I say it vainly—I feel and know!
Friends Beyond
William Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,
Robert’s kin, and John’s, and Ned’s,
And the Squire, and Lady Susan, lie in Mellstock churchyard now!
“Gone,” I call them, gone for good, that group of local hearts and heads;
Yet at mothy curfew-tide,
And at midnight when the noon-heat breathes it back from walls and leads,
They’ve a way of whispering to me—fellow-wight who yet abide—
In the muted, measured note
Of a ripple under archways, or a lone cave’s stillicide:
“We have triumphed: this achievement turns the bane to antidote,
Unsuccesses to success,
—Many thought-worn eves and morrows to a morrow free of thought.
“No more need we corn and clothing, feel of old terrestrial stress;
Chill detraction stirs no sigh;
Fear of death has even bygone us: death gave all that we possess.”
W. D.—“Ye mid burn the wold bass-viol that I set such vallie by.” Squire.—“You may hold the manse in fee, You may wed my spouse, my children’s memory of me may decry.”
Lady.—“You may have my rich brocades, my laces; take each household key; Ransack coffer, desk, bureau; Quiz the few poor treasures hid there, con the letters kept by me.”
Far.—“Ye mid zell my favourite heifer, ye mid let the charlock grow, Foul the grinterns, give up thrift.” Wife.—“If ye break my best blue china, children, I shan’t care or ho.”
All. —“We’ve no wish to hear the tidings, how the people’s fortunes shift; What your daily doings are; Who are wedded, born, divided; if your lives beat slow or swift.
“Curious not the least are we if our intents you make or mar,
If you quire to our old tune,
If the City stage still passes, if the weirs still roar afar.”
—Thus, with very gods’ composure, freed those crosses late and soon
Which, in life, the Trine allow
(Why, none witteth), and ignoring all that haps beneath the moon,
William Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,
Robert’s kin, and John’s, and Ned’s,
And the Squire, and Lady Susan, murmur mildly to me now.
To Outer Nature
Show thee as I thought thee
When I early sought thee,
Omen-scouting,
All undoubting
Love alone had wrought thee—
Wrought thee for my pleasure,
Planned thee as a measure
For expounding
And resounding
Glad things that men treasure.
O for but a moment
Of that old endowment—
Light to gaily
See thy daily
Irisèd embowment!
But such re-adorning
Time forbids with scorning—
Makes me see things
Cease to be things
They were in my morning.
Fad’st thou, glow-forsaken,
Darkness-overtaken!
Thy first sweetness,
Radiance, meetness,
None shall re-awaken.
Why not sempiternal
Thou and I? Our vernal
Brightness keeping,
Time outleaping;
Passed the hodiernal!
Thoughts of Phena
AT NEWS OF HER DEATH
Not a line of her writing have I,
Not a thread of her hair,
No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby
I may picture her there;
And in vain do I urge my unsight
To conceive my lost prize
At her close, whom I knew when her dreams were upbrimming with light,
And with laughter her eyes.
What scenes spread around her last days,
Sad, shining, or dim?
Did her gifts and compassions enray and enarch her sweet ways
With an aureate nimb?
Or did life-light decline from her years,
And mischances control
Her full day-star; unease, or regret, or forebodings, or fears
