Wessex Poems and Other Verses. Thomas Hardy

      Snow-bound in woodland, a mournful word,

      Dropt now and then from the bill of a bird,

      Reached me on wind-wafts; and thus I heard,

      Wearily waiting: —

      “I planned her a nest in a leafless tree,

      But the passers eyed and twitted me,

      And said: ‘How reckless a bird is he,

      Cheerily mating!’

      “Fear-filled, I stayed me till summer-tide,

      In lewth of leaves to throne her bride;

      But alas! her love for me waned and died,

      Wearily waiting.

      “Ah, had I been like some I see,

      Born to an evergreen nesting-tree,

      None had eyed and twitted me,

      Cheerily mating!”

      Your troubles shrink not, though I feel them less

      Here, far away, than when I tarried near;

      I even smile old smiles – with listlessness —

      Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries mere.

      A thought too strange to house within my brain

      Haunting its outer precincts I discern:

      – That I will not show zeal again to learn

      Your griefs, and sharing them, renew my pain.

      It goes, like murky bird or buccaneer

      That shapes its lawless figure on the main,

      And each new impulse tends to make outflee

      The unseemly instinct that had lodgment here;

      Yet, comrade old, can bitterer knowledge be

      Than that, though banned, such instinct was in me!

      We stood by a pond that winter day,

      And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,

      And a few leaves lay on the starving sod,

      – They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.

      Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove

      Over tedious riddles solved years ago;

      And some words played between us to and fro —

      On which lost the more by our love.

      The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing

      Alive enough to have strength to die;

      And a grin of bitterness swept thereby

      Like an ominous bird a-wing.

      Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,

      And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me

      Your face, and the God-curst sun, and a tree,

      And a pond edged with grayish leaves.

      They bear him to his resting-place —

      In slow procession sweeping by;

      I follow at a stranger’s space;

      His kindred they, his sweetheart I.

      Unchanged my gown of garish dye,

      Though sable-sad is their attire;

      But they stand round with griefless eye,

      Whilst my regret consumes like fire!

      Upon a poet’s page I wrote

      Of old two letters of her name;

      Part seemed she of the effulgent thought

      Whence that high singer’s rapture came.

      – When now I turn the leaf the same

      Immortal light illumes the lay,

      But from the letters of her name

      The radiance has died away!

      The two were silent in a sunless church,

      Whose mildewed walls, uneven paving-stones,

      And wasted carvings passed antique research;

      And nothing broke the clock’s dull monotones.

      Leaning against a wormy poppy-head,

      So wan and worn that he could scarcely stand,

      – For he was soon to die, – he softly said,

      “Tell me you love me!” – holding hard her hand.

      She would have given a world to breathe “yes” truly,

      So much his life seemed handing on her mind

      And hence she lied, her heart persuaded throughly

      ’Twas worth her soul to be a moment kind.

      But the sad need thereof, his nearing death,

      So mocked humanity that she shamed to prize

      A world conditioned thus, or care for breath

      Where Nature such dilemmas could devise.

      Though I waste watches framing words to fetter

      Some spirit to mine own in clasp and kiss,

      Out of the night there looms a sense ’twere better

      To fail obtaining whom one fails to miss.

      For winning love we win the risk of losing,

      And losing love is as one’s life were riven;

      It cuts like contumely and keen ill-using

      To cede what was superfluously given.

      Let me then feel no more the fateful thrilling

      That devastates the love-worn wooer’s frame,

      The hot ado of fevered hopes, the chilling

      That agonizes disappointed aim!

      So may I live no junctive law fulfilling,

      And my heart’s table bear no woman’s name.

      When

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