Wessex Poems and Other Verses Read Online

...

– Two armies writhe in coils of red and blue,

And brass and iron clang

From Goumont, past the front of Waterloo,

To Pap'lotte and Smohain.

The Guard Imperial wavered on the height;

The Emperor's face grew glum;

»I sent,« he said, »to Grouchy yesternight,

And yet he does not come!«

'Twas then, Good Father, that the French espied,

Streaking the summer land,

The men of Blücher. But the Emperor cried,

»Grouchy is now at hand!«

And meanwhile Vand'leur, Vivian, Maitland, Kempt,

Met d'Erlon, Friant, Ney;

But Grouchy – mis-sent, blamed, yet blame-exempt –

Grouchy was far away.

By even, slain or struck, Michel the strong,

Bold Travers, Dnop, Delord,

Smart Guyot, Reil-le, l'Heriter, Friant,

Scattered that champaign o'er.

Fallen likewise wronged Duhesme, and skilled Lobau

Did that red sunset see;

Colbert, Legros, Blancard! ... And of the foe

Picton and Ponsonby;

With Gordon, Canning, Blackman, Ompteda,

L'Estrange, Delancey, Packe,

Grose, D'Oyly, Stables, Morice, Howard, Hay,

Von Schwerin, Watzdorf, Boek,

Smith, Phelips, Fuller, Lind, and Battersby,

And hosts of ranksmen round. ...

Memorials linger yet to speak to thee

Of those that bit the ground!

The Guards' last column yielded; dykes of dead

Lay between vale and ridge,

As, thinned yet closing, faint yet fierce, they sped

In packs to Genappe Bridge.

Safe was my stock; my capple cow unslain;

Intact each cock and hen;

But Grouchy far at Wavre all day had lain,

And thirty thousand men.

O Saints, had I but lost my earing corn

And saved the cause once prized!

O Saints, why such false witness had I borne

When late I'd sympathized! ...

So now, being old, my children eye askance

My slowly dwindling store,

And crave my mite; till, worn with tarriance,

I care for life no more.

To Almighty God henceforth I stand confessed,

And Virgin-Saint Marie;

O Michael, John, and Holy Ones in rest,

Entreat the Lord for me!

The Alarm

(Traditional)

In Memory of one of the Writer's Family who was a Volunteer during the War with Napoleon

In a ferny byway

Near the great South-Wessex Highway,

A homestead raised its breakfast-smoke aloft;

The dew-damps still lay steamless, for the sun had made no skyway,

And twilight cloaked the croft.

It was almost past conceiving

Here, where woodbines hung inweaving,

That quite closely hostile armaments might steer,

Save from seeing in the porchway a fair woman mutely grieving,

And a harnessed Volunteer.

In haste he'd flown there

To his comely wife alone there,

While marching south hard by, to still her fears,

For she soon would be a mother, and few messengers were known there

In these campaigning years.

'Twas time to be Good-bying,

Since the assembly-hour was nighing

In royal George's town at six that morn;

And betwixt its wharves and this retreat were ten good miles of hieing

Ere ring of bugle-horn.

»I've laid in food, Dear,

And broached the spiced and brewed, Dear;

And if our July hope should antedate,

Let the char-wench mount and gallop by the halterpath and wood, Dear,

And fetch assistance straight.

As for Buonaparte, forget him;

He's not like to land! But let him,

Those strike with aim who strike for wives and sons!

And the war-boats built to float him; 'twere but wanted to upset him

A slat from Nelson's guns!

But, to assure thee,

And of creeping fears to cure thee,

If he should be rumoured anchoring in the Road,

Drive with the nurse to Kingsbere; and let nothing thence allure thee

Till we have him safe-bestowed.

Now, to turn to marching matters: –

I've my knapsack, firelock, spatters,

Crossbelts, priming-horn, stock, bay'net, blackball, clay,

Pouch, magazine, and flint-box that at every quick-step clatters; –

My heart, Dear; that must stay!«

– With breathings broken

Farewell was kissed unspoken,

And they parted there as morning stroked the panes;

And the Volunteer went on, and turned, and twirled his glove for token,

And took the coastward lanes.

When above He'th Hills he found him,

He saw, on gazing round him,

The Barrow-Beacon burning – burning low,

As if, perhaps, enkindled ever since he'd homeward bound him;

And it meant: Expect the Foe!

Leaving the byway,

He entered on the highway,

Where were cars and chariots, faring fast inland;

»He's anchored, Soldier!« shouted some: »God save thee, marching thy way,

Th'lt front him on the strand!«

He slowed; he stopped; he paltered

Awhile with self, and faltered,

»Why courting misadventure shoreward roam?

To Molly, surely! Seek the woods with her till times have altered;

Charity favours home.

Else, my denying

He'd come, she'll read as lying –

Think the Barrow-Beacon must have met my eyes –

That my words were not unwareness, but deceit of her, while vying

In deeds that jeopardize.

At home is stocked provision,

And to-night, without suspicion,

We might bear it with us to a covert near;

Such sin, to save a childing wife, would earn it Christ's remission,

Though none forgive it here!«

While he stood thinking,

A little bird, perched drinking

Among the crowfoot tufts the river bore,

Was tangled in their stringy arms and fluttered, almost sinking

Near him, upon the moor.

He stepped in, reached, and seized it,

And, preening, had released it

But that a thought of Holy Writ occurred,

And Signs Divine ere battle, till it seemed him Heaven had pleased it

As guide to send the bird.

»O Lord, direct me! ...

Doth Duty now expect me

To march a-coast, or guard my weak ones near?

Give this bird a flight according, that I thence learn to elect me

The southward or the rear.«

He loosed his clasp; when, rising,

The bird – as if surmising –

Bore due to southward, crossing by the Froom,

And Durnover Great Field and Fort, the soldier clear advising –

Prompted he deemed by Whom.

Then on he panted

By grim Mai-Don, and slanted

Up the steep Ridge-way, hearkening between whiles;

Till nearing coast and harbour he beheld the shore-line planted

With Foot and Horse for miles.

Mistrusting not the omen,

He gained the beach, where Yeomen,

Militia, Fencibles and Pikemen bold,

With Regulars in thousands, were enmassed to meet the Foemen,

Whose fleet had not yet shoaled.

Captain and Colonel,

Sere Generals, Ensigns vernal,

Were there; of neighbour-natives, Michel, Smith,

Meggs, Bingham, Gambier, Cunningham, to face the said nocturnal

Swoop on their land and kith.

But Buonaparte still tarried:

His project had miscarried;

At the last hour, equipped for victory,

The fleet had paused; his subtle combinations had been parried

By British strategy.

Homeward returning

Anon, no beacons burning,

No alarms, the Volunteer, in modest bliss,

Te Deum sang with wife and friends: »We praise Thee, Lord, discerning

That Thou hast helped in this!«

Her Death and After

The summons was urgent: and forth I went –

By the way of the Western Wall, so drear

On that winter night, and sought a gate,

Where one, by Fate,

Lay dying that I held dear.

And there, as I paused by her tenement,

And the trees shed on me their rime and hoar,

I thought of the man who had left her lone –

Him who made her his own

When I loved her, long before.

The rooms within had the piteous shine

That home-things wear when there's aught amiss;

From the stairway floated the rise and fall

Of an infant's call,

Whose birth had brought her to this.

Her life was the price she would pay for that whine –

For a child by the man she did not love.

»But let that rest for ever,« I said,

And bent my tread

To the bedchamber above.

She took my hand in her thin white own,

And smiled her thanks – though nigh too weak –

And made them a sign to leave us there,

Then faltered, ere

She could bring herself to speak.

»Just to see you – before I go – he'll condone

Such a natural thing now my time's not much –

When Death is so near it hustles hence

All passioned sense

Between woman and man as such!

My husband is absent. As heretofore

The City detains him. But, in truth,

He has not been kind. ... I will speak no blame,

But – the child is lame;

O, I pray she may reach his ruth!

Forgive past days – I can say no more –

Maybe had we wed you would now repine! ...

But I treated you ill. I was punished. Farewell!

– Truth shall I tell?

Would the child were yours and mine!

As a wife I was true. But, such my unease

That, could I insert a deed back in Time,

I'd make her yours, to secure your care;

And the scandal bear,

And the penalty for the crime!«

– When I had left, and the swinging trees

Rang above me, as lauding her candid say,

Another was I. Her words were enough:

Came smooth, came rough,

I felt I could live my day.

Next night she died; and her obsequies

In the Field of Tombs where the earthworks frowned

Had her husband's heed. His tendance spent,

I often went

And pondered by her mound.

All that year and the next year whiled,

And I still went thitherward in the gloam;

But the Town forgot her and her nook,

And her husband took

Another Love to his home.

And the rumour flew that the lame lone child

Whom she wished for its safety child of mine,

Was treated ill when offspring came

Of the new-made dame,

And marked a more vigorous line.

A smarter grief within me wrought

Than even at loss of her so dear –

That the being whose soul my soul suffused

Had a child ill-used,

While I dared not interfere!

One eve as I stood at my spot of thought

In the white-stoned Garth, brooding thus her wrong,

Her husband neared; and to shun his nod

By her hallowed sod

I went from the tombs among

To the Cirque of the Gladiators which faced –

That haggard mark of Imperial Rome,

Whose Pagan echoes mock the chime

Of our Christian time

From its hollows of chalk and loam.

The sun's gold touch was scarce displaced

From the vast Arena where men once bled,

When her husband followed; bowed; half-passed

With lip upcast;

Then halting sullenly said:

»It is noised that you visit my first wife's tomb.

Now, I gave her an honoured name to bear

While living, when dead. So I've claim to ask

By what right you task

My patience by vigiling there?

There's decency even in death, I assume;

Preserve it, sir, and keep away;

For the mother of my first-born you

Show mind undue!

– Sir, I've nothing more to say.«

A desperate stroke discerned I then –

God pardon – or pardon not – the lie;

She had sighed that she wished (lest the child should pine

Of slights) 'twere mine,

So I said: »But the father I.

That you thought it yours is the way of men;

But I won her troth long ere your day:

You learnt how, in dying, she summoned me?

'Twas in fealty.

– Sir, I've nothing more to say,

Save that, if you'll hand me my little maid,

I'll take her, and rear her, and spare you toil.

Think it more than a friendly act none can;

I'm a lonely man,

While you've a large pot to boil.

If not, and you'll put it to ball or blade –

To-night, to-morrow night, anywhen –

I'll meet you here. ... But think of it,

And in season fit

Let me hear from you again.«

– Well, I went away, hoping; but nought I heard

Of my stroke for the child, till there greeted me

A little voice that one day came

To my window-frame

And babbled innocently:

»My father who's not my own, sends word

I'm to stay here, sir, where I belong!«

Next a writing came: »Since the child was the fruit

Of your lawless suit,

Pray take her, to right a wrong.«

And I did. And I gave the child my love,

And the child loved me, and estranged us none.

But compunctions loomed; for I'd harmed the dead

By what I said

For the good of the living one.

– Yet though, God wot, I am sinner enough,

And unworthy the woman who drew me so,

Perhaps this wrong for her darling's good

She forgives, or would,

If only she could know!

The Dance at the Phœnix

To Jenny came a gentle youth

From inland leazes lone,

His love was fresh as apple-blooth

By Parrett, Yeo, or Tone.

And duly he entreated her

To be his tender minister,

And take him for her own.

Now Jenny's life had hardly been

A life of modesty;

And few in Casterbridge had seen

More loves of sorts than she

From scarcely sixteen years above;

Among them sundry troopers of

The King's-Own Cavalry.

But each with charger, sword, and gun,

Had bluffed the Biscay wave;

And Jenny prized her rural one

For all the love he gave.

She vowed to be, if they were wed,

His honest wife in heart and head

From bride-ale hour to grave.

Wedded they were. Her husband's trust

In Jenny knew no bound,

And Jenny kept her pure and just,

Till even malice found

No sin or sign of ill to be

In one who walked so decently

The duteous helpmate's round.

Two sons were born, and bloomed to men,

And roamed, and were as not:

Alone was Jenny left again

As ere her mind had sought

A solace in domestic joys,

And ere the vanished pair of boys

Were sent to sun her cot.

She numbered near on sixty years,

And passed as elderly,

When, on a day, with flushing fears,

She learnt from shouts of glee,

And shine of swords, and thump of drum,

Her early loves from war had come,

The King's-Own Cavalry.

She turned aside, and bowed her head

Anigh Saint Peter's door;

»Alas for chastened thoughts!« she said;

»I'm faded now, and hoar,

And yet those notes – they thrill me through,

And those gay forms move me anew

As they moved me of yore!« ...

'Twas Christmas, and the Phœnix Inn

Was lit with tapers tall,

For thirty of the trooper men

Had vowed to give a ball

As ›Theirs‹ had done ('twas handed down)

When lying in the selfsame town

Ere Buonaparté's fall.

That night the throbbing »Soldier's Joy«,

The measured tread and sway

Of »Fancy-Lad« and »Maiden Coy«,

Reached Jenny as she lay

Beside her spouse; till springtide blood

Seemed scouring through her like a flood

That whisked the years away.

She rose, arrayed, and decked her head

Where the bleached hairs grew thin;

Upon her cap two bows of red

She fixed with hasty pin;

Unheard descending to the street

She trod the flags with tune-led feet,

And stood before the Inn.

Save for the dancers', not a sound

Disturbed the icy air;

No watchman on his midnight round

Or traveller was there;

But over All-Saints', high and bright,

Pulsed to the music Sirius white,

The Wain by Bullstake Square.

She knocked, but found her further stride

Checked by a sergeant tall:

»Gay Granny, whence come you?« he cried;

»This is a private ball.«

– »No one has more right here than me!

Ere you were born, man,« answered she,

»I knew the regiment all!«

»Take not the lady's visit ill!«

The steward said; »for see,

We lack sufficient partners still,

So, prithee, let her be!«

They seized and whirled her mid the maze,

And Jenny felt as in the days

Of her immodesty.

Hour chased each hour, and night advanced;

She sped as shod with wings;

Each time and every time she danced –

Reels, jigs, poussettes, and flings:

They cheered her as she soared and swooped,

(She had learnt ere art in dancing drooped

From hops to slothful swings).

The favourite Quick-step »Speed the Plough« –

(Cross hands, cast off, and wheel) –

»The Triumph«, »Sylph«, »The Row-dow-dow«,

Famed »Major Malley's Reel«,

»The Duke of York's«, »The Fairy Dance«,

»The Bridge of Lodi« (brought from France),

She beat out, toe and heel.

The »Fall of Paris« clanged its close,

And Peter's chime went four,

When Jenny, bosom-beating, rose

To seek her silent door.

They tiptoed in escorting her,

Lest stroke of heel or clink of spur

Should break her goodman's snore.

The fire that lately burnt fell slack

When lone at last was she;

Her nine-and-fifty years came back;

She sank upon her knee

Beside the durn, and like a dart

A something arrowed through her heart

In shoots of agony.

Their footsteps died as she leant there,

Lit by the morning star

Hanging above the moorland, where

The aged elm-rows are;

As overnight, from Pummery Ridge

To Maembury Ring and Standfast Bridge

No life stirred, near or far.

Though inner mischief worked amain,

She reached her husband's side;

Where, toil-weary, as he had lain

Beneath the patchwork pied

When forthward yestereve she crept,

And as unwitting, still he slept

Who did in her confide.

A tear sprang as she turned and viewed

His features free from guile;

She kissed him long, as when, just wooed,

She chose his domicile.

She felt she would give more than life

To be the single-hearted wife

That she had been erstwhile. ...

Time wore to six. Her husband rose

And struck the steel and stone;

He glanced at Jenny, whose repose

Seemed deeper than his own.

With dumb dismay, on closer sight,

He gathered sense that in the night,

Or morn, her soul had flown.

When told that some too mighty strain

For one so many-yeared

Had burst her bosom's master-vein,

His doubts remained unstirred.

His Jenny had not left his side

Betwixt the eve and morning-tide:

– The King's said not a word.

Well! times are not as times were then,

Nor fair ones half so free;

And truly they were martial men,

The King's-Own Cavalry.

And when they went from Casterbridge

And vanished over Mellstock Ridge,

'Twas saddest morn to see.

The Casterbridge Captains

(Khyber Pass, 1842)

A Tradition of J. B. L––, T. G. B––, and J. L––

Three captains went to Indian wars,

And only one returned:

Their mate of yore, he singly wore

The laurels all had earned.

At home he sought the ancient aisle

Wherein, untrumped of fame,

The three had sat in pupilage,

And each had carved his name.

The names, rough-hewn, of equal size,

Stood on the panel still;

Unequal since. – »'Twas theirs to aim,

Mine was it to fulfil!«

– »Who saves his life shall lose it, friends!«

Outspake the preacher then,

Unweeting he his listener, who

Looked at the names again.

That he had come and they had been stayed

Was but the chance of war:

Another chance, and they had been here,

And he had lain afar.

Yet saw he something in the lives

Of those who had ceased to live

That sphered them with a majesty

Which living failed to give.

Transcendent triumph in return

No longer lit his brain;

Transcendence rayed the distant urn

Where slept the fallen twain.

A Sign-Seeker

I mark the months in liveries dank and dry,

The noontides many-shaped and hued;

I see the nightfall shades subtrude,

And hear the monotonous hours clang negligently by.

I view the evening bonfires of the sun

On hills where morning rains have hissed;

The eyeless countenance of the mist

Pallidly rising when the summer droughts are done.

I have seen the lightning-blade, the leaping star,

The cauldrons of the sea in storm,

Have felt the earthquake's lifting arm,

And trodden where abysmal fires and snow-cones are.

I learn to prophesy the hid eclipse,

The coming of eccentric orbs;

To mete the dust the sky absorbs,

To weigh the sun, and fix the hour each planet dips.

I witness fellow earth-men surge and strive;

Assemblies meet, and throb, and part;

Death's sudden finger, sorrow's smart;

– All the vast various moils that mean a world alive.

But that I fain would wot of shuns my sense –

Those sights of which old prophets tell,

Those signs the general word so well

As vouchsafed their unheed, denied my long suspense.

In graveyard green, where his pale dust lies pent

To glimpse a phantom parent, friend,

Wearing his smile, and ›Not the end!‹

Outbreathing softly: that were blest enlightenment;

Or, if a dead Love's lips, whom dreams reveal

When midnight imps of King Decay

Delve sly to solve me back to clay,

Should leave some print to prove her spirit-kisses real;

Or, when Earth's Frail lie bleeding of her Strong,

If some Recorder, as in Writ,

Near to the weary scene should flit

And drop one plume as pledge that Heaven inscrolls the wrong.

– There are who, rapt to heights of trancelike trust,

These tokens claim to feel and see,

Read radiant hints of times to be –

Of heart to heart returning after dust to dust.

Such scope is granted not to lives like mine ...

I have lain in dead men's beds, have walked

The tombs of those with whom I had talked,

Called many a gone and goodly one to shape a sign,

And panted for response. But none replies;

No warnings loom, nor whisperings

To open out my limitings,

And Nescience mutely muses: When a man falls he lies.

My Cicely

(17–)

»Alive?« – And I leapt in my wonder,

Was faint of my joyance,

And grasses and grove shone in garments

Of glory to me.

»She lives, in a plenteous well-being,

To-day as aforehand;

The dead bore the name – though a rare one –

The name that bore she.«

She lived ... I, afar in the city

Of frenzy-led factions,

Had squandered green years and maturer

In bowing the knee

To Baals illusive and specious,

Till chance had there voiced me

That one I loved vainly in nonage

Had ceased her to be.

The passion the planets had scowled on,

And change had let dwindle,

Her death-rumour smartly relifted

To full apogee.

I mounted a steed in the dawning

With acheful remembrance,

And made for the ancient West Highway

To far Exonb'ry.

Passing heaths, and the House of Long Sieging,

I neared the thin steeple

That tops the fair fane of Poore's olden

Episcopal see;

And, changing anew my blown bearer,

I traversed the downland

Whereon the bleak hill-graves of Chieftains

Bulge barren of tree;

And still sadly onward I followed

That Highway the Icen,

Which trails its pale riband down Wessex

By lynchet and lea.

Along through the Stour-bordered Forum,

Where Legions had wayfared,

And where the slow river-face glasses

Its green canopy,

And by Weatherbury Castle, and thencefrom

Through Casterbridge held I

Still on, to entomb her my mindsight

Saw stretched pallidly.

No highwayman's trot blew the night-wind

To me so life-weary,

But only the creak of a gibbet

Or waggoner's jee.

Triple-ramparted Maidon gloomed grayly

Above me from southward,

And north the hill-fortress of Eggar,

And square Pummerie.

The Nine-Pillared Cromlech, the Bride-streams,

The Axe, and the Otter

I passed, to the gate of the city

Where Exe scents the sea;

Till, spent, in the graveacre pausing,

I learnt 'twas not my Love

To whom Mother Church had just murmured

A last lullaby.

– »Then, where dwells the Canon's kinswoman,

My friend of aforetime?«

I asked, to disguise my heart-heavings

And new ecstasy.

»She wedded.« – »Ah!« – »Wedded beneath her –

She keeps the stage-hostel

Ten miles hence, beside the great Highway –

The famed Lions-Three.

Her spouse was her lackey – no option

'Twixt wedlock and worse things;

A lapse over-sad for a lady

Of her pedigree!«

I shuddered, said nothing, and wandered

To shades of green laurel:

More ghastly than death were these tidings

Of life's irony!

For, on my ride down I had halted

Awhile at the Lions,

And her – her whose name had once opened

My heart as a key –

I'd looked on, unknowing, and witnessed

Her jests with the tapsters,

Her liquor-fired face, her thick accents

In naming her fee.

»O God, why this seeming derision!«

I cried in my anguish:

»O once Loved, O fair Unforgotten –

That Thing – meant it thee!

Inurned and at peace, lost but sainted,

Were grief I could compass;

Depraved – 'tis for Christ's poor dependent

A cruel decree!«

I backed on the Highway; but passed not

The hostel. Within there

Too mocking to Love's re-expression

Was Time's repartee!

Uptracking where Legions had wayfared

By cromlechs unstoried,

And lynchets, and sepultured Chieftains,

In self-colloquy,

A feeling stirred in me and strengthened

That she was not my Love,

But she of the garth, who lay rapt in

Her long reverie.

And thence till to-day I persuade me

That this was the true one;

That Death stole intact her young dearness

And innocency.

Frail-witted, illuded they call me;

I may be. Far better

To dream than to own the debasement

Of sweet Cicely.

Moreover I rate it unseemly

To hold that kind Heaven

Could work such device – to her ruin

And my misery.

So, lest I disturb my choice vision,

I shun the West Highway,

Even now, when the knaps ring with rhythms

From blackbird and bee;

And feel that with slumber half-conscious

She rests in the church-hay,

Her spirit unsoiled as in youth-time

When lovers were we.

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 brethren, 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.