Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with Miscellaneous Pieces. Thomas Hardy

      In this fair niche above the unslumbering sea,

      That sentrys up and down all night, all day,

      From cove to promontory, from ness to bay,

         The Fates have fitly bidden that he should be Pillowed eternally.

      – It was as though a garland of red roses

      Had fallen about the hood of some smug nun

      When irresponsibly dropped as from the sun,

      In fulth of numbers freaked with musical closes,

      Upon Victoria’s formal middle time

         His leaves of rhythm and rhyme.

      O that far morning of a summer day

      When, down a terraced street whose pavements lay

      Glassing the sunshine into my bent eyes,

      I walked and read with a quick glad surprise

         New words, in classic guise, —

      The passionate pages of his earlier years,

      Fraught with hot sighs, sad laughters, kisses, tears;

      Fresh-fluted notes, yet from a minstrel who

      Blew them not naïvely, but as one who knew

         Full well why thus he blew.

      I still can hear the brabble and the roar

      At those thy tunes, O still one, now passed through

      That fitful fire of tongues then entered new!

      Their power is spent like spindrift on this shore;

         Thine swells yet more and more.

      – His singing-mistress verily was no other

      Than she the Lesbian, she the music-mother

      Of all the tribe that feel in melodies;

      Who leapt, love-anguished, from the Leucadian steep

      Into the rambling world-encircling deep

         Which hides her where none sees.

      And one can hold in thought that nightly here

      His phantom may draw down to the water’s brim,

      And hers come up to meet it, as a dim

      Lone shine upon the heaving hydrosphere,

      And mariners wonder as they traverse near,

         Unknowing of her and him.

      One dreams him sighing to her spectral form:

      “O teacher, where lies hid thy burning line;

      Where are those songs, O poetess divine

      Whose very arts are love incarnadine?”

      And her smile back: “Disciple true and warm,

         Sufficient now are thine.”.

      So here, beneath the waking constellations,

      Where the waves peal their everlasting strains,

      And their dull subterrene reverberations

      Shake him when storms make mountains of their plains —

      Him once their peer in sad improvisations,

      And deft as wind to cleave their frothy manes —

      I leave him, while the daylight gleam declines

         Upon the capes and chines.

      When you slowly emerged from the den of Time,

      And gained percipience as you grew,

      And fleshed you fair out of shapeless slime,

      Wherefore, O Man, did there come to you

      The unhappy need of creating me —

      A form like your own – for praying to?

      My virtue, power, utility,

      Within my maker must all abide,

      Since none in myself can ever be,

      One thin as a shape on a lantern-slide

      Shown forth in the dark upon some dim sheet,

      And by none but its showman vivified.

      “Such a forced device,” you may say, “is meet

      For easing a loaded heart at whiles:

      Man needs to conceive of a mercy-seat

      Somewhere above the gloomy aisles

      Of this wailful world, or he could not bear

      The irk no local hope beguiles.”

      – But since I was framed in your first despair

      The doing without me has had no play

      In the minds of men when shadows scare;

      And now that I dwindle day by day

      Beneath the deicide eyes of seers

      In a light that will not let me stay,

      And to-morrow the whole of me disappears,

      The truth should be told, and the fact be faced

      That had best been faced in earlier years:

      The fact of life with dependence placed

      On the human heart’s resource alone,

      In brotherhood bonded close and graced

      With loving-kindness fully blown,

      And visioned help unsought, unknown.

         I saw a slowly-stepping train —

      Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar —

      Following in files across a twilit plain

      A strange and mystic form the foremost bore.

         And by contagious throbs of thought

      Or latent knowledge that within me lay

      And had already stirred me, I was wrought

      To