SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCE IN FIFTEEN GLIMPSES

I. At Tea

THE kettle descants in a cosy drone,

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

And then in 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 his first 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.

Thomas Hardy

II. 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 deaf dumb-show

That had moved the congregation so.

Thomas Hardy

III. By Her Aunt's Grave

'SIXPENCE a week,' says a girl to her lover,

'Aunt used to bring me, for she could confide

In me alone, she vowed. 'Twas to cover

The cost of her headstone when she died.

And that was a year ago last June;

I've not yet fixed it, but I must soon.'

'And where is the money now, my dear?'

'O, snug in my purse...Aunt was so slow

In saving it--eighty weeks or near.'...

'Let's spend it,' he hints. 'For she won't know

There's a dance to-night at the Load of Hay.'

She passively nods, and they go that way.

Thomas Hardy

IV. In the Room of the Bride-Elect

'WOULD it had been the man of our wish!'

Sighs her mother. To whom with vehemence she

In the wedding-dress--the wife to be--

'Then why were you so mollyish

As not to insist on him for me!'

The mother, amazed:'Why, dearest one,

Because you pleaded for this or none!'

'But father and you should have stood out strong!

Since then, to my cost, I have lived to find

That you were right and I was wrong;

This man is a dolt to the one declined...

Ah!--here he comes with his button-hole rose.

Good God--I must marry him I suppose!'

Thomas Hardy

V. At a Watering Place

THEY sit and smoke on the esplanade,

The man and his friend, and regard the bay

Where the far chalk cliffs, to the left displayed,

Smile shallowly in the decline of day.

And saunterers pass with laugh and jest--

A handsome couple among the rest.

'That smart proud pair,' said the man to his friend,

'Are to marry next week...How little he thinks

That dozens of days and nights on end

I have stroked her neck, unhooked the links

Of her sleeve to get at her upper arm...

Well, bliss is in ignorance: what's the harm!'

Thomas Hardy

VI. In the Cemetery

'YOU see those mothers squabbling there?'

Remarks the man of the cemetery.

'One says in tears, "Tis mine lies here!"

Another, "Nay mine, you Pharisee!"

Another, "How dare you move my flowers

And put your own on this grave of ours!"

But all their children were laid therein

At different times, like sprats in a tin.

'And then the main drain had to cross,

And we moved the lost some nights ago,

And packed them away in the general foss

With hundreds more. But their folks don't know,

And as well cry over a new-laid drain

As anything else, to ease your pain!'

Thomas Hardy

VII. Outside the Window

'MY stick!' he says, and turns in the lane

To the house just left, whence a vixen voice

Comes out with the firelight through the pane,

And he sees within that the girl of his choice

Stands rating her mother with eyes aglare

For something said while he was there.

'At last I behold her soul undraped!'

Thinks the man who had loved her more than himself;

'My God!--tis but narrowly I have escaped.--

My precious porcelain proves it delf.'

His face has reddened like one ashamed,

And he steels off, leaving his stick unclaimed.

Thomas Hardy

VIII. In the Study

HE enters, and mute on the edge of a chair

Sits a thin-faced lady, a stranger there,

A type of decayed gentility;

And by some small signs he well can guess

That she comes to him almost breakfastless.

'I have called--I hope I do not err--

I am looking for a purchaser

Of some score volumes of the works

Of eminent divines I own,--

Left by my father--though it irks

My patience to offer them.' And she smiles

As if necessity were unknown;

'But the truth of it is that oftenwhiles

I have wished, as I am fond of art,

To make my rooms a little smart,

And these old books are so in the way.'

And lightly still she laughs to him,

As if to sell where a mere gay whim,

And that, to be frank, Life were indeed

To her not vinegar and gall,

But fresh and honey-like; and Need

No household skeleton at all.

Thomas Hardy

IX. At the Altar-Rail

'MY bride is not coming, alas!' says the groom

And the telegram shakes in his hand. 'I own

It was hurried! We met at a dancing-room

When I went to the Cattle-Show alone,

And then, next night, where the Fountain leaps,

And the Street of the Quarter-Circle sweeps.

'Ay, she won me to ask her to be my wife--

'Twas foolish perhaps!--to forsake the ways

Of the flaring town for a farmer's life.

She agreed. And we fixed it. Now she says:

"It's sweet of you, dear, to prepare me a nest,

But a swift, short, gay life suits me best.

What I really am you have never gleaned;

"I had eaten the apple ere you were weaned."'

Thomas Hardy

X. In the Nupital Chamber

'O THAT mastering tune!' And up in the bed

Like a lace-robed phantom springs the bride;

'And why?' asks the man she had that day wed,

With a start, as the band plays on outside.

'It's the townsfolk's cheery compliment

Because of our marriage, my Innocent.'

'O but you don't know! 'Tis the passionate air

To which my old Love waltzed with me,

And I swore as we spun that none should share

My home, my kisses, till death, save he!

And he dominates me and thrills me through,

And it's he I embrace while embracing you!'

Thomas Hardy

XI. In the Restaurant

'BUT hear. If you stay, and the child be born,

It will pass as your husband's with the rest,

While, if we fly, the teeth of scorn

Will be gleaming at us from east to west;

And the child will come as a life despised;

I feel an elopement is ill-advised!'

'O you realize not what it is, my dear,

To a woman! Daily and hourly alarms

Lest the truth should out. How can I stay here

And nightly take him into my arms!

Come to the child no name or fame,

Let us go, and face it, and bear the shame.'

Thomas Hardy

XII. At the Draper's

'I STOOD at the back of the shop, my dear,

But you did not perceive me.

Well, when they deliver what you were shown

I shall know nothing of it, believe me!'

And he coughed and coughed as she paled and said,

'O, I didn't see you come in there--

Why couldn't you speak?--'Well, I didn't. I left

That you should not notice I'd been there.

'You were viewing some lovely things. "Soon required

For a widow, of latest fashion;"

And I knew 'twould upset you to meet the man

Who had to be cold and ashen

And screwed in a box before thy could dress you

"In the latest new note in mourning,"

As they defined it. So, not to distress you,

I left you to your adorning.'

Thomas Hardy

XIII. On the Death-Bed

'I'LL tell--being past all praying for--

Then promptly die...He was out at the war,

And got some scent of the intimacy

That was under way between her and me;

And he stole back home, and appeared like a ghost

One night, at the very time almost

That I reached her house. Well, I shot him dead,

And secretly buried him. Nothing was said.

'The news of the battle came next day;

He was scheduled missing. I hurried away,

Got out there, visited the field,

And sent home word that a search revealed

He was one of the slain; though, lying alone

And stript, his body had not been known.

'But she suspected. I lost her love,

Yea, my hope of earth, and of Heaven above;

And my time's now come, and I'll pay the score,

Though it be burning for evermore.'

Thomas Hardy

XIV. Over the Coffin

THEY stand confronting, the coffin between,

His wife of old, and his wife of late,

And the dead man whose both they had been

Seems listening aloof, as to things past date.

--'I have called,' says the first. 'Do you marvel or not?'

'In truth,' says the second, 'I do--somewhat.'

'Well, there was a word to be said by me!...

I divorced that man because of you--

It seemed I must do it, boundenly;

But now I am older, and tell you true,

For life is little, and dead lies he;

I would I had let alone you two!

And both of us, scorning parochial ways,

Had lived like the wives in the patriarch's days.'

Thomas Hardy

XV. In the Moonlight

'O LONELY workman, standing there

In a dream, why do you stare and stare

At her grave, as no other grave there were?

'If your great gaunt eyes so importune

Her soul by the shine of this corpse-cold moon

Maybe you'll raise her phantom soon!'

'Why, fool, it is what I would rather see

Than all the living folk there be;

But alas, there is no such joy for me!'

'Ah--she was one you loved, no doubt,

Through good and evil, through rain and drought,

And when she passed, all your sun went out?'

'Nay: she was the woman I did not love,

Whom all the others were ranked above,

'Whom during life I thought nothing of.

Thomas Hardy

Domicilium

IT faces west, and round the back and sides

High beeches, bending, hang a veil of boughs,

And sweep against the roof. Wild honeysucks

Climb on the walls, and seem to sprout a wish

(If we may fancy wish of trees and plants)

To overtop the apple trees hard-by.

Red roses, lilacs, variegated box

Are there in plenty, and such hardy flowers

As flourish best untrained. Adjoining these

Are herbs and esculents; and farther still

A field; then cottages with trees, and last

The distant hills and sky.

Behind, the scene is wilder. Heath and furze

Are everything that seems to grow and thrive

Upon the uneven ground. A stunted thorn

Stands here and there, indeed; and from a pit

An oak uprises, Springing from a seed

Dropped by some bird a hundred years ago.

                                       In days bygone--

Long gone--my father's mother, who is now

Blest with the blest, would take me out to walk.

At such a time I once inquired of her

How looked the spot when first she settled here.

The answer I remember. 'Fifty years

Have passed since then, my child, and change has marked

The face of all things. Yonder garden-plots

And orchards were uncultivated slopes

O'ergrown with bramble bushes, furze and thorn:

That road a narrow path shut in by ferns,

Which, almost trees, obscured the passers-by.

Our house stood quite alone, and those tall firs

And beeches were not planted. Snakes and efts

Swarmed in the summer days, and nightly bats

Would fly about our bedrooms. Heathcroppers

Lived on the hills, and were our only friends;

So wild it was when we first settled here.'

Thomas Hardy

Embarcation

(Southampton Docks: October 1899)

HERE, where Vespasian's legions struck the sands,

And Cendric with the Saxons entered in,

And Henry's army lept afloat to win

Convincing triumphs over neighboring lands,

Vaster battalions press for further strands,

To argue in the selfsame bloody mode

Which this late age of thought, and pact, and code,

Still fails to mend.--Now deckward tramp the bands,

Yellow as autumn leaves, alive as spring;

And as each host draws out upon the sea

Beyond which lies the tragical To-be,

None dubious of the cause, none murmuring,

Wives, sisters, parents, wave white hands and smile,

As if they knew not that they weep the while.

Thomas Hardy

A Wife in London

(December 1899)

          I

SHE sits in the tawny vapour

That the Thames-side lanes have uprolled,

Behind whose webby fold-on-fold

Like a waning taper

The street-lamp glimmers cold.

A messenger's knock cracks smartly,

Flashed news in her hand

Of meaning it dazes to understand

Though shaped so shortly:

He--he has fallen--in the far South Land...

          I

'Tis the morrow; the fog hangs thicker,

The postman nears and goes:

A letter is brought whose lines disclose

By the firelight flicker

His hand, whom the worm now knows:

Fresh--firm--penned in highest feather--

Page-full of his hoped return,

And of home-planned jaunts of brake and burn

In the summer weather,

And of new love that they would learn.

Thomas Hardy

Shelley's Skylark

(The neighborhood of Leghorn: March 1887)

SOMEWHERE afield here something lies

In Earth's oblivious eyeless trust

That moved a poet to prophecies--

A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust:

The dust of the lark that Shelley heard,

And made immortal through times to be;--

Though it only lived like another bird,

And knew not its immortality:

Lived its meek life; then, one day, fell--

A little ball of feather and bone;

And how it perished, when piped farewell,

And where it wastes, are alike unknown.

Maybe it rests in the loam I view,

Maybe it throbs in a myrtle's green,

Maybe it sleeps in the coming hue

Of a grape on the slopes of yon inland scene.

Go find it, faeries, go and find

That tiny pinch of priceless dust,

And bring a casket silver-lined,

And framed of gold that gems encrust;

And we will lay it safe therein,

And consecrate it to endless time;

For it inspired a bard to win

Ecstatic heights in thought and rhyme.

Thomas Hardy