Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses. Thomas Hardy

      I travel as a phantom now,

      For people do not wish to see

      In flesh and blood so bare a bough

         As Nature makes of me.

      And thus I visit bodiless

      Strange gloomy households often at odds,

      And wonder if Man’s consciousness

         Was a mistake of God’s.

      And next I meet you, and I pause,

      And think that if mistake it were,

      As some have said, O then it was

         One that I well can bear!

            Show me again the time

            When in the Junetide’s prime

         We flew by meads and mountains northerly! —

      Yea, to such freshness, fairness, fulness, fineness, freeness,

            Love lures life on.

            Show me again the day

            When from the sandy bay

         We looked together upon the pestered sea! —

      Yea, to such surging, swaying, sighing, swelling, shrinking,

            Love lures life on.

            Show me again the hour

            When by the pinnacled tower

         We eyed each other and feared futurity! —

      Yea, to such bodings, broodings, beatings, blanchings, blessings,

            Love lures life on.

            Show me again just this:

            The moment of that kiss

         Away from the prancing folk, by the strawberry-tree! —

      Yea, to such rashness, ratheness, rareness, ripeness, richness,

            Love lures life on.

      In the seventies I was bearing in my breast,

               Penned tight,

      Certain starry thoughts that threw a magic light

      On the worktimes and the soundless hours of rest

      In the seventies; aye, I bore them in my breast

               Penned tight.

      In the seventies when my neighbours – even my friend —

               Saw me pass,

      Heads were shaken, and I heard the words, “Alas,

      For his onward years and name unless he mend!”

      In the seventies, when my neighbours and my friend

            Saw me pass.

      In the seventies those who met me did not know

            Of the vision

      That immuned me from the chillings of mis-prision

      And the damps that choked my goings to and fro

      In the seventies; yea, those nodders did not know

            Of the vision.

      In the seventies nought could darken or destroy it,

            Locked in me,

      Though as delicate as lamp-worm’s lucency;

      Neither mist nor murk could weaken or alloy it

      In the seventies! – could not darken or destroy it,

            Locked in me.

               I bent in the deep of night

            Over a pedigree the chronicler gave

            As mine; and as I bent there, half-unrobed,

      The uncurtained panes of my window-square let in the watery light

               Of the moon in its old age:

      And green-rheumed clouds were hurrying past where mute and cold it globed

         Like a drifting dolphin’s eye seen through a lapping wave.

               So, scanning my sire-sown tree,

            And the hieroglyphs of this spouse tied to that,

               With offspring mapped below in lineage,

               Till the tangles troubled me,

      The branches seemed to twist into a seared and cynic face

         Which winked and tokened towards the window like a Mage