Thomas Hardy : 8 poems

On the Departure Platform

We kissed at the barrier ; and passing through

She left me, and moment by moment got

Smaller and smaller, until to my view

                She was but a spot ;

A wee white spot of muslin fluff

That down the diminishing platform bore

Through hustling crowds of gentle and rough

               To the carriage door.

Under the lamplight’s fitful glowers,

Behind dark groups from far and near,

Whose interests were apart from ours,

                 She would disappear,

Then show again, till I ceased to see

That flexible form, that nebulous white ;

And she who was more than my life to me

                 Had vanished quite.

We have penned new plans since that fair fond day,

And in season she will appear again—

Perhaps in the same soft white array—

                 But never as then !

—‘And why, young man, must eternally fly

A joy you’ll repeat, if you love her well ?’

—O friend, nought happens twice thus ; why,

                 I cannot tell !

The Rambler

I do not see the hills around,

Nor mark the tints the copses wear;

I do not note the grassy ground

And constellated daisies there.

I hear not the contralto note

Of cuckoos hid on either hand,

The whirr that shakes the nighthawk's throat

When eve's brown awning hoods the land.

Some say each songster, tree and mead--

All eloquent of love divine--

Receives their constant careful heed:

Such keen appraisement is not mine.

The tones around me that I hear,

The aspects, meanings, shapes I see,

Are those far back ones missed when near,

And now perceived too late by me!

Your Last Drive

Here by the moorway you returned,

And saw the borough lights ahead

That lit your face—all undiscerned

To be in a week the face of the dead,

And you told of the charm of that haloed view

That never again would beam on you.

And on your left you passed the spot

Where eight days later you were to lie,

And be spoken of as one who was not;

Beholding it with a heedless eye

As alien from you, though under its tree

You soon would halt everlastingly.

I drove not with you. . . . Yet had I sat

At your side that eve I should not have seen

That the countenance I was glancing at

Had a last-time look in the flickering sheen,

Nor have read the writing upon your face,

"I go hence soon to my resting-place;

"You may miss me then.  But I shall not know

How many times you visit me there,

Or what your thoughts are, or if you go

There never at all.  And I shall not care.

Should you censure me I shall take no heed

And even your praises no more shall need."

True:  never you'll know.  And you will not mind.

But shall I then slight you because of such?

Dear ghost, in the past did you ever find

The thought "What profit", move me much?

Yet abides the fact, indeed, the same,—

You are past love, praise, indifference, blame.

The Phantom Horsewoman

I

Queer are the ways of a man I know:

He comes and stands

In a careworn craze,

And looks at the sands

And the seaward haze

With moveless hands

And face and gaze,

Then turns to go...

And what does he see when he gazes so?

II

They say he sees as an instant thing

More clear than to-day,

A sweet soft scene

That once was in play

By that briny green;

Yes, notes alway

Warm, real, and keen,

What his back years bring—

A phantom of his own figuring.

III

Of this vision of his they might say more:

Not only there

Does he see this sight,

But everywhere

In his brain–day, night,

As if on the air

It were drawn rose bright–

Yea, far from that shore

Does he carry this vision of heretofore:

IV

A ghost-girl-rider. And though, toil-tried,

He withers daily,

Time touches her not,

But she still rides gaily

In his rapt thought

On that shagged and shaly

Atlantic spot,

And as when first eyed

Draws rein and sings to the swing of the tide.

In the Moonlight

“O LONELY workman, standing there   

In a dream, why do you stare and stare              

At her grave, as no other grave there were?    

“If your great gaunt eyes so importune              

Her soul by the shine of this corpse-cold moon,                     

Maybe you’ll raise her phantom soon!”              

“Why, fool, it is what I would rather see             

Than all the living folk there be;              

But alas, there is no such joy for me!”  

“Ah—she was one you loved, no doubt,                    

Through good and evil, through rain and drought,         

And when she passed, all your sun went out?”               

“Nay: she was the woman I did not love,           

Whom all the others were ranked above,          

Whom during her life I thought nothing of.”

Transformations

Portion of this yew

Is a man my grandsire knew,

Bosomed here at its foot:

This branch may be his wife,

A ruddy human life

Now turned to a green shoot.

These grasses must be made

Of her who often prayed,

Last century, for repose;

And the fair girl long ago

Whom I often tried to know

May be entering this rose.

So, they are not underground,

But as nerves and veins abound

In the growths of upper air,

And they feel the sun and rain,

And the energy again

That made them what they were!

I Looked Up from My Writing

I looked up from my writing,

   And gave a start to see,

As if rapt in my inditing,

   The moon's full gaze on me.

Her meditative misty head

   Was spectral in its air,

And I involuntarily said,

   'What are you doing there?'

'Oh, I've been scanning pond and hole

   And waterway hereabout

For the body of one with a sunken soul

   Who has put his life-light out.

'Did you hear his frenzied tattle?

   It was sorrow for his son

Who is slain in brutish battle,

   Though he has injured none.

'And now I am curious to look

   Into the blinkered mind

Of one who wants to write a book

   In a world of such a kind.'

Her temper overwrought me,

   And I edged to shun her view,

For I felt assured she thought me

   One who should drown him too.

In a London Flat

 I

" You look like a widower," she said

Through the folding-doors with a laugh from the bed,

As he sat by the fire in the outer room,

Reading late on a night of gloom,

And a cab-hack's wheeze, and the clap of its feet

In its breathless pace on the smooth wet street,

Were all that came to them now and then. . . .

" You really do!" she quizzed again.

II

And the Spirits behind the curtains heard,

And also laughed, amused at her word,

And at her light-hearted view of him.

" Let's get him made so — just for a whim!"

Said the Phantom Ironic. " 'Twould serve her right

If we coaxed the Will to do it some night."

" O pray not!" pleaded the younger one,

The Sprite of the Pities. " She said it in fun!"

III

But so it befell, whatever the cause,

That what she had called him he next year was;

And on such a night, when she lay elsewhere,

He, watched by those Phantoms, again sat there,

And gazed, as if gazing on far faint shores,

At the empty bed through the folding-doors

As he remembered her words; and wept

That she had forgotten them where she slept.

The Essential Hardy /  Selected and with an Introduction by  Joseph Brodsky.

The Ecco Press, 1995

About the poetry of Thomas Hardy : Thomas Hardy Society

About Thomas Hardy :  Thomas Hardy Society