The Complete Poetical Works. Томас Харди
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 thus he, thinking,
A little bird, quick drinking
Among the crowfoot tufts the river bore,
Was tangled in their stringy arms, and fluttered, well-nigh 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 know 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 wist by Whom.
Then on he panted
By grim Mai-Don, and slanted
Up the steep Ridge-way, hearkening betwixt 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, roused by the hued 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
’Twas a death-bed summons, and forth I went
By the way of the Western Wall, so drear
On that winter night, and sought a gate—
The home, by Fate,
Of one I had long 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 chamber up 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.
“’Twas 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 if we’d wedded you’d 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, by the Via renowned,
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