Satires of Circumstance Part 1

Satires of Circ.u.mstance etc.

by Thomas Hardy.

IN FRONT OF THE LANDSCAPE

Plunging and labouring on in a tide of visions, Dolorous and dear, Forward I pushed my way as amid waste waters Stretching around, Through whose eddies there glimmered the customed landscape Yonder and near,

Blotted to feeble mist. And the coomb and the upland Foliage-crowned, Ancient chalk-pit, milestone, rills in the gra.s.s-flat Stroked by the light, Seemed but a ghost-like gauze, and no substantial Meadow or mound.

What were the infinite spectacles bulking foremost Under my sight, Hindering me to discern my paced advancement Lengthening to miles; What were the re-creations killing the daytime As by the night?

O they were speechful faces, gazing insistent, Some as with smiles, Some as with slow-born tears that brinily trundled Over the wrecked Cheeks that were fair in their flush-time, ash now with anguish, Harrowed by wiles.

Yes, I could see them, feel them, hear them, address them - Halo-bedecked - And, alas, onwards, shaken by fierce unreason, Rigid in hate, Smitten by years-long wryness born of misprision, Dreaded, suspect.

Then there would breast me s.h.i.+ning sights, sweet seasons Further in date; Instruments of strings with the tenderest pa.s.sion Vibrant, beside Lamps long extinguished, robes, cheeks, eyes with the earth's crust Now corporate.

Also there rose a headland of h.o.a.ry aspect Gnawed by the tide, Frilled by the nimb of the morning as two friends stood there Guilelessly glad - Wherefore they knew not--touched by the fringe of an ecstasy Scantly descried.

Later images too did the day unfurl me, Shadowed and sad, Clay cadavers of those who had shared in the dramas, Laid now at ease, Pa.s.sions all spent, chiefest the one of the broad brow Sepulture-clad.

So did beset me scenes miscalled of the bygone, Over the leaze, Past the clump, and down to where lay the beheld ones; --Yea, as the rhyme Sung by the sea-swell, so in their pleading dumbness Captured me these.

For, their lost revisiting manifestations In their own time Much had I slighted, caring not for their purport, Seeing behind Things more coveted, reckoned the better worth calling Sweet, sad, sublime.

Thus do they now show hourly before the intenser Stare of the mind As they were ghosts avenging their slights by my bypast Body-borne eyes, Show, too, with fuller translation than rested upon them As living kind.

Hence wag the tongues of the pa.s.sing people, saying In their surmise, "Ah--whose is this dull form that perambulates, seeing nought Round him that looms Whithersoever his footsteps turn in his farings, Save a few tombs?"

CHANNEL FIRING

That night your great guns, unawares, Shook all our coffins as we lay, And broke the chancel window-squares, We thought it was the Judgment-day

And sat upright. While drearisome Arose the howl of wakened hounds: The mouse let fall the altar-crumb, The worms drew back into the mounds,

The glebe cow drooled. Till G.o.d called, "No; It's gunnery practice out at sea Just as before you went below; The world is as it used to be:

"All nations striving strong to make Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters They do no more for Christes sake Than you who are helpless in such matters.

"That this is not the judgment-hour For some of them's a blessed thing, For if it were they'd have to scour h.e.l.l's floor for so much threatening . . .

"Ha, ha. It will be warmer when I blow the trumpet (if indeed I ever do; for you are men, And rest eternal sorely need)."

So down we lay again. "I wonder, Will the world ever saner be,"

Said one, "than when He sent us under In our indifferent century!"

And many a skeleton shook his head.

"Instead of preaching forty year,"

My neighbour Parson Thirdly said, "I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer."

Again the guns disturbed the hour, Roaring their readiness to avenge, As far inland as Stourton Tower, And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.

April 1914.

THE CONVERGENCE OF THE TWAIN

(Lines on the loss of the "t.i.tanic")

I

In a solitude of the sea Deep from human vanity, And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

II

Steel chambers, late the pyres Of her salamandrine fires, Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.

III

Over the mirrors meant To gla.s.s the opulent The sea-worm crawls--grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

IV

Jewels in joy designed To ravish the sensuous mind Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

V

Dim moon-eyed fishes near Gaze at the gilded gear And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?" . . .

VI

Well: while was fas.h.i.+oning This creature of cleaving wing, The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

VII

Prepared a sinister mate For her--so gaily great - A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.

VIII

And as the smart s.h.i.+p grew In stature, grace, and hue, In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.