Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses
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OLD EXCURSIONS
“What’s the good of going to Ridgeway, Cerne, or Sydling Mill, Or to Yell’ham Hill,Blithely bearing Casterbridge-way As we used to do?She will no more climb up there,Or be visible anywhere In those haunts we knew.”But to-night, while walking weary, Near me seemed her shade, Come as ’twere to upbraidThis my mood in deeming dreary Scenes that used to please;And, if she did come to me,Still solicitous, there may be Good in going to these.So, I’ll care to roam to Ridgeway, Cerne, or Sydling Mill, Or to Yell’ham Hill,Blithely bearing Casterbridge-way As we used to do,Since her phasm may flit out there,And may greet me anywhere In those haunts we knew.April 1913.
THE MASKED FACE
I found me in a great surging space, At either end a door,And I said: “What is this giddying place, With no firm-fixéd floor, That I knew not of before?” “It is Life,” said a mask-clad face.I asked: “But how do I come here, Who never wished to come;Can the light and air be made more clear, The floor more quietsome, And the doors set wide? They numb Fast-locked, and fill with fear.”The mask put on a bleak smile then, And said, “O vassal-wight,There once complained a goosequill pen To the scribe of the Infinite Of the words it had to write Because they were past its ken.”IN A WHISPERING GALLERY
That whisper takes the voiceOf a Spirit’s compassioningsClose, but invisible,And throws me under a spellAt the kindling vision it brings;And for a moment I rejoice,And believe in transcendent thingsThat would mould from this muddy earthA spot for the splendid birthOf everlasting lives,Whereto no night arrives;And this gaunt gray galleryA tabernacle of worthOn this drab-aired afternoon,When you can barely seeAcross its hazed lacuneIf opposite aught there beOf fleshed humanityWherewith I may commune;Or if the voice so nearBe a soul’s voice floating here.THE SOMETHING THAT SAVED HIM
It was whenWhirls of thick waters laved me Again and again,That something arose and saved me; Yea, it was then. In that dayUnseeing the azure went I On my way,And to white winter bent I, Knowing no May. Reft of renown,Under the night clouds beating Up and down,In my needfulness greeting Cit and clown. Long there had beenMuch of a murky colour In the scene,Dull prospects meeting duller; Nought between. Last, there loomedA closing-in blind alley, Though there boomedA feeble summons to rally Where it gloomed. The clock rang;The hour brought a hand to deliver; I upsprang,And looked back at den, ditch and river, And sang.THE ENEMY’S PORTRAIT
He saw the portrait of his enemy, offeredAt auction in a street he journeyed nigh,That enemy, now late dead, who in his life-timeHad injured deeply him the passer-by.“To get that picture, pleased be God, I’ll try,And utterly destroy it; and no moreShall be inflicted on man’s mortal eyeA countenance so sinister and sore!”And so he bought the painting. Driving homeward,“The frame will come in useful,” he declared,“The rest is fuel.” On his arrival, weary,Asked what he bore with him, and how he fared,He said he had bid for a picture, though he caredFor the frame only: on the morrow heWould burn the canvas, which could well be spared,Seeing that it portrayed his enemy.Next day some other duty found him busy;The foe was laid his face against the wall;But on the next he set himself to loosenThe straining-strips. And then a casual callPrevented his proceeding therewithal;And thus the picture waited, day by day,Its owner’s pleasure, like a wretched thrall,Until a month and more had slipped away.And then upon a morn he found it shifted,Hung in a corner by a servitor.“Why did you take on you to hang that picture?You know it was the frame I bought it for.”“It stood in the way of every visitor,And I just hitched it there.” – “Well, it must go:I don’t commemorate men whom I abhor.Remind me ’tis to do. The frame I’ll stow.”But things become forgotten. In the shadowOf the dark corner hung it by its string,And there it stayed – once noticed by its owner,Who said, “Ah me – I must destroy that thing!”But when he died, there, none remembering,It hung, till moved to prominence, as one sees;And comers pause and say, examining,“I thought they were the bitterest enemies?”IMAGININGS
She saw herself a lady With fifty frocks in wear,And rolling wheels, and rooms the best, And faithful maidens’ care, And open lawns and shady For weathers warm or drear. She found herself a striver, All liberal gifts debarred,With days of gloom, and movements stressed, And early visions marred, And got no man to wive her But one whose lot was hard. Yet in the moony night-time She steals to stile and leaDuring his heavy slumberous rest When homecome wearily, And dreams of some blest bright-time She knows can never be.ON THE DOORSTEP
The rain imprinted the step’s wet shineWith target-circles that quivered and crossedAs I was leaving this porch of mine;When from within there swelled and paused A song’s sweet note; And back I turned, and thought, “Here I’ll abide.”The step shines wet beneath the rain,Which prints its circles as heretofore;I watch them from the porch again,But no song-notes within the door Now call to me To shun the dripping lea And forth I stride.Jan. 1914.
SIGNS AND TOKENS
Said the red-cloaked croneIn a whispered moan:“The dead man was limpWhen laid in his chest;Yea, limp; and whyBut to signifyThat the grave will crimpEre next year’s sunYet another oneOf those in that house —It may be the best —For its endless drowse!”Said the brown-shawled dameTo confirm the same:“And the slothful fliesOn the rotting fruitHave been seen to wearWhile crawling thereCrape scarves, by eyesThat were quick and acute;As did those that had pitchedOn the cows by the pails,And with flaps of their tailsWere far away switched.”Said the third in plaid,Each word being weighed:“And trotting doesIn the park, in the lane,And just outsideThe shuttered pane,Have also been heard —Quick feet as lightAs the feet of a sprite —And the wise mind knowsWhat things may betideWhen such has occurred.”Cried the black-craped fourth,Cold faced as the north:“O, though giving suchSome head-room, I smileAt your falteringsWhen noting those thingsRound your domicile!For what, what can touchOne whom, riven of allThat makes life gay,No hints can appalOf more takings away!”PATHS OF FORMER TIME
No; no; It must not be so:They are the ways we do not go. Still chew The kine, and mooIn the meadows we used to wander through; Still purl The rivulets and curlTowards the weirs with a musical swirl; Haymakers As in former yearsRake rolls into heaps that the pitchfork rears; Wheels crack On the turfy trackThe waggon pursues with its toppling pack. “Why then shun — Since summer’s not done —All this because of the lack of one?” Had you been Sharer of that sceneYou would not ask while it bites in keen Why it is so We can no more goBy the summer paths we used to know!1913.
THE CLOCK OF THE YEARS
“A spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up.” And the Spirit said,“I can make the clock of the years go backward,But am loth to stop it where you will.” And I cried, “Agreed To that. Proceed: It’s better than dead!” He answered, “Peace”;And called her up – as last before me;Then younger, younger she freshed, to the year I first had known Her woman-grown, And I cried, “Cease! — “Thus far is good —It is enough – let her stay thus always!”But alas for me. He shook his head: No stop was there; And she waned child-fair, And to babyhood. Still less in mienTo my great sorrow became she slowly,And smalled till she was nought at all In his checkless griff; And it was as if She had never been. “Better,” I plained,“She were dead as before! The memory of herHad lived in me; but it cannot now!” And coldly his voice: “It was your choice To mar the ordained.”1916.
AT THE PIANO
A woman was playing, A man looking on; And the mould of her face, And her neck, and her hair, Which the rays fell upon Of the two candles there,Sent him mentally straying In some fancy-place Where pain had no trace.A cowled Apparition Came pushing between; And her notes seemed to sigh, And the lights to burn pale, As a spell numbed the scene. But the maid saw no bale,And the man no monition; And Time laughed awry, And the Phantom hid nigh.THE SHADOW ON THE STONE
I went by the Druid stone That broods in the garden white and lone,And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows That at some moments fall thereon From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing, And they shaped in my imaginingTo the shade that a well-known head and shoulders Threw there when she was gardening. I thought her behind my back, Yea, her I long had learned to lack,And I said: “I am sure you are standing behind me, Though how do you get into this old track?” And there was no sound but the fall of a leaf As a sad response; and to keep down griefI would not turn my head to discover That there was nothing in my belief. Yet I wanted to look and see That nobody stood at the back of me;But I thought once more: “Nay, I’ll not unvision A shape which, somehow, there may be.” So I went on softly from the glade, And left her behind me throwing her shade,As she were indeed an apparition — My head unturned lest my dream should fade.Begun 1913: finished 1916.
IN THE GARDEN
(M. H.)
We waited for the sunTo break its cloudy prison(For day was not yet done,And night still unbegun)Leaning by the dial.After many a trial —We all silent there —It burst as new-arisen,Throwing a shade to whereTime travelled at that minute.Little saw we in it,But this much I know,Of lookers on that shade,Her towards whom it madeSoonest had to go.1915.
THE TREE AND THE LADY
I have done all I couldFor that lady I knew! Through the heats I have shaded her,Drawn to her songsters when summer has jaded her, Home from the heath or the wood. At the mirth-time of May,When my shadow first lured her, I’d donned my new braveryOf greenth: ’twas my all. Now I shiver in slavery, Icicles grieving me gray. Plumed to every twig’s endI could tempt her chair under me. Much did I treasure herDuring those days she had nothing to pleasure her; Mutely she used me as friend. I’m a skeleton now,And she’s gone, craving warmth. The rime sticks like a skin to me;Through me Arcturus peers; Nor’lights shoot into me; Gone is she, scorning my bough!AN UPBRAIDING
Now I am dead you sing to me The songs we used to know,But while I lived you had no wish Or care for doing so.Now I am dead you come to me In the moonlight, comfortless;Ah, what would I have given alive To win such tenderness!When you are dead, and stand to me Not differenced, as now,But like again, will you be cold As when we lived, or how?THE YOUNG GLASS-STAINER
“These Gothic windows, how they wear me outWith cusp and foil, and nothing straight or square,Crude colours, leaden borders roundabout,And fitting in Peter here, and Matthew there!“What a vocation! Here do I draw nowThe abnormal, loving the Hellenic norm;Martha I paint, and dream of Hera’s brow,Mary, and think of Aphrodite’s form.”Nov. 1893.
LOOKING AT A PICTURE ON AN ANNIVERSARY
But don’t you know it, my dear, Don’t you know it,That this day of the year(What rainbow-rays embow it!)We met, strangers confessed, But parted – blest?Though at this query, my dear, There in your frameUnmoved you still appear,You must be thinking the same,But keep that look demure Just to allure.And now at length a trace I surely visionUpon that wistful faceOf old-time recognition,Smiling forth, “Yes, as you say, It is the day.”For this one phase of you Now left on earthThis great date must endueWith pulsings of rebirth? —I see them vitalize Those two deep eyes!But if this face I con Does not declareConsciousness living onStill in it, little I careTo live myself, my dear, Lone-labouring here!Spring 1913.
THE CHOIRMASTER’S BURIAL
He often would ask usThat, when he died,After playing so manyTo their last rest,If out of us anyShould here abide,And it would not task us,We would with our lutesPlay over himBy his grave-brimThe psalm he liked best —The one whose sense suits“Mount Ephraim” —And perhaps we should seemTo him, in Death’s dream,Like the seraphim.As soon as I knewThat his spirit was goneI thought this his due,And spoke thereupon.“I think,” said the vicar,“A read service quickerThan viols out-of-doorsIn these frosts and hoars.That old-fashioned wayRequires a fine day,And it seems to meIt had better not be.”Hence, that afternoon,Though never knew heThat his wish could not be,To get through it fasterThey buried the masterWithout any tune.But ’twas said that, whenAt the dead of next nightThe vicar looked out,There struck on his kenThronged roundabout,Where the frost was grayingThe headstoned grass,A band all in whiteLike the saints in church-glass,Singing and playingThe ancient staveBy the choirmaster’s grave.Such the tenor man toldWhen he had grown old.THE MAN WHO FORGOT
At a lonely cross where bye-roads met I sat upon a gate;I saw the sun decline and set, And still was fain to wait.A trotting boy passed up the way And roused me from my thought;I called to him, and showed where lay A spot I shyly sought.“A summer-house fair stands hidden where You see the moonlight thrown;Go, tell me if within it there A lady sits alone.”He half demurred, but took the track, And silence held the scene;I saw his figure rambling back; I asked him if he had been.“I went just where you said, but found No summer-house was there:Beyond the slope ’tis all bare ground; Nothing stands anywhere.“A man asked what my brains were worth; The house, he said, grew rotten,And was pulled down before my birth, And is almost forgotten!”My right mind woke, and I stood dumb; Forty years’ frost and flowerHad fleeted since I’d used to come To meet her in that bower.WHILE DRAWING IN A CHURCH-YARD
“It is sad that so many of worth, Still in the flesh,” soughed the yew,“Misjudge their lot whom kindly earth Secludes from view. “They ride their diurnal round Each day-span’s sum of hoursIn peerless ease, without jolt or bound Or ache like ours. “If the living could but hear What is heard by my roots as they creepRound the restful flock, and the things said there, No one would weep.” “‘Now set among the wise,’ They say: ‘Enlarged in scope,That no God trumpet us to rise We truly hope.’” I listened to his strange tale In the mood that stillness brings,And I grew to accept as the day wore pale That show of things.“FOR LIFE I HAD NEVER CARED GREATLY”
For Life I had never cared greatly, As worth a man’s while; Peradventures unsought, Peradventures that finished in nought,Had kept me from youth and through manhood till lately Unwon by its style. In earliest years – why I know not — I viewed it askance; Conditions of doubt, Conditions that leaked slowly out,May haply have bent me to stand and to show not Much zest for its dance. With symphonies soft and sweet colour It courted me then, Till evasions seemed wrong, Till evasions gave in to its song,And I warmed, until living aloofly loomed duller Than life among men. Anew I found nought to set eyes on, When, lifting its hand, It uncloaked a star, Uncloaked it from fog-damps afar,And showed its beams burning from pole to horizon As bright as a brand. And so, the rough highway forgetting, I pace hill and dale Regarding the sky, Regarding the vision on high,And thus re-illumed have no humour for letting My pilgrimage fail.POEMS OF WAR AND PATRIOTISM
“MEN WHO MARCH AWAY”
(SONG OF THE SOLDIERS)What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away Ere the barn-cocks say Night is growing gray,Leaving all that here can win us;What of the faith and fire within us Men who march away?Is it a purblind prank, O think you, Friend with the musing eye, Who watch us stepping by With doubt and dolorous sigh?Can much pondering so hoodwink you!Is it a purblind prank, O think you, Friend with the musing eye?Nay. We well see what we are doing, Though some may not see — Dalliers as they be — England’s need are we;Her distress would leave us rueing:Nay. We well see what we are doing, Though some may not see!In our heart of hearts believing Victory crowns the just, And that braggarts must Surely bite the dust,Press we to the field ungrieving,In our heart of hearts believing Victory crowns the just.Hence the faith and fire within us Men who march away Ere the barn-cocks say Night is growing gray,Leaving all that here can win us;Hence the faith and fire within us Men who march away.September 5, 1914.
HIS COUNTRY
[He travels southward, and looks around;]I journeyed from my native spot Across the south sea shine,And found that people in hall and cotLaboured and suffered each his lot Even as I did mine.[and cannot discern the boundary]Thus noting them in meads and marts It did not seem to meThat my dear country with its hearts,Minds, yearnings, worse and better parts Had ended with the sea.[of his native country;]I further and further went anon, As such I still surveyed,And further yet – yea, on and on,And all the men I looked upon Had heart-strings fellow-made.[or where his duties to his fellow-creatures end;]I traced the whole terrestrial round, Homing the other side;Then said I, “What is there to boundMy denizenship? It seems I have found Its scope to be world-wide.”[nor who are his enemies]I asked me: “Whom have I to fight, And whom have I to dare,And whom to weaken, crush, and blight?My country seems to have kept in sight On my way everywhere.”1913.
ENGLAND TO GERMANY IN 1914
“O England, may God punish thee!”– Is it that Teuton genius flowersOnly to breathe malignityUpon its friend of earlier hours?– We have eaten your bread, you have eaten ours,We have loved your burgs, your pines’ green moan,Fair Rhine-stream, and its storied towers;Your shining souls of deathless dowersHave won us as they were our own:We have nursed no dreams to shed your blood,We have matched your might not rancorously,Save a flushed few whose blatant moodYou heard and marked as well as weTo tongue not in their country’s key;But yet you cry with face aflame,“O England, may God punish thee!”And foul in onward history,And present sight, your ancient name.Autumn 1914.
ON THE BELGIAN EXPATRIATION
I dreamt that people from the Land of ChimesArrived one autumn morning with their bells,To hoist them on the towers and citadelsOf my own country, that the musical rhymesRung by them into space at meted timesAmid the market’s daily stir and stress,And the night’s empty star-lit silentness,Might solace souls of this and kindred climes.Then I awoke; and lo, before me stoodThe visioned ones, but pale and full of fear;From Bruges they came, and Antwerp, and Ostend,No carillons in their train. Foes of mad moodHad shattered these to shards amid the gearOf ravaged roof, and smouldering gable-end.October 18, 1914.
AN APPEAL TO AMERICA ON BEHALF OF THE BELGIAN DESTITUTE
Seven millions standEmaciate, in that ancient Delta-land: —We here, full-charged with our own maimed and dead,And coiled in throbbing conflicts slow and sore,Can poorly soothe these ails unmeritedOf souls forlorn upon the facing shore! —Where naked, gaunt, in endless band on band Seven millions stand. No man can sayTo your great country that, with scant delay,You must, perforce, ease them in their loud need:We know that nearer first your duty lies;But – is it much to ask that you let pleadYour lovingkindness with you – wooing-wise —Albeit that aught you owe, and must repay, No man can say?December 1914.
THE PITY OF IT
I walked in loamy Wessex lanes, afarFrom rail-track and from highway, and I heardIn field and farmstead many an ancient wordOf local lineage like “Thu bist,” “Er war,”“Ich woll,” “Er sholl,” and by-talk similar,Nigh as they speak who in this month’s moon girdAt England’s very loins, thereunto spurredBy gangs whose glory threats and slaughters are.Then seemed a Heart crying: “Whosoever they beAt root and bottom of this, who flung this flameBetween kin folk kin tongued even as are we,“Sinister, ugly, lurid, be their fame;May their familiars grow to shun their name,And their brood perish everlastingly.”April 1915.
IN TIME OF WARS AND TUMULTS
“Would that I’d not drawn breath here!” some one said,“To stalk upon this stage of evil deeds,Where purposelessly month by month proceedsA play so sorely shaped and blood-bespread.”Yet had his spark not quickened, but lain deadTo the gross spectacles of this our day,And never put on the proffered cloak of clay,He had but known not things now manifested;Life would have swirled the same. Morns would have dawnedOn the uprooting by the night-gun’s strokeOf what the yester noonshine brought to flower;Brown martial brows in dying throes have wannedDespite his absence; hearts no fewer been brokeBy Empery’s insatiate lust of power.1915.
IN TIME OF “THE BREAKING OF NATIONS” 1
IOnly a man harrowing clods In a slow silent walkWith an old horse that stumbles and nods Half asleep as they stalk.IIOnly thin smoke without flame From the heaps of couch-grass;Yet this will go onward the same Though Dynasties pass.IIIYonder a maid and her wight Come whispering by:War’s annals will cloud into night Ere their story die.1915.
CRY OF THE HOMELESS AFTER THE PRUSSIAN INVASION OF BELGIUM
“Instigator of the ruin — Whichsoever thou mayst beOf the masterful of Europe That contrived our misery —Hear the wormwood-worded greeting From each city, shore, and lea Of thy victims: “Conqueror, all hail to thee!”“Yea: ‘All hail!’ we grimly shout thee That wast author, fount, and headOf these wounds, whoever proven When our times are throughly read.‘May thy loved be slighted, blighted, And forsaken,’ be it said By thy victims, ‘And thy children beg their bread!’“Nay: a richer malediction! — Rather let this thing befallIn time’s hurling and unfurling On the night when comes thy call;That compassion dew thy pillow And bedrench thy senses all For thy victims, Till death dark thee with his pall.”August 1915.
BEFORE MARCHING AND AFTER
(in Memoriam F. W. G.)
Orion swung southward aslant Where the starved Egdon pine-trees had thinned, The Pleiads aloft seemed to pant With the heather that twitched in the wind;But he looked on indifferent to sights such as these,Unswayed by love, friendship, home joy or home sorrow,And wondered to what he would march on the morrow. The crazed household-clock with its whirr Rang midnight within as he stood, He heard the low sighing of her Who had striven from his birth for his good;But he still only asked the spring starlight, the breeze,What great thing or small thing his history would borrowFrom that Game with Death he would play on the morrow. When the heath wore the robe of late summer, And the fuchsia-bells, hot in the sun, Hung red by the door, a quick comer Brought tidings that marching was doneFor him who had joined in that game overseasWhere Death stood to win, though his name was to borrowA brightness therefrom not to fade on the morrow.September 1915.
“OFTEN WHEN WARRING”
Often when warring for he wist not what,An enemy-soldier, passing by one weak,Has tendered water, wiped the burning cheek,And cooled the lips so black and clammed and hot;Then gone his way, and maybe quite forgotThe deed of grace amid the roar and reek;Yet larger vision than loud arms bespeakHe there has reached, although he has known it not.For natural mindsight, triumphing in the actOver the throes of artificial rage,Has thuswise muffled victory’s peal of pride,Rended to ribands policy’s specious pageThat deals but with evasion, code, and pact,And war’s apology wholly stultified.1915.