Time poems
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Leipzig
© Thomas Hardy
"OLD Norbert with the flat blue cap--
A German said to be--
Why let your pipe die on your lap,
Your eyes blink absently?"--
The Widow
© Thomas Hardy
By Mellstock Lodge and Avenue
Towards her door I went,
And sunset on her window-panes
Reflected our intent.
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.
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.
The Bridge of Lodi.
© Thomas Hardy
When of tender mind and body
I was moved by minstrelsy,
And that strain "The Bridge of Lodi"
Brought a strange delight to me.
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?"
The Supplanter: A Tale
© Thomas Hardy
He bends his travel-tarnished feet
To where she wastes in clay:
From day-dawn until eve he fares
Along the wintry way;
From day-dawn until eve repairs
Unto her mound to pray.
On a Fine Morning
© Thomas Hardy
Whence comes Solace?--Not from seeing
What is doing, suffering, being,
Not from noting Life's conditions,
Nor from heeding Time's monitions;
By the Earth's Corpse
© Thomas Hardy
I "O Lord, why grievest Thou? -
Since Life has ceased to be
Upon this globe, now cold
As lunar land and sea,
A Sign-Seeker
© Thomas Hardy
I MARK the months in liveries dank and dry,
The day-tides many-shaped and hued;
I see the nightfall shades subtrude,
And hear the monotonous hours clang negligently by.
The Peasant's Confession
© Thomas Hardy
Good Father!
Twas an eve in middle June,
And war was waged anew
By great Napoleon, who for years had strewn
Mens bones all Europe through.
The Superseded
© Thomas Hardy
As newer comers crowd the fore,
We drop behind.
- We who have laboured long and sore
Times out of mind,
And keen are yet, must not regret
To drop behind.
De Profundis
© Thomas Hardy
Wintertime nighs;
But my bereavement-pain
It cannot bring again:
Twice no one dies.
A Commonplace Day
© Thomas Hardy
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.
The Souls of the Slain
© Thomas Hardy
The thick lids of Night closed upon me
Alone at the Bill
Of the Isle by the Race {1} -
Many-caverned, bald, wrinkled of face -
And with darkness and silence the spirit was on me
To brood and be still.
Long Plighted
© Thomas Hardy
Is it worth while, dear, now,
To call for bells, and sally forth arrayed
For marriage-rites -- discussed, decried, delayed
So many years?
Wives in the Sere
© Thomas Hardy
I Never a careworn wife but shows,
If a joy suffuse her,
Something beautiful to those
Patient to peruse her,
At the War Office, London
© Thomas Hardy
Last year I called this world of gain-givings
The darkest thinkable, and questioned sadly
If my own land could heave its pulse less gladly,
So charged it seemed with circumstance whence springs
The tragedy of things.
