Collected Poems Of Thomas Hardy

THE RECALCITRANTS

LET us off and search, and find a place Where yours and mine can be natural lives, Where no one comes who dissects and dives And proclaims that ours is a curious case, Which its touch of romance can scarcely grace

You would think it strange at first, but then Everything has been strange in its time. When some one said on a day of the prime He would bow to no brazen god again He doubtless dazed the mass of men.

None will see in us a pair whose claims To righteous judgment we care not making; Who have doubted if breath be worth the taking, And have no respect for the current fames Whence the savour has flown while abide the names.

We have found us already shunned, disdained, And for re-acceptance have not once striven; Whatever offence our course has given The brunt thereof we have long sustained. Well, let us away, scorned, unexplained.

THE WELL-BELOVED I WENT by star and planet shine Towards the dear one's home At Kingsbere, there to make her mine When the next sun upclomb.

I edged the ancient hill and wood Beside the Ikling Way, Nigh where the Pagan temple stood In the world's earlier day.

And as I quick and quicker walked On gravel and on green, I sang to sky, and tree, or talked Of her I called my queen.

--"O faultless is her dainty form, And luminous her mind; She is the God-created norm Of perfect womankind!"

A shape whereon one star-blink gleamed Slid softly by my side, A woman's; and her motion seemed The motion of my bride.

And yet methought she'd drawn erstwhile Out from the ancient leaze, Where once were pile and peristyle For men's idolatries.

--"O maiden lithe and lone, what may Thy name and lineage be Who so resemblest by this ray My darling?--Art thou she?"

The Shape: "Thy bride remains within Her father's grange and grove." --"Thou speakest rightly," I broke in, "Thou art not she I love."

--"Nay: though thy bride remains inside Her father's walls," said she, "The one most dear is with thee here, For thou dost love but me."

Then I: "But she, my only choice, Is now at Kingsbere Grove?" Again her soft mysterious voice. "I am thy only Love."

Thus still she vouched, and still I said, "O sprite, that cannot be!"... It was as if my bosom bled, So much she troubled me.

The sprite resumed: "Thou hast transferred To her dull form awhile My beauty, fame, and deed, and word, My gestures and my smile.

"O fatuous man, this truth infer, Brides are not what they seem; Thou lovest what thou dreamest her; I am thy very dream!"

--"O then," I answered miserably, Speaking as scarce I knew, "My loved one, I must wed with thee If what thou sayest be true!"

She, proudly, thinning in the gloom: "Though, since troth-plight began, I have ever stood as bride to groom, I wed no mortal man!"

Thereat she vanished by the lane Adjoining Kingsbere town, Near where, men say, once stood the Fane To Venus, on the Down.

--When I arrived and met my bride Her look was pinched and thin, As if her soul had shrunk and died, And left a waste within.

THE MOTH-SIGNAL

(On Egdon Heath)

"WHAT are you still, still thinking," He asked in vague surmise, "That you stare at the wick unblinking With those deep lost luminous eyes?"

"O, I see a poor moth burning In the candle flame;" said she, "Its wings and legs are turning To a cinder rapidly."

"Moths fly in from the heather," He said, "now the days decline." "I know," said she. "The weather, I hope, will at last be fine.

"I think," she added lightly, "I'll look out at the door. The ring the moon wears nightly May be visible now no more."

She rose, and, little heeding, Her life-mate then went on With his mute and museful reading In the annals of ages gone.

Outside the house a figure Came from the tumulus near, And speedily waxed bigger, And clasped and called her Dear.

"I saw the pale-winged token You sent through the crack," sighed she. "That moth is burnt and broken With which you lured out me.

"And were I as the moth is It might be better far For one whose marriage troth is Shattered as potsherds are!"

Then grinned the Ancient Briton From the tumulus treed with pine: "So, hearts are thwartly smitten In these days as in mine!"