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

         And this phantasmal variousness

      Ever possessed it as they drew along:

      Yet throughout all it symboled none the less

      Potency vast and loving-kindness strong.

         Almost before I knew I bent

      Towards the moving columns without a word;

      They, growing in bulk and numbers as they went,

      Struck out sick thoughts that could be overheard: —

         “O man-projected Figure, of late

      Imaged as we, thy knell who shall survive?

      Whence came it we were tempted to create

      One whom we can no longer keep alive?

         “Framing him jealous, fierce, at first,

      We gave him justice as the ages rolled,

      Will to bless those by circumstance accurst,

      And longsuffering, and mercies manifold.

         “And, tricked by our own early dream

      And need of solace, we grew self-deceived,

      Our making soon our maker did we deem,

      And what we had imagined we believed.

         “Till, in Time’s stayless stealthy swing,

      Uncompromising rude reality

      Mangled the Monarch of our fashioning,

      Who quavered, sank; and now has ceased to be.

         “So, toward our myth’s oblivion,

      Darkling, and languid-lipped, we creep and grope

      Sadlier than those who wept in Babylon,

      Whose Zion was a still abiding hope.

         “How sweet it was in years far hied

      To start the wheels of day with trustful prayer,

      To lie down liegely at the eventide

      And feel a blest assurance he was there!

         “And who or what shall fill his place?

      Whither will wanderers turn distracted eyes

      For some fixed star to stimulate their pace

      Towards the goal of their enterprise?”.

         Some in the background then I saw,

      Sweet women, youths, men, all incredulous,

      Who chimed as one: “This figure is of straw,

      This requiem mockery!  Still he lives to us!”

         I could not prop their faith: and yet

      Many I had known: with all I sympathized;

      And though struck speechless, I did not forget

      That what was mourned for, I, too, once had prized.

         Still, how to bear such loss I deemed

      The insistent question for each animate mind,

      And gazing, to my growing sight there seemed

      A pale yet positive gleam low down behind,

         Whereof to lift the general night,

      A certain few who stood aloof had said,

      “See you upon the horizon that small light —

      Swelling somewhat?”  Each mourner shook his head.

         And they composed a crowd of whom

      Some were right good, and many nigh the best.

      Thus dazed and puzzled ’twixt the gleam and gloom

      Mechanically I followed with the rest.

      “It is not death that harrows us,” they lipped,

      “The soundless cell is in itself relief,

      For life is an unfenced flower, benumbed and nipped

      At unawares, and at its best but brief.”

      The speakers, sundry phantoms of the gone,

      Had risen like filmy flames of phosphor dye,

      As if the palest of sheet lightnings shone

      From the sward near me, as from a nether sky.

      And much surprised was I that, spent and dead,

      They should not, like the many, be at rest,

      But stray as apparitions; hence I said,

      “Why, having slipped life, hark you back distressed?

      “We are among the few death sets not free,

      The hurt, misrepresented names, who come

      At each year’s brink, and cry to History

      To do them justice, or go past them dumb.

      “We are stript of rights; our shames lie unredressed,

      Our deeds in full anatomy are not shown,

      Our words in morsels merely are expressed

      On the scriptured page, our motives blurred, unknown.”

      Then all these shaken slighted visitants sped

      Into the vague, and left me musing there

      On fames that well might instance what they had said,

      Until the New-Year’s dawn strode up the air.

      “Ah, are you digging on my grave

         My loved one? – planting rue?”

      – “No: yesterday he went to wed

      One of the brightest wealth has bred.

      ‘It cannot hurt her now,’ he said,

         ‘That I should not be true.’”

      “Then who is digging on my grave?

         My nearest dearest kin?”

      – “Ah, no; they sit and think, ‘What use!

      What good will planting flowers produce?

      No tendance of her mound can loose

         Her spirit from Death’s gin.’”

      “But some one digs upon my grave?

         My enemy? – prodding sly?”

      – “Nay: when she heard you had passed the Gate

      That shuts on all flesh soon or late,

      She thought you no more worth her hate,

         And cares not where you lie.”

      “Then,