The Complete Poetical Works. Томас Харди

      A Commonplace Day

       Table of Contents

      The day is turning ghost,

       And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively,

       To join the anonymous host

       Of those that throng oblivion; ceding his place, maybe,

       To one of like degree.

      I part the fire-gnawed logs,

       Rake forth the embers, spoil the busy flames, and lay the ends

       Upon the shining dogs;

       Further and further from the nooks the twilight’s stride extends,

       And beamless black impends.

      Nothing of tiniest worth

       Have I wrought, pondered, planned; no one thing asking blame or praise,

       Since the pale corpse-like birth

       Of this diurnal unit, bearing blanks in all its rays—

       Dullest of dull-hued Days!

      Wanly upon the panes

       The rain slides as have slid since morn my colourless thoughts; and yet

       Here, while Day’s presence wanes,

       And over him the sepulchre-lid is slowly lowered and set,

       He wakens my regret.

      Regret—though nothing dear

       That I wot of, was toward in the wide world at his prime,

       Or bloomed elsewhere than here,

       To die with his decease, and leave a memory sweet, sublime,

       Or mark him out in Time . . .

      —Yet, maybe, in some soul,

       In some spot undiscerned on sea or land, some impulse rose,

       Or some intent upstole

       Of that enkindling ardency from whose maturer glows

       The world’s amendment flows;

      But which, benumbed at birth

       By momentary chance or wile, has missed its hope to be

       Embodied on the earth;

       And undervoicings of this loss to man’s futurity

       May wake regret in me.