Late Lyrics and Earlier, With Many Other Verses. Thomas Hardy
one,
But only of trifles – legends, ghosts —
Though, on the moorland dim and dun
That travellers shun
About these coasts,
The man had passed Tresparret Posts.
There was no light at all inland,
Only the seaward pharos-fire,
Nothing to let me understand
That hard at hand
By Hennett Byre
The man was getting nigh and nigher.
There was a rumble at the door,
A draught disturbed the drapery,
And but a minute passed before,
With gaze that bore
My destiny,
The man revealed himself to me.
THE STRANGE HOUSE
(MAX GATE, A.D. 2000)
“I hear the piano playing —
Just as a ghost might play.”
“ – O, but what are you saying?
There’s no piano to-day;
Their old one was sold and broken;
Years past it went amiss.”
“ – I heard it, or shouldn’t have spoken:
A strange house, this!
“I catch some undertone here,
From some one out of sight.”
“ – Impossible; we are alone here,
And shall be through the night.”
“ – The parlour-door – what stirred it?”
“ – No one: no soul’s in range.”
“ – But, anyhow, I heard it,
And it seems strange!
“Seek my own room I cannot —
A figure is on the stair!”
“ – What figure? Nay, I scan not
Any one lingering there.
A bough outside is waving,
And that’s its shade by the moon.”
“ – Well, all is strange! I am craving
Strength to leave soon.”
“ – Ah, maybe you’ve some vision
Of showings beyond our sphere;
Some sight, sense, intuition
Of what once happened here?
The house is old; they’ve hinted
It once held two love-thralls,
And they may have imprinted
Their dreams on its walls?
“They were – I think ’twas told me —
Queer in their works and ways;
The teller would often hold me
With weird tales of those days.
Some folk can not abide here,
But we – we do not care
Who loved, laughed, wept, or died here,
Knew joy, or despair.”
“AS ’TWERE TO-NIGHT”
(SONG)
As ’twere to-night, in the brief space
Of a far eventime,
My spirit rang achime
At vision of a girl of grace;
As ’twere to-night, in the brief space
Of a far eventime.
As ’twere at noontide of to-morrow
I airily walked and talked,
And wondered as I walked
What it could mean, this soar from sorrow;
As ’twere at noontide of to-morrow
I airily walked and talked.
As ’twere at waning of this week
Broke a new life on me;
Trancings of bliss to be
In some dim dear land soon to seek;
As ’twere at waning of this week
Broke a new life on me!
THE CONTRETEMPS
A forward rush by the lamp in the gloom,
And we clasped, and almost kissed;
But she was not the woman whom
I had promised to meet in the thawing brume
On that harbour-bridge; nor was I he of her tryst.
So loosening from me swift she said:
“O why, why feign to be
The one I had meant! – to whom I have sped
To fly with, being so sorrily wed!”
– ’Twas thus and thus that she upbraided me.
My assignation had struck upon
Some others’ like it, I found.
And her lover rose on the night anon;
And then her husband entered on
The lamplit, snowflaked, sloppiness around.
“Take her and welcome, man!” he cried:
“I wash my hands of her.
I’ll find me twice as good a bride!”
– All this to me, whom he had eyed,
Plainly, as his wife’s planned deliverer.
And next the lover: “Little I knew,
Madam, you had a third!
Kissing here in my very view!”
– Husband and lover then withdrew.
I let them; and I told them not they erred.
Why not? Well, there faced she and I —
Two strangers who’d kissed, or near,
Chancewise. To see stand weeping by
A woman once embraced, will try
The tension of a man the most austere.
So it began; and I was young,
She pretty, by the lamp,
As flakes came waltzing down among
The waves of her clinging hair, that hung
Heavily on her temples, dark and damp.
And there alone still stood we two;
She one cast off for me,
Or so it seemed: while night ondrew,