Poems of the Past and the Present Read Online

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Of love and us no trace

Abides upon the place;

The sun and shadows wheel,

Season and season sereward steal;

Foul days and fair

Here, too, prevail,

And gust and gale

As everywhere.

But lonely shepherd souls

Who bask amid these knolls

May catch a faery sound

On sleepy noontides from the ground:

»O not again

Till Earth outwears

Shall love like theirs

Suffuse this glen!«

Long Plighted

Is it worth while, dear, now,

To call for bells, and sally forth arrayed

For marriage-rites – discussed, descried, delayed

So many years?

Is it worth while, dear, now,

To stir desire for old fond purposings,

By feints that Time still serves for dallyings,

Though quittance nears?

Is it worth while, dear, when

The day being so far spent, so low the sun,

The undone thing will soon be as the done,

And smiles as tears?

Is it worth while, dear, when

Our cheeks are worn, our early brown is gray;

When, meet or part we, none says yea or nay,

Or heeds, or cares?

Is it worth while, dear, since

We still can climb old Yell'ham's wooded mounds

Together, as each season steals its rounds

And disappears?

Is it worth while, dear, since

As mates in Mellstock churchyard we can lie,

Till the last crash of all things low and high

Shall end the spheres?

The Widow Betrothed

I passed the lodge and avenue

To her fair tenement,

And sunset on her window-panes

Reflected our intent.

The creeper on the gable nigh

Was fired to more than red,

And when I came to halt thereby

»Bright as my joy!« I said.

Of late days it had been her aim

To meet me in the hall;

Now at my footsteps no one came,

And no one to my call.

Again I knocked, and tardily

An inner tread was heard,

And I was shown her presence then

With a mere answering word.

She met me, and but barely took

My proffered warm embrace;

Preoccupation weighed her look,

And hardened her sweet face.

»To-morrow – could you – would you call?

Abridge your present stay?

My child is ill – my one, my all! –

And can't be left to-day.«

And then she turns, and gives commands

As I were out of sound,

Or were no more to her and hers

Than any neighbour round. ...

– As maid I loved her; but one came

And pleased, and coaxed, and wooed,

And when in time he wedded her

I deemed her gone for good.

He won, I lost her; and my loss

I bore I know not how;

But I do think I suffered then

Less wretchedness than now.

For Time, in taking him, unclosed

An unexpected door

Of bliss for me, which grew to seem

Far surer than before.

Yet in my haste I overlooked

When secondly I sued

That then, as not at first, she had learnt

The call of motherhood. ...

Her word is steadfast, and I know

How firmly pledged are we:

But a new love-claim shares her since

She smiled as maid on me!

At a Hasty Wedding

(Triolet)

If hours be years the twain are blest,

For now they solace swift desire

By bonds of every bond the best,

If hours be years. The twain are blest

Do eastern stars slope never west,

Nor pallid ashes follow fire:

If hours be years the twain are blest,

For now they solace swift desire.

The Dream-Follower

A dream of mine flew over the mead

To the halls where my old Love reigns;

And it drew me on to follow its lead:

And I stood at her window-panes;

And I saw but a thing of flesh and bone

Speeding on to its cleft in the clay;

And my dream was scared, and expired on a moan,

And I whitely hastened away.

His Immortality

I

I saw a dead man's finer part

Shining within each faithful heart

Of those bereft. Then said I: »This must be

His immortality.«

II

I looked there as the seasons wore,

And still his soul continuously bore

A life in theirs. But less its shine excelled

Than when I first beheld.

III

His fellow-yearsmen passed, and then

In later hearts I looked for him again;

And found him – shrunk, alas! into a thin

And spectral mannikin.

IV

Lastly I ask – now old and chill –

If aught of him remain unperished still;

And find, in me alone, a feeble spark,

Dying amid the dark.

The To-Be-Forgotten

I

I heard a small sad sound,

And stood awhile among the tombs around:

»Wherefore, old friends,« said I, »are you distrest,

Now, screened from life's unrest?«

II

– »O not at being here;

But that our future second death is near;

When, with the living, memory of us numbs,

And blank oblivion comes!

III

These, our sped ancestry,

Lie here embraced by deeper death than we;

Nor shape nor thought of theirs can you descry

With keenest backward eye.

IV

They count as quite forgot;

They are as men who have existed not;

Theirs is a loss past loss of fitful breath;

It is the second death.

V

We here, as yet, each day

Are blest with dear recall; as yet, can say

We hold in some soul loved continuance

Of shape and voice and glance.

VI

But what has been will be –

First memory, then oblivion's swallowing sea;

Like men foregone, shall we merge into those

Whose story no one knows.

VII

For which of us could hope

To show in life that world-awakening scope

Granted the few whose memory none lets die,

But all men magnify?

VIII

We were but Fortune's sport;

Things true, things lovely, things of good report

We neither shunned nor sought ... We see our bourne,

And seeing it we mourn.«

Wives in the Sere

I

Never a careworn wife but shows,

If a joy suffuse her,

Something beautiful to those

Patient to peruse her,

Some one charm the world unknows

Precious to a muser,

Haply what, ere years were foes,

Moved her mate to choose her.

II

But, be it a hint of rose

That an instant hues her,

Or some early light or pose

Wherewith thought renews her –

Seen by him at full, ere woes

Practised to abuse her –

Sparely comes it, swiftly goes,

Time again subdues her.

The Superseded

I

As newer comers crowd the fore,

We drop behind.

– We who have laboured long and sore

Times out of mind,

And keen are yet, must not regret

To drop behind.

II

Yet there are some of us who grieve

To go behind;

Staunch, strenuous souls who scarce believe

Their fires declined,

And know none spares, remembers, cares

Who go behind.

III

'Tis not that we have unforetold

The drop behind;

We feel the new must oust the old

In every kind;

But yet we think, must we, must we,

Too, drop behind?

An August Midnight

I

A shaded lamp and a waving blind,

And the beat of a clock from a distant floor:

On this scene enter – winged, horned, and spined –

A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore;

While 'mid my page there idly stands

A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands ...

II

Thus meet we five, in this still place,

At this point of time, at this point in space.

– My guests besmear my new-penned line,

Or bang at the lamp and fall supine.

»God's humblest, they!« I muse. Yet why?

They know Earth-secrets that know not I.

Max Gate, 1899

The Caged Thrush Freed and Home Again

(Villanelle)

»Men know but little more than we,

Who count us least of things terrene,

How happy days are made to be!

Of such strange tidings what think ye,

O birds in brown that peck and preen?

Men know but little more than we!

When I was borne from yonder tree

In bonds to them, I hoped to glean

How happy days are made to be,

And want and wailing turned to glee;

Alas, despite their mighty mien

Men know but little more than we!

They cannot change the Frost's decree,

They cannot keep the skies serene;

How happy days are made to be

Eludes great Man's sagacity

No less than ours, O tribes in treen!

Men know but little more than we

How happy days are made to be.«

Birds at Winter Nightfall

(Triolet)

Around the house the flakes fly faster,

And all the berries now are gone

From holly and cotonea-aster

Around the house. The flakes fly! – faster

Shutting indoors that crumb-outcaster

We used to see upon the lawn

Around the house. The flakes fly faster,

And all the berries now are gone!

Max Gate

The Puzzled Game-Birds

(Triolet)

They are not those who used to feed us

When we were young – they cannot be –

These shapes that now bereave and bleed us?

They are not those who used to feed us,

For did we then cry, they would heed us.

– If hearts can house such treachery

They are not those who used to feed us

When we were young – they cannot be!

Winter in Durnover Field

Scene. – A wide stretch of fallow ground recently sown with wheat, and frozen to iron hardness. Three large birds walking about thereon, and wistfully eyeing the surface. Wind keen from north-east: sky a dull grey.

(Triolet)

Rook. – Throughout the field I find no grain;

The cruel frost encrusts the cornland!

Starling. – Aye: patient pecking now is vain

Throughout the field, I find ...

Rook. – No grain!

Pigeon. – Nor will be, comrade, till it rain,

Or genial thawings loose the lorn land

Throughout the field.

Rook. – I find no grain:

The cruel frost encrusts the cornland!

The Last Chrysanthemum

Why should this flower delay so long

To show its tremulous plumes?

Now is the time of plaintive robin-song,

When flowers are in their tombs.

Through the slow summer, when the sun

Called to each frond and whorl

That all he could for flowers was being done,

Why did it not uncurl?

It must have felt that fervid call

Although it took no heed,

Waking but now, when leaves like corpses fall,

And saps all retrocede.

Too late its beauty, lonely thing,

The season's shine is spent,

Nothing remains for it but shivering

In tempests turbulent.

Had it a reason for delay,

Dreaming in witlessness

That for a bloom so delicately gay

Winter would stay its stress?

– I talk as if the thing were born

With sense to work its mind;

Yet it is but one mask of many worn

By the Great Face behind.

The Darkling Thrush

I leant upon a coppice gate

When Frost was spectre-gray,

And Winter's dregs made desolate

The weakening eye of day.

The tangled bine-stems scored the sky

Like strings of broken lyres,

And all mankind that haunted nigh

Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be

The Century's corpse outleant,

His crypt the cloudy canopy,

The wind his death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

Was shrunken hard and dry,

And every spirit upon earth

Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among

The bleak twigs overhead

In a full-hearted evensong

Of joy illimited;

An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,

In blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings

Of such ecstatic sound

Was written on terrestrial things

Afar or nigh around,

That I could think there trembled through

His happy good-night air

Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew

And I was unaware.

The Comet at Yell'ham

I

It bends far over Yell'ham Plain,

And we, from Yell'ham Height,

Stand and regard its fiery train,

So soon to swim from sight.

II

It will return long years hence, when

As now its strange swift shine

Will fall on Yell'ham; but not then

On that sweet form of thine.

Mad Judy

When the hamlet hailed a birth

Judy used to cry:

When she heard our christening mirth

She would kneel and sigh.

She was crazed, we knew, and we

Humoured her infirmity.

When the daughters and the sons

Gathered them to wed,

And we like-intending ones

Danced till dawn was red,

She would rock and mutter, »More

Comers to this stony shore!«

When old Headsman Death laid hands

On a babe or twain,

She would feast, and by her brands

Sing her songs again.

What she liked we let her do,

Judy was insane, we knew.

A Wasted Illness

Through vaults of pain,

Enribbed and wrought with groins of ghastliness,

I passed, and garish spectres moved my brain

To dire distress.

And hammerings,

And quakes, and shoots, and stifling hotness, blent

With webby waxing things and waning things

As on I went.

»Where lies the end

To this foul way?« I asked with weakening breath.

Thereon ahead I saw a door extend –

The door to Death.

It loomed more clear:

»At last!« I cried. »The all-delivering door!«

And then, I knew not how, it grew less near

Than theretofore.

And back slid I

Along the galleries by which I came,

And tediously the day returned, and sky,

And life – the same.

And all was well:

Old circumstance resumed its former show,

And on my head the dews of comfort fell

As ere my woe.

I roam anew,

Scarce conscious of my late distress. ... And yet

Those backward steps to strength I cannot view

Without regret.

For that dire train

Of waxing shapes and waning, passed before,

And those grim chambers, must be ranged again

To reach that door.

A Man

(In Memory of H. of M.)

I

In Casterbridge there stood a noble pile,

Wrought with pilaster, bay, and balustrade

In tactful times when shrewd Eliza swayed. –

On burgher, squire, and clown

It smiled the long street down for near a mile.

II

But evil days beset that domicile;

The stately beauties of its roof and wall

Passed into sordid hands. Condemned to fall

Were cornice, quoin, and cove,

And all that art had wove in antique style.

III

Among the hired dismantlers entered there

One till the moment of his task untold.

When charged therewith he gazed, and answered bold:

»Be needy I or no,

I will not help lay low a house so fair!

IV

Hunger is hard. But since the terms be such –

No wage, or labour stained with the disgrace

Of wrecking what our age cannot replace

To save its tasteless soul –

I'll do without your dole. Life is not much!«

V

Dismissed with sneers he backed his tools and went,

And wandered workless; for it seemed unwise

To close with one who dared to criticize

And carp on points of taste:

Rude men should work where placed, and be content.

VI

Years whiled. He aged, sank, sickened; and was not:

And it was said, »A man intractable

And curst is gone.« None sighed to hear his knell,

None sought his churchyard-place;

His name, his rugged face, were soon forgot.

VII

The stones of that fair hall lie far and wide,

And but a few recall its ancient mould;

Yet when I pass the spot I long to hold

As truth what fancy saith:

»His protest lives where deathless things abide!«

The Dame of Athelhall

I

»Dear! Shall I see thy face,« she said,

»In one brief hour?

And away with thee from a loveless bed

To a far-off sun, to a vine-wrapt bower,

And be thine own unseparated,

And challenge the world's white glower?«

II

She quickened her feet, and met him where

They had predesigned:

And they clasped, and mounted, and cleft the air

Upon whirling wheels; till the will to bind

Her life with his made the moments there

Efface the years behind.

III

Miles slid, and the port uprose to view

As they sped on;

When slipping its bond the bracelet flew

From her fondled arm. Replaced anon,

Its cameo of the abjured one drew

Her musings thereupon.

IV

The gaud with his image once had been

A gift from him:

And so it was that its carving keen

Refurbished memories wearing dim,

Which set in her soul a twinge of teen,

And a tear on her lashes' brim.

V

»I may not go!« she at length outspake,

»Thoughts call me back –

I would still lose all for your dear, true sake;

My heart is thine, friend! But my track

Home, home to Athelhall I must take

To hinder household wrack!«

VI

He was wroth. And they parted, weak and wan;

And he left the shore;

His ship diminished, was low, was gone;

And she heard in the waves as the daytide wore,

And read in the leer of the sun that shone,

That they parted for evermore.

VII

She homed as she came, at the dip of eve

On Athel Coomb

Regaining the Hall she had sworn to leave.

The house was soundless as a tomb,

And she stole to her chamber, there to grieve

Lone, kneeling, in the gloom.

VIII

From the lawn without rose her husband's voice

To one his friend:

»Another her Love, another my choice,

Her going is good.