Wessex Poems and Other Verses Read Online

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 Reuben, 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 terrestrial 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.

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

See »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.

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!

Nature's Questioning

When I look forth at dawning, pool,

Field, flock, and lonely tree,

All seem to gaze at me

Like chastened children sitting silent in a school;

Their faces dulled, constrained, and worn,

As though the master's ways

Through the long teaching days

Had cowed them till their early zest was overborne.

Upon them stirs in lippings mere

(As if once clear in call,

But now scarce breathed at all) –

»We wonder, ever wonder, why we find us here!

Has some Vast Imbecility,

Mighty to build and blend,

But impotent to tend,

Framed us in jest, and left us now to hazardry?

Or come we of an Automaton

Unconscious of our pains? ...

Or are we live remains

Of Godhead dying downwards, brain and eye now gone?

Or is it that some high Plan betides,

As yet not understood,

Of Evil stormed by Good,

We the Forlorn Hope over which Achievement strides?«

Thus things around. No answerer I. ...

Meanwhile the winds, and rains,

And Earth's old glooms and pains

Are still the same, and Life and Death are neighbours nigh.

The Impercipient

(At a Cathedral Service)

That with this bright believing band

I have no claim to be,

That faiths by which my comrades stand

Seem fantasies to me,

And mirage-mists their Shining Land,

Is a strange destiny.

Why thus my soul should be consigned

To infelicity,

Why always I must feel as blind

To sights my brethren see,

Why joys they've found I cannot find,

Abides a mystery.

Since heart of mine knows not that ease

Which they know; since it be

That He who breathes All's Well to these

Breathes no All's-Well to me,

My lack might move their sympathies

And Christian charity!

I am like a gazer who should mark

An inland company

Standing upfingered, with, »Hark! hark!

The glorious distant sea!«

And feel, »Alas, 'tis but yon dark

And wind-swept pine to me!«

Yet I would bear my shortcomings

With meet tranquillity,

But for the charge that blessed things

I'd liefer not have be.

O, doth a bird deprived of wings

Go earth-bound wilfully!

. . .

Enough. As yet disquiet clings

About us. Rest shall we.

At an Inn

When we as strangers sought

Their catering care,

Veiled smiles bespoke their thought

Of what we were.

They warmed as they opined

Us more than friends –

That we had all resigned

For love's dear ends.

And that swift sympathy

With living love

Which quicks the world – maybe

The spheres above,

Made them our ministers,

Moved them to say,

»Ah, God, that bliss like theirs

Would flush our day!«

And we were left alone

As Love's own pair;

Yet never the love-light shone

Between us there!

But that which chilled the breath

Of afternoon,

And palsied unto death

The pane-fly's tune.

The kiss their zeal foretold,

And now deemed come,

Came not: within his hold

Love lingered numb.

Why cast he on our port

A bloom not ours?

Why shaped us for his sport

In after-hours?

As we seemed we were not

That day afar,

And now we seem not what

We aching are.

O severing sea and land,

O laws of men,

Ere death, once let us stand

As we stood then!

The Slow Nature

(An Incident of Froom Valley)

»Thy husband – poor, poor Heart! – is dead –

Dead, out by Moreford Rise;

A bull escaped the barton-shed,

Gored him, and there he lies!«

– »Ha, ha – go away! 'Tis a tale, methink,

Thou joker Kit!« laughed she.

»I've known thee many a year, Kit Twink,

And ever hast thou fooled me!«

– »But, Mistress Damon – I can swear

Thy goodman John is dead!

And soon th'lt hear their feet who bear

His body to his bed.«

So unwontedly sad was the merry man's face –

That face which had long deceived –

That she gazed and gazed; and then could trace

The truth there; and she believed.

She laid a hand on the dresser-ledge,

And scanned far Egdon-side;

And stood; and you heard the wind-swept sedge

And the rippling Froom; till she cried:

›O my chamber's untidied, unmade my bed,

Though the day has begun to wear!

»What a slovenly hussif!« it will be said,

When they all go up my stair!‹

She disappeared; and the joker stood

Depressed by his neighbour's doom,

And amazed that a wife struck to widowhood

Thought first of her unkempt room.

But a fortnight thence she could take no food,

And she pined in a slow decay;

While Kit soon lost his mournful mood

And laughed in his ancient way.

In a Eweleaze near Weatherbury

The years have gathered grayly

Since I danced upon this leaze

With one who kindled gaily

Love's fitful ecstasies!

But despite the term as teacher,

I remain what I was then

In each essential feature

Of the fantasies of men.

Yet I note the little chisel

Of never-napping Time

Defacing wan and grizzel

The blazon of my prime.

When at night he thinks me sleeping

I feel him boring sly

Within my bones, and heaping

Quaintest pains for by-and-by.

Still, I'd go the world with Beauty,

I would laugh with her and sing,

I would shun divinest duty

To resume her worshipping.

But she'd scorn my brave endeavour,

She would not balm the breeze

By murmuring »Thine for ever!«

As she did upon this leaze.

The Bride-Night Fire

(A Wessex Tradition)

They had long met o' Zundays – her true love and she –

And at junketings, maypoles, and flings;

But she bode wi' a thirtover2 uncle, and he

Swore by noon and by night that her goodman should be

Naibour Sweatley – a wight often weak at the knee

From taking o' sommat more cheerful than tea –

Who tranted,3 and moved people's things.

She cried, »O pray pity me!« Nought would he hear;

Then with wild rainy eyes she obeyed.

She chid when her Love was for clinking off wi' her:

The pa'son was told, as the season drew near,

To throw over pu'pit the names of the pair

As fitting one flesh to be made.

The wedding-day dawned and the morning drew on;

The couple stood bridegroom and bride;

The evening was passed, and when midnight had gone

The feasters horned,4 »God save the King,« and anon

The pair took their homealong5 ride.

The lover Tim Tankens mourned heart-sick and leer6

To be thus of his darling deprived:

He roamed in the dark ath'art field, mound, and mere,

And, a'most without knowing it, found himself near

The house of the tranter, and now of his Dear,

Where the lantern-light showed 'em arrived.

The bride sought her chamber so calm and so pale

That a Northern had thought her resigned;

But to eyes that had seen her in tidetimes7 of weal,

Like the white cloud o' smoke, the red battlefield's vail,

That look spak' of havoc behind.

The bridegroom yet laitered a beaker to drain,

Then reeled to the linhay8 for more,

When the candle-snoff kindled some chaff from his grain –

Flames spread, and red vlankers9 wi' might and wi' main

Around beams, thatch, and chimley-tun10 roar.

Young Tim away yond, rafted11 up by the light,

Through brimbles and underwood tears,

Till he comes to the orchet, when crooping12 from sight

In the lewth13 of a codlin-tree, bivering14 wi' fright,

Wi' on'y her night-rail to cover her plight,

His lonesome young Barbree appears.

Her cwold little figure half-naked he views

Played about by the frolicsome breeze,

Her light-tripping totties,15 her ten little tooes,

All bare and besprinkled wi' Fall's16 chilly dews,

While her great gallied17 eyes through her hair hanging loose

Shone as stars through a tardle18 o' trees.

She eyed him; and, as when a weir-hatch is drawn,

Her tears, penned by terror afore,

With a rushing of sobs in a shower were strawn,

Till her power to pour 'em seemed wasted and gone

From the heft19 o' misfortune she bore.

»O Tim, my own Tim I must call 'ee – I will!

All the world has turned round on me so!

Can you help her who loved 'ee, though acting so ill?

Can you pity her misery – feel for her still?

When worse than her body so quivering and chill

Is her heart in its winter o' woe!

I think I mid20 almost ha' borne it,« she said,

»Had my griefs one by one come to hand;

But O, to be slave to thik husbird,21 for bread,

And then, upon top o' that, driven to wed,

And then, upon top o' that, burnt out o' bed,

Is more than my nater can stand!«

Like a lion 'ithin en Tim's spirit outsprung –

(Tim had a great soul when his feelings were wrung) –

»Feel for 'ee, dear Barbree?« he cried;

And his warm working-jacket then straightway he flung

Round about her, and horsed her by jerks, till she clung

Like a chiel on a gipsy, her figure uphung

By the sleeves that he tightly had tied.

Over piggeries, and mixens,22 and apples, and hay,

They lumpered23 straight into the night;

And finding ere long where a halter-path24 lay,

Sighted Tim's house by dawn, on'y seen on their way

By a naibour or two who were up wi' the day,

But who gathered no clue to the sight.

Then tender Tim Tankens he searched here and there

For some garment to clothe her fair skin;

But though he had breeches and waistcoats to spare,

He had nothing quite seemly for Barbree to wear,

Who, half shrammed25 to death, stood and cried on a chair

At the caddle26 she found herself in.

There was one thing to do, and that one thing he did,

He lent her some clothes of his own,

And she took 'em perforce; and while swiftly she slid

Them upon her Tim turned to the winder, as bid,

Thinking, »O that the picter my duty keeps hid

To the sight o' my eyes mid27 be shown!«

In the tallet28 he stowed her; there huddied29 she lay,

Shortening sleeves, legs, and tails to her limbs;

But most o' the time in a mortal bad way,

Well knowing that there'd be the divel to pay

If 'twere found that, instead o' the elements' prey,

She was living in lodgings at Tim's.

»Where's the tranter?« said men and boys; »where can he be?«

»Where's the tranter?« said Barbree alone.

»Where on e'th is the tranter?« said everybod-y:

They sifted the dust of his perished roof-tree,

And all they could find was a bone.

Then the uncle cried, »Lord, pray have mercy on me!«

And in terror began to repent.

But before 'twas complete, and till sure she was free,

Barbree drew up her loft-ladder, tight turned her key –

Tim bringing up breakfast and dinner and tea –

Till the news of her hiding got vent.

Then followed the custom-kept rout, shout, and flare

Of a skimmity-ride30 through the naibourhood, ere

Folk had proof o' wold31 Sweatley's decay.

Whereupon decent people all stood in a stare,

Saying Tim and his lodger should risk it, and pair:

So he took her to church. An' some laughing lads there

Cried to Tim, »After Sweatley!« She said, »I declare

I stand as a maiden to-day!«

Heiress and Architect

For A. W. Blomfield

She sought the Studios, beckoning to her side

An arch-designer, for she planned to build.

He was of wise contrivance, deeply skilled

In every intervolve of high and wide –

Well fit to be her guide.

»Whatever it be,«

Responded he,

With cold, clear voice, and cold, clear view,

»In true accord with prudent fashionings

For such vicissitudes as living brings,

And thwarting not the law of stable things,

That will I do.«

»Shape me,« she said, »high halls with tracery

And open ogive-work, that scent and hue

Of buds, and travelling bees, may come in through,

The note of birds, and singings of the sea,

For these are much to me.«

»An idle whim!«

Broke forth from him

Whom nought could warm to gallantries:

»Cede all these buds and birds, the zephyr's call,

And scents, and hues, and things that falter all,

And choose as best the close and surly wall,

For winters freeze.«

»Then frame,« she cried, »wide fronts of crystal glass,

That I may show my laughter and my light –

Light like the sun's by day, the stars' by night –

Till rival heart-queens, envying, wail, ›Alas,

Her glory!‹ as they pass.«

»O maid misled!«

He sternly said

Whose facile foresight pierced her dire;

»Where shall abide the soul when, sick of glee,

It shrinks, and hides, and prays no eye may see?

Those house them best who house for secrecy,

For you will tire.«

»A little chamber, then, with swan and dove

Ranged thickly, and engrailed with rare device

Of reds and purples, for a Paradise

Wherein my Love may greet me, I my Love,

When he shall know thereof?«

»This, too, is ill,«

He answered still,

The man who swayed her like a shade.

»An hour will come when sight of such sweet nook

Would bring a bitterness too sharp to brook,

When brighter eyes have won away his look;

For you will fade.«

Then said she faintly: »O, contrive some way –

Some narrow winding turret, quite mine own,

To reach a loft where I may grieve alone!

It is a slight thing; hence do not, I pray,

This last dear fancy slay!«

»Such winding ways

Fit not your days,«

Said he, the man of measuring eye;

»I must even fashion as the rule declares,

To wit: Give space (since life ends unawares)

To hale a coffined corpse adown the stairs;

For you will die.«

1867. 8 Adelphi Terrace

The Two Men

There were two youths of equal age,

Wit, station, strength, and parentage;

They studied at the selfsame schools,

And shaped their thoughts by common rules.

One pondered on the life of man,

His hopes, his ending, and began

To rate the Market's sordid war

As something scarce worth living for.

»I'll brace to higher aims,« said he,

»I'll further Truth and Purity;

Thereby to mend the mortal lot

And sweeten sorrow. Thrive I not,

Winning their hearts, my kind will give

Enough that I may lowly live,

And house my Love in some dim dell,

For pleasing them and theirs so well.«

Idly attired, with features wan,

In secret swift he laboured on:

Such press of power had brought much gold

Applied to things of meaner mould.

Sometimes he wished his aims had been

To gather gains like other men;

Then thanked his God he'd traced his track

Too far for wish to drag him back.

He looked down from his loft one day

To where his slighted garden lay;

Nettles and hemlock hid each lawn,

And every flower was starved and gone.

He fainted in his heart, whereon

He rose, and sought his plighted one,

Resolved to loose her bond withal,

Lest she should perish in his fall.

He met her with a careless air,

As though he'd ceased to find her fair,

And said: »True love is dust to me;

I cannot kiss: I tire of thee!«

(That she might scorn him was he fain,

To put her sooner out of pain;

For angered love breathes quick and dies,

When famished love long-lingering lies.)

Once done, his soul was so betossed,

It found no more the force it lost:

Hope was his only drink and food,

And hope extinct, decay ensued.

And, living long so closely penned,

He had not kept a single friend;

He dwindled thin as phantoms be,

And drooped to death in poverty. ...

Meantime his schoolmate had gone out

To join the fortune-finding rout;

He liked the winnings of the mart,

But wearied of the working part.

He turned to seek a privy lair,

Neglecting note of garb and hair,

And day by day reclined and thought

How he might live by doing nought.

»I plan a valued scheme,« he said

To some.