Let Me Enjoy

(Minor Key)

         I

LET me enjoy the earth no less

Because the all-enacting Might

That fashioned forth its loveliness

Had other aims than my delight.

         II

About my path there flits a Fair,

Who throws me not a word or sign;

I'll charm me with her ignoring air,

And laud the lips not meant for mine.

         III

From manuscripts of moving song

Inspired by scenes and dreams unknown

I'll pour out raptures that belong

To others, as they were my own.

         IV

And some day hence, towards Paradise

And all its blest -- if such should be --

I will lift glad, afar-off eyes

Though it contain no place for me.

Thomas Hardy

When I Set Out for Lyonnesse

WHEN I set out for Lyonnesse,

A hundred miles away,

The rime was on the spray,

And starlight lit my lonesomeness

When I set out for Lyonnesse

A hundred miles away.

What would bechance at Lyonnesse

While I should sojourn there

No prophet durst declare,

Nor did the wisest wizard guess

What would bechance at Lyonnesse

While I should sojourn there.

When I came back from Lyonnesse

With magic in my eyes,

All marked with mute surmise

My radiance rare and fathomless,

When I came back from Lyonnesse

With magic in my eyes!

Thomas Hardy

Afterwards

WHEN the Present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay,

And the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings,

Delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbours say,

"He was a man who used to notice such things"?

If it be in the dusk when, like an eyelid's soundless blink,

The dewfall-hawk comes crossing the shades to alight

Upon the wind-warped upland thorn, a gazer may think,

"To him this must have been a familiar sight."

If I pass during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm,

When the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn,

One may say, "He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm,

But he could do little for them; and now he is gone."

If, when hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door,

Watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees,

Will this thought rise on those who will meet my face no more,

"He was one who had an eye for such mysteries"?

And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom,

And a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its outrollings,

Till they rise again, as they were a new bell's boom,

"He hears it not now, but used to notice such things"?

Thomas Hardy

Heredity

I AM the family face;

Flesh perishes, I live on,

Projecting trait and trace

Through time to times anon,

And leaping from place to place

Over oblivion.

The years-heired feature that can

In curve and voice and eye

Despise the human span

Of durance -- that is I;

The eternal thing in man,

That heeds no call to die.

Thomas Hardy

Midnight on the Great Western

IN the third-class seat sat the journeying boy,

And the roof-lamp's oily flame

Played down on his listless form and face,

Bewrapt past knowing to what he was going,

    Or whence he came.

In the band of his hat the journeying boy

Had a ticket stuck; and a string

Around his neck bore the key of his box,

That twinkled gleams of the lamp's sad beams

    Like a living thing.

What past can be yours, O journeying boy

Towards a world uknown,

Who calmly, as if incurious quite

On all at stake, can undertake

    This plunge alone?

Knows your soul a sphere, O journeying boy,

Our rude realms far above,

Whence with spacious vision you mark and mete

This region of sin that you find you in,

    But are not of?

Thomas Hardy

An Ancient to Ancients

WHERE once we danced, where once we sang,

Gentlemen,

The floors are sunken, cobwebs hang,

And cracks creep; worms have fed upon

The doors. Yea, sprightlier times were then

Than now, with harps and tabrets gone,

Gentlemen!

Where once we rowed, where once we sailed,

Gentlemen,

And damsels took the tiller, veiled

Against too strong a stare (God wot

Their fancy, then or anywhen!)

Upon that shore we are clean forgot,

Gentlemen!

We have lost somewhat of that, afar and near,

Gentlemen,

The thinning of our ranks each year

Affords a hint we are nigh undone,

That shall not be ever again

The marked of many, loved of one,

Gentlemen.

In dance the polka hit our wish,

Gentlemen,

The paced quadrille, the spry schottische,

"Sir Roger."--And in opera spheres

The "Girl" (the famed "Bohemian"),

And "Trovatore" held the ears,

Gentlemen.

This season's paintings do not please,

Gentlemen

Like Etty, Mulready, Maclise;

Throbbing romance had waned and wanned;

No wizard wields the witching pen

Of Bulwer, Scott, Dumas, and Sand,

Gentlemen.

The bower we shrined to Tennyson,

Gentlemen,

Is roof-wrecked; damps there drip upon

Sagged seats, the creeper-nails are rust,

The spider is sole denizen;

Even she who voiced those rhymes is dust,

Gentlemen!

We who met sunrise sanguine-souled,

Gentlemen,

Are wearing weary. We are old;

These younger press; we feel our rout

Is imminent to Aïdes' den,--

That evening shades are stretching out,

Gentlemen!

And yet, though ours be failing frames,

Gentlemen,

So were some others' history names,

Who trode their track light-limbed and fast

As these youth, and not alien

From enterprise, to their long last,

Gentlemen.

Sophocles, Plato, Socrates,

Gentlemen,

Pythagoras, Thucydides,

Herodotus, and Homer,--yea,

Clement, Augustin, Origen,

Burnt brightlier towards their setting-day,

Gentlemen.

And ye, red-lipped and smooth-browed; list,

Gentlemen;

Much is there waits you we have missed;

Much lore we leave you worth the knowing,

Much, much has lain outside our ken;

Nay, rush not: time serves: we are going,

Gentlemen.

Thomas Hardy