Life poems
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The Independent Man
© Gwendolyn Brooks
Now who could take you off to tiny life
In one room or in two rooms or in three
And cork you smartly, like the flask of wine
You are? Not any woman. Not a wife.
[Greek Title]
© Thomas Hardy
Long have I framed weak phantasies of Thee,
O Willer masked and dumb!
Who makest Life become, -
As though by labouring all-unknowingly,
Like one whom reveries numb.
The Casterbridge Captains
© Thomas Hardy
THREE captains went to Indian wars,
And only one returned:
Their mate of yore, he singly wore
The laurels all had earned.
V.R. 1819-1901 (A Reverie.)
© Thomas Hardy
Moments the mightiest pass calendared,
And when the Absolute
In backward Time outgave the deedful word
Whereby all life is stirred:
The King's Experiment
© Thomas Hardy
It was a wet wan hour in spring,
And Nature met King Doom beside a lane,
Wherein Hodge trudged, all blithely ballading
The Mother's smiling reign.
She, To Him III
© Thomas Hardy
I WILL be faithful to thee; aye, I will!
And Death shall choose me with a wondering eye
That he did not discern and domicile
One his by right ever since that last Good-bye!
The Dame of Athelhall
© Thomas Hardy
"Soul! Shall I see thy face," she said,
"In one brief hour?
And away with thee from a loveless bed
To a far-off sun, to a vine-wrapt bower,
And be thine own unseparated,
And challenge the world's white glower?
The Lost Pyx: A Mediaeval Legend
© Thomas Hardy
Some say the spot is banned; that the pillar Cross-and-Hand
Attests to a deed of hell;
But of else than of bale is the mystic tale
That ancient Vale-folk tell.
On an Invitation to the United States
© Thomas Hardy
I My ardours for emprize nigh lost
Since Life has bared its bones to me,
I shrink to seek a modern coast
Whose riper times have yet to be;
She, to Him, I
© Thomas Hardy
When you shall see me lined by tool of Time,
My lauded beauties carried off from me,
My eyes no longer stars as in their prime,
My name forgot of Maiden Fair and Free;
Middle-Age Enthusiasms
© Thomas Hardy
WE passed where flag and flower
Signalled a jocund throng;
We said: "Go to, the hour
Is apt!"--and joined the song;
And, kindling, laughed at life and care,
Although we knew no laugh lay there.
The Temporary The All
© Thomas Hardy
CHANGE and chancefulness in my flowering youthtime,
Set me sun by sun near to one unchosen;
Wrought us fellowly, and despite divergence,
Friends interblent us.
She, to Him, II
© Thomas Hardy
Perhaps, long hence, when I have passed away,
Some others feature, accent, thought like mine,
Will carry you back to what I used to say,
And bring some memory of your loves decline.
The Tenant-For-Life
© Thomas Hardy
The sun said, watching my watering-pot
"Some morn you'll pass away;
These flowers and plants I parch up hot -
Who'll water them that day?
The Alarm
© Thomas Hardy
In a ferny byway
Near the great South-Wessex Highway,
A homestead raised its breakfast-smoke aloft;
The dew-damps still lay steamless, for the sun had made no sky-way,
And twilight cloaked the croft.
The Sleep-Worker
© Thomas Hardy
When wilt thou wake, O Mother, wake and see -
As one who, held in trance, has laboured long
By vacant rote and prepossession strong -
The coils that thou hast wrought unwittingly;
Rome: On the Palatine.
© Thomas Hardy
We walked where Victor Jove was shrined awhile,
And passed to Livia's rich red mural show,
Whence, thridding cave and Criptoportico,
We gained Caligula's dissolving pile.
Lines
© Thomas Hardy
BEFORE we part to alien thoughts and aims,
Permit the one brief word the occasion claims;
--When mumming and grave projects are allied,
Perhaps an Epilogue is justified.
Thought Of Ph---a At News Of Her Death
© Thomas Hardy
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;
Amabel
© Thomas Hardy
I MARKED her ruined hues,
Her custom-straitened views,
And asked, "Can there indwell
My Amabel?"
