The very ground she trod.

I lay, and thought; and in a trance

She came and stood thereby--

The same, even to the marvellous ray

That used to light her eye.

"You draw me, and I come to you,

My faithful one," she said,

In voice that had the moving tone

It bore ere she was wed.

"Seven years have circled since I died:

Few now remember me;

My husband clasps another bride.

My children's love has she.

"My brethern, sisters, and my friends

Care not to meet my sprite:

Who prized me most I did not know

Till 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 ones

Has immortality;

By living me you keep alive,

By dying you slay me.

"In you resides my single power

Of sweet continuance here;

On your fidelity I count

Through 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 days

I'll guard me from minutest harms

That may invest my ways!"

She smiled and went. Since then she comes

Oft when her birth-moon climbs,

Or at the seasons' ingresses,

Or anniversary times;

But grows my grief. When I surcease

Through whom alone lives she,

Her spirit ends its living lease,

Never again to be!

The Ivy-Wife

I longed to love a full-boughed beech

And 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 partnership

To one of other race--

A plane: he barked him strip by strip

From upper bough to base;

And me therewith; for gone my grip,

My arms could not enlace.

In new affection next I strove

To coll an ash I saw,

And he in trust received my love;

Till with my soft green claw

I cramped and bound him as I wove . . .

Such was my love: ha-ha!

By this I gained his strength and height

Without his rivalry,

But in my triumph I lost sight

Of afterhaps. Soon he,

Being bark-bound, flagged, snapped, fell outright,

And in his fall felled me!

A Meeting With Despair

As evening shaped I found me on a moor

Sight shunned to entertain:

The black lean land, of featureless contour,

Was like a tract in pain.

"This scene, like my own life," I said, "is one

Where many glooms abide;

Toned by its fortune to a deadly dun--

Lightless on every side."

I glanced aloft and halted, pleasure-caught

To see the contrast there:

The ray-lit clouds gleamed glory; and I thought,

"There's solace everywhere!"

Then bitter self-reproaches as I stood

I dealt me silently

As one perverse, misrepresenting Good

In graceless mutiny.

Against the horizon's dim-discernèd wheel

A form rose, strange of mould:

That he was hideous, hopeless, I could feel

Rather than could behold.

"'Tis a dead spot, where even the light lies spent

To darkness!" croaked the Thing.

"Not if you look aloft!" said I, intent

On my new reasoning.

"Yea-but await awhile!" he cried. "Ho-ho!--

Now look aloft and see!"

I looked. There, too, sat night: Heaven's radiant show

Had gone that heartened me.

Unknowing

When, soul in soul reflected,

We breathed an æthered air,

When we neglected

All things elsewhere,

And left the friendly friendless

To keep our love aglow,

We deemed it endless . . .

--We did not know!

When panting passion-goaded,

We planned to hie away,

But, unforeboded,

All the long day

The storm so pierced and pattered

That none could up and go,

Our lives seemed shattered . . .

--We did not know!

When I found you helpless lying,

And you waived my long misprise,

And swore me, dying,

In phantom-guise

To wing to me when grieving,

And touch away my woe,

We kissed, believing . . .

--We did not know!

But though, your powers outreckoning,

You tarry dead and dumb,

Or scorn my beckoning,

And will not come:

And I say, "Why thus inanely

Brood on her memory so!"

I say it vainly--

I feel and know!

Friends Beyond

William Dewy, Tranter Teuben, 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 note

Of 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 terrestial 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 old bass-viol that I set such value by."

Squire.--"You may hold the manse in fee,

You may wed my spouse, may let my children's memory of me die."

Lady S.--"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."

Far. 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 soon

Which, 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.

To Outer Nature

Show thee as I thought thee

When I early sought thee,

Omen-scouting,

All undoubting

Love alone had wrought thee--

Wrought thee for my pleasure

Planned thee as a measure

For expounding

And resounding

Glad things that men treasure.

O for but a moment

Of that old endowment--

Light to gaily

See thy daily

Iris-hued embowment!

But such re-adorning

Time forbids with scorning--

Makes me see things

Cease to be things

They were in my morning.

Fad'st thou, glow-forsaken,

Darkness-overtaken!

Thy first sweetness,

Radiance, meetness,

None shall re-awaken.

Why not sempiternal

Thou and I? Our vernal

Brightness keeping,

Time outleaping;

Passed the hodiernal!

Thoughts of Phena

At News of her Death

      Not a line of her writing have I

Not a thread of her hair,

No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby

I may picture her there;

      And in vain do I urge my unsight

To conceive my lost prize

At 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 ways

With an aureate nimb?

      Or did life-light decline from her years,

And mischances control

Her full day-star; unease, or regret, or forebodings, or fears

Disennoble her soul?

      Thus I do but the phantom retain

Of the maiden of yore

As my relic; yet haply the best of her--fined in my brain

It may be the more

      That no line of her writing have I,

Nor a thread of her hair,

No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby

I may picture her there.

   March 1890.

Middle-age Enthusiasms

To M.H.

We passed where flag and flower

Signalled a jocund throng;

We said: "Go to, the hour

Is apt!"--and joined the song;

And, kindling, laughed at life and care,

Although we knew no laugh lay there.

We walked where shy birds stood

Watching 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 sheens

Leap from quaint leaves in shade;

A secret light of greens

They'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."

In a Wood

From "The Woodlanders"

Pale beech and pine so blue,

Set in one clay,

Bough to bough cannot you

Live out your day?

When the rains skim and skip,

Why mar sweet comradeship,

Blighting with poison-drip

Neighbourly spray?

Heart-halt and spirit-lame,

City-opprest,

Unto this wood I came

As to a nest;

Dreaming that sylvan peace

Offered the harrowed ease--

Nature a soft release

From men's unrest.

But, having entered in,

Great growths and small

Show them to men akin--

Combatants all!

Sycamore shoulders oak,

Bines the slim sapling yoke,

Ivy-spun halters choke

Elms stout and tall.

Touches from ash, O wych,

Sting you like scorn!

You, too, brave hollies, twitch

Sidelong from thorn.

Even the rank poplars bear

Lothly a rival's air,

Cankering in black despair

If overborne.

Since, then, no grace I find

Taught 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 found

Life-loyalties.

1887 : 1896.

To a Lady

Offended by a book of the writer's

Now that my page is exiled,--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 heave

Of those less forthright, must lose place in thee.

So be it. I have borne such. Let thy dreams

Of 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.

To a Motherless Child

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 birth

Bars, lest she overjoy,

Renewal of the loved on earth

       Save with alloy.

The Dame has no regard, alas, my maiden,

For love and loss like mine--

No sympathy with mindsight memory-laden,

Only with fickle eyne.

To her mechanic artistry,

My dreams are all unknown,

And why I wish that thou couldst be

       But One's alone!