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1840-1928
I LEANT upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.
The land’s sharp features seem’d to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seem’d fervourless as I.
At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.
So little cause for carollings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessàed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.
PERHAPS, long hence, when I have pass’d away,
Some other’s feature, accent, thought like mine,
Will carry you back to what I used to say,
And bring some memory of your love’s decline.
Then you may pause awhile and think, ‘Poor jade!’
And yield a sigh to me—as ample due,
Not as the tittle of a debt unpaid
To one who could resign her all to you—
And thus reflecting, you will never see
That your thin thought, in two small words convey’d,
Was no such fleeting phantom-thought to me,
But the Whole Life wherein my part was play’d;
And you amid its fitful masquerade
A Thought—as I in yours but seem to be.
I NEED not go
Through sleet and snow
To where I know
She waits for me;
She will tarry me there
Till I find it fair,
And have time to spare
From company.
When I’ve overgot
The world somewhat,
When things cost not
Such stress and strain,
Is soon enough
By cypress sough
To tell my Love
I am come again.And if some day,
When none cries nay,
I still delay
To seek her side,
(Though ample measure
Of fitting leisure
Await my pleasure)
She will not chide.
What—not upbraid me
That I delay’d me,
Nor ask what stay’d me
So long? Ah, no!—
New cares may claim me.
New loves inflame me,
She will not blame me,
But suffer it so.
WILLIAM DEWY, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow
late at plough,
Robert’s kin, and John’s, and Ned’s,
And the Squire, and Lady Susan, lie in Mellstock church-
yard now!
‘Gone,’ I call them, gone for good, that group of local
hearts and heads;
Yet at mothy curfew-tide,
And at midnight when the noon-heat breathes it back
from walls and leads,
They’ve a way of whispering to me—fellow-wight who
yet abide—
In the muted, measured note
Of a ripple under archways, or a lone cave’s stillicide:
‘We have triumph’d: this achievement turns the bane to
antidote,
Unsuccesses to success,
Many thought-worn eves and morrows to a morrow free
of thought.
‘No more need we corn and clothing, feel of old terrestrial
stress;
Chill detraction stirs no sigh;
Fear of death has even bygone us: death gave all that we
possess.’
W. D.—‘Ye mid burn the old bass-viol that set I such value
by.’
Squire.—‘You may hold the manse in fee,
You may wed my spouse, may let my children’s memory
of me die.’
Lady.—‘You may have my rich brocades, my laces; take each
household key;
Ransack coffer, desk, bureau;
Quiz the few poor treasures hid there, con the letters kept by me.’
Far.—‘Ye mid zell my favourite heifer, ye mid let the
charlock grow,
Foul the grinterns, give up thrift.’
Wife.—‘If ye break my best blue china, children, I shan’t
care or ho.’
All.—‘We’ve no wish to hear the tidings, how the people’s
fortunes shift;
What your daily doings are;
Who are wedded, born, divided; if your lives beat slow or swift.
‘Curious not the least are we if our intents you make or
mar,
If you quire to our old tune,
If the City stage still passes, if the weirs still roar afar.’
—Thus, with very gods’ composure, freed those crosses
late and soon
Which, in life, the Trine allow
(Why, none witteth), and ignoring all that haps beneath the moon,
William Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at
plough,
Robert’s kin, and John’s, and Ned’s,
And the Squire, and Lady Susan, murmur mildly to me
now.
ONLY a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.
Only thin smoke without flame
From the heaps of couch-grass;
Yet this will go onward the same
Though Dynasties pass.
Yonder a maid and her wightI Jer. li. 20.
Come whispering by:
War’s annals will cloud into night
Ere their story die.
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