Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?

"AH, are you digging on my grave,

My loved one? -- planting rue?"

-- "No: yesterday he went to wed

One of the brightest wealth has bred.

'It cannot hurt her now,' he said,

'That I should not be true.'"

"Then who is digging on my grave,

My nearest dearest kin?"

-- "Ah, no: they sit and think, 'What use!

What good will planting flowers produce?

No tendance of her mound can loose

Her spirit from Death's gin.'"

"But someone digs upon my grave?

My enemy? -- prodding sly?"

-- "Nay: when she heard you had passed the Gate

That shuts on all flesh soon or late,

She thought you no more worth her hate,

And cares not where you lie.

"Then, who is digging on my grave?

Say -- since I have not guessed!"

-- "O it is I, my mistress dear,

Your little dog , who still lives near,

And much I hope my movements here

Have not disturbed your rest?"

"Ah yes! You dig upon my grave...

Why flashed it not to me

That one true heart was left behind!

What feeling do we ever find

To equal among human kind

A dog's fidelity!"

"Mistress, I dug upon your grave

To bury a bone, in case

I should be hungry near this spot

When passing on my daily trot.

I am sorry, but I quite forgot

It was your resting place."

Thomas Hardy

During Wind and Rain

THEY sing their dearest songs--

He, she, all of them--yea,

Treble and tenor and bass.

      And one to play;

With the candles mooning each face....

      Ah, no; the years O!

How the sick leaves reel down in throngs!

They clear the creeping moss--

Elders and juniors--aye,

Making the pathways neat

      And the garden gay;

And they build a shady seat....

      Ah, no; the years, the years;

See, the white storm-birds wing across!

They are blithely breakfasting all--

Men and maidens--yea,

Under the summer tree,

      With a glimpse of the bay,

While pet fowl come to the knee....

      Ah, no; the years O!

And the rotten rose is ripped from the wall.

They change to a high new house,

He, she, all of them--aye,

Clocks and carpets and chairs

      On the lawn all day,

And brightest things that are theirs....

      Ah, no; the years, the years;

Down their carved names the raindrop plows.

Thomas Hardy

The Darkling Thrush

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 seemed to me

The Century's corpse outleant,

Its crypt the cloudy canopy,

The wind its death-lament.

The ancient pulse of germ and birth

Was shrunken hard and dry,

And every spirit upon earth

Seemed fervorless 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,

With blast-beruffled plume,

Had chosen thus to fling his soul

Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings

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 blessed Hope, whereof he knew,

And I was unaware.

Thomas Hardy

The Roman Road

THE Roman Road runs straight and bare

As the pale parting-line in hair

Across the heath. And thoughtful men

Contrast its days of Now and Then,

And delve, and measure, and compare;

Visioning on the vacant air

Helmeted legionnaires, who proudly rear

The Eagle, as they pace again

The Roman Road.

But no tall brass-helmeted legionnaire

Haunts it for me. Uprises there

A mother's form upon my ken,

Guiding my infant steps, as when

We walked that ancient thoroughfare,

The Roman Road.

Thomas Hardy

Weathers

(I)

THIS is the weather the cuckoo likes,

And so do I;

When showers betumble the chestnut spikes,

And nestlings fly;

And the little brown nightingale bills his best,

And they sit outside at 'The Traveller's Rest,'

And maids come forth sprig-muslin drest,

And citizens dream of the south and west,

And so do I.

(II)

This is the weather the shepherd shuns,

And so do I;

When beeches drip in browns and duns,

And thresh and ply;

And hill-hid tides throb, throe on throe,

And meadow rivulets overflow,

And drops on gate bars hang in a row,

And rooks in families homeward go,

And so do I.

Thomas Hardy

The Man He Killed

'HAD he and I but met

By some old ancient inn,

We should have set us down to wet

Right many a nipperkin!

'But ranged as infantry,

And staring face to face,

I shot at him as he at me,

And killed him in his place.

'I shot him dead because--

Because he was my foe,

Just so: my foe of course he was;

That's clear enough; although

'He thought he'd 'list, perhaps,

Off-hand like--just as I--

Was out of work--had sold his traps--

No other reason why.

'Yes; quaint and curious war is!

You shoot a fellow down

You'd treat, if met where any bar is,

Or help to half a crown.'

Thomas Hardy

Channel Firing

THAT night your great guns, unawares,

Shook all our coffins as we lay,

And broke the chancel window-squares,

We thought it was the Judgement-day

And sat upright. While drearisome

Arose the howl of wakened hounds:

The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,

The worms drew back into the mounds,

The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, "No;

It's gunnery practice out at sea

Just as before you went below;

The world is as it used to be:

"All nations striving strong to make

Red war yet redder. Mad as hatters

They do more for Christés sake

Than you who are helpless in such matters.

"That this is not the judgment-hour

For some of them's a blessed thing,

For if it were they'd have to scour

Hells floor for so much threatening...

"Ha, ha. It will be warmer when

I blow the trumpet (if indeed

I ever do; for you are men,

And rest eternal sorely need)."

So down we lay again. "I wonder,

Will the world ever saner be,"

Said one, "than when He sent us under

In our indifferent century!"

And many a skeleton shook his head.

"Instead of preaching forty year,"

My neighbor Parson Thirdly said,

"I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer."

Again the guns disturbed the hour,

Roaring their readiness to avenge,

As far inland as Stourton Tower,

And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.

Thomas Hardy

The Voice

WOMAN much missed, how you call to me, call to me,

Saying that now you are not as you were

When you had changed from the one who was all to me,

But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,

Standing as when I drew near to the town

Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,

Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness

Travelling across the wet mead to me here,

You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,

Heard no more again far or near?

Thus I; faltering forward,

Leaves around me falling,

Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,

And the woman calling.

Thomas Hardy

The Convergence of the Twain

(Lines on the loss of the Titanic)

              I

IN a solitude of the sea

Deep from human vanity,

And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.

              II

Steel chambers, late the pyres

Of her salamandrine fires,

Cold currents thrid, and turn to rythmic tidal lyres.

              III

Over the mirrors meant

To glass the opulent

The sea-worm crawls--grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

              IV

Jewels in joy designed

To ravish the sensuous mind

Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

              V

Dim moon-eyed fishes near

Gaze at the gilded gear

And query: "What does this vaingloriousness down here?"...

              VI

Well: while was fashioning

This creature of cleaving wing,

The Immanent Will that stirrs and urges everything

              VII

Prepared a sinister mate

For her--so gaily great--

A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.

              VIII

And as the smart ship grew

In stature, grace, and hue,

In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

              IX

Alien they seemed to be:

No mortal eye could see

The intimate welding of their later history.

              X

Or sign that they were bent

By paths coincident

On being anon twin halves of one august event,

              XI

Till the Spinner of the Years

Said "Now!" And each one hears,

And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

Thomas Hardy

In Time of "The Breaking of Nations"

            I

ONLY a man harrowing clods

In a slow silent walk

With an old horse that stumbles and nods

Half asleep as they stalk.

            II

Only thin smoke without flame

From the heaps of couch-grass;

Yet this will go onward the same

Though Dynasties pass.

            III

Yonder a maid and her wight

Come whispering by:

War's annals will cloud into night

Ere their story die.

Thomas Hardy

In Tenebris - I

WINTERTIME nighs;

But my bereavement-pain

It cannot bring again:

Twice no one dies.

Flower-petals flee;

But, since it once hath been,

No more that severing scene

Can harrow me.

Birds faint in dread:

I shall not lose old strength

In the lone frost's black length:

Strength long since fled!

Leaves freeze to dun;

But friends can not turn cold

This season as of old

For him with none.

Tempests may scath;

But love can not make smart

Again this year his heart

Who no heart hath.

Black is night's cope;

But death will not appal

One who, past doubtings all,

Waits in unhope.

Thomas Hardy

In Tenebris - II

WHEN the clouds' swoln bosoms echo back the shouts of the many and strong

That things are all as they best may be, save a few to be right ere long,

And my eyes have not the vision in them to discern what to these is so clear,

The blot seems straightway in me alone; one better he were not here.

The stout upstanders say, All's well with us; ruers have nought to rue!

And what the potent say so oft, can it fail to be somewhat true?

Breezily go they, breezily come; their dust smokes around their career,

Till I think I am one born out of due time, who has no calling here.

Their dawns bring lusty joys, it seems; their evenings all that is sweet;

Our times are blessed times, they cry: Life shapes it as is most meet,

And nothing is much the matter; there are many smiles to a tear;

Then what is the matter is I, I say. Why should such a one be here?...

Let him in whose ears the low-voiced Best is killed by the clash of the First,

Who holds that if way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst,

Who feels tht delight is a delicate growth cramped by crookedness, custom and fear,

Get him up and be gone as one shaped awry; he disturbs the order here.

Thomas Hardy

In Tenebris - III

THERE have been times when I well might have passed and the ending have come--

Points in my path when the dark might have stolen on me, artless, unrueing,

Ere I had learnt that the world was a welter of futile doing:

Such had been times when I well might have passed, and the ending have come!

Say, on the noon when the half-sunny hours told that April was nigh,

And I upgathered and cast forth the snow from the crocus-border,

Fashioned and furbished the soil into a summer-seeming order,

Glowing in gladsome faith that I quickened the year thereby.

Or on that loneliest of eves when afar and benighted we stood,

She who upheld me and I, in the midmost of Egdon together,

Confident I in her watching and ward through the blackening heather,

Deeming her matchless in might and with measureless scope endued.

Or on that winter-wild night when, reclined by the chimney-nook quion,

Slowly a drowse overgat me, the smallest and feeblest of folk there,

Weak from my baptism of pain; when at times and anon I awoke there--

Heard of a world wheeling on, with no listing or longing to join.

Even then! while unweeting that vision could vex or that knowledge could numb,

That sweets to the mouth in the belly are bitter, and tart, and untoward,

Then, on some dim-coloured scene should my briefly raised curtain have lowered,

Then might the Voice that is law have said "Cease!" and the ending have come.

Thomas Hardy

The Church-Builder

THE church flings forth a battled shade

Over the moon-blanched sward:

The church; my gift; whereto I paid

My all in hand and hoard;

         Lavished my gains

         With stintless pains

To glorify the Lord.

I squared the broad foundations in

Of ashlared masonry;

I moulded mullions thick and thin,

Hewed fillet and ogee;

         I circleted

         Each sculptured head

With nimb and canopy.

I called in many a craftsmaster

To fix emblazoned glass,

To figure Cross and Sepulchure

On dossal, boss, and brass.

         My gold all spent,

         My jewels went

To gem the cups of Mass.

I borrowed deep to carve the screen

And raise the ivoried Rood;

I parted with my small demesne

To make my owings good.

         Heir-looms unpriced

         I sacrificed,

Until debt-free I stood.

So closed the task. "Deathless the Creed

Here substanced!" said my soul:

"I heard me bidden to this deed,

And straight obeyed the call.

         Illume this fane,

         That not in vain

I build it, Lord of all!"

But, as it chanced me, then and there

Did dire misfortunes burst;

My home went waste for lack of care,

My sons rebelled and curst;

         Till I confessed

         That aims the best

Were looking like the worst.

Enkindled by my votive work

No burnng faith I find;

The deeper thinkers sneer and smirk,

And give my toil no mind;

         From nod and wink

         I read they think

That I am fool and blind.

My gift to God seems futile, quite;

The world moves as erstwhile;

And powerful Wrong on feeble Right

Tramples in olden style.

         My faith burns down,

         I see no crown;

But Cares, and Griefs, and Guile.

So now, the remedy? Yea, this:

I gently swing the door

Here, of my fane--no soul to wis--

And cross the patterned floor

         To the rood-screen

         That stands between

The nave and inner chore.

The rich red windows dim the moon,

But little light need I;

I mount the prie-dieu, lately hewn

From woods of rarest dye;

         Then from below

         My garment, so,

I draw this cord, and tie

One end thereof around the beam

Midway 'twixt Cross and truss:

I noose the nethermost extreme,

And in ten seconds thus

         I journey hence--

         To that land whence

No rumour reaches us.

Well: Here at morn they'll light on one

Dangling in mockery

Of what he spent his substance on

Blindly and uselessly!...

         "He might," they'll say,

         "Have built, some way,

A cheaper gallows-tree!"

Thomas Hardy

The Pity of It

I WALKED in loamy Wessex lanes, afar
From rail-track and from highway, and I heard
In field and farmstead many an ancient word
Of local lineage like 'Thu bist', 'Er war',

'Ich woll', 'Er sholl', and by-talk similar,
Nigh as they speak who in this month's moon gird
At England's very loins, thereunto spurred
By gangs whose glory threats and slaughters are.

There seemed a Heart crying: 'Whosoever they be
At root and bottom of this, who flung this flame
Between kin folk tongued even as are we,

'Sinister, ugly, lurid, be their fame;
May their familiars grow to shun their name,
And their brood perish everlastingly.'

Thomas Hardy