Wessex Poems and Other Verses

Nature's Questioning

      When I look forth at dawning, pool,

Field, flock and lonely tree,

All seem to gaze at me

Like chastened children sitting silent in a school;

      Their faces dulled, constrained, and worn,

As though the master's ways

Through the long teaching days

Had cowed them till their early zest was overborne.

      Upon them stirs in lippings mere

(As if once clear in call,

But now scarce breathed at all)--

"We wonder, ever wonder, why we find us here!

      "Has some Vast Imbecility,

Mighty to build and blend,

But impotent to tend,

Framed us in jest, and left us now to hazardry?

      "Or come we of an Automation

Unconscious of our pains? . . .

Or are we live remains

Of Godhead dying downwards, brain and eye not gone?

      "Or is it that some high Plan betides,

As yet not understood,

Of Evil stormed by Good,

We the Forlorn Hope over which Achievement strides?"

      Thus things around. No answerer I. . .

Meanwhile the winds, and rains,

And Earth's old glooms and pains

Are still the same, and Life and Death are neighbours nigh.

The Impercipient

(At a Cathedral Service)

That with this bright believing band

I have no claim to be,

That faiths by which my comrades stand

Seem fantasies to me,

And mirage-mists their Shining Land,

Is a stange destiny.

Why thus my soul should be consigned

To infelicity,

Why always I must feel as blind

To sights my brethren see,

Why joys they've found I cannot find,

Abides a mystery.

Since heart of mine knows not that ease

Which they know; since it be

That He who breathes All's Well to these

Breathes no All's-Well to me,

My lack might move their sympathies

And Christian charity!

I am like a gazer who should mark

An inland company

Standing unfingered, with "Hark! hark!

The glorious distant sea!"

And feel, "Alas, 'tis but yon dark

And wind-swept pine to me!"

Yet I would bear my shortcomings

With meet tranquillity,

But for the charge that blessed things

I'd liefer not have be.

O, doth a bird deprived of wings

Go earth-bound wilfully!

       .               .               .               .

Enough. As yet disquiet clings

About us. Rest shall we.

At an Inn

When we as strangers sought

Their catering care,

Veiled smiles bespoke their thought

Of what we were.

They warmed as they opined

Us more than friends--

That we had all resigned

For love's dear ends.

And that swift sympathy

With living love

Which quicks the world--maybe

The spheres above,

Made them our ministers,

Moved them to say,

"Ah, God, that bliss like theirs

Would flush our day!"

And we were left alone

As Love's own pair;

Yet never the love-light shone

Between us there!

But that which chilled the breath

Of afternoon,

And palsied unto death

The pane-fly's tune.

The kiss their zeal foretold,

And now deemed come,

Came not: within his hold

Love lingered numb.

Why cast he on our port

A bloom not ours?

Why shaped us for his sport

In after-hours?

As we seemed we were not

That day afar,

And now we seem not what

We aching are.

O severing sea and land,

O laws of men,

Ere death, once let us stand

As we stood then!

The Slow Nature

(An Incident of Froom Valley)

"Thy husband--poor, poor Heart!--is dead--

Dead, out by Moreford Rise;

A bull escaped the barton-shed,

Gored him, and there he lies!"

--"Ha, ha--go away! 'Tis a tale, methink,

Thou joker Kit!" laughed she.

"I've known thee many a year, Kit Twink,

And ever hast thou fooled me!"

--"But, Mistress Damon--I can swear

Thy goodman John is dead!

And soon th'lt hear their feet who bear

His body to his bed."

So unwontedly sad was the merry man's face--

That face which had long deceived--

That she gazed and gazed; and then could trace

The truth there; and she believed.

She laid a hand on the dresser-ledge,

And scanned far Egdon-side;

And stood; and you heard the wind-swept sedge

And the rippling Froom; till she cried:

"O my chamber's untidied, unmade my bed,

Though the day has begun to wear!

'What a slovenly hussif!' it will be said,

When they all go up my stair!"

She disappeared; and the joker stood

Depressed by his neighbor's doom,

And amazed that a wife struck to widowhood

Thought first of her unkempt room.

But a fortnight thence she could take no food,

And she pined in a slow decay;

While Kit soon lost his mournful mood

And laughed in his ancient way.

    1894.

In a Eweleaze Near Weatherbury

The years have gathered grayly

Since I danced upon this leaze

With one who kindled gayly

Love's fitful ecstasies!

But despite the term as teacher,

I remain what I was then

In each essential feature

Of the fantasies of men.

Yet I note the little chisel

Of never-napping Time,

Defacing ghast and grizzel

The blazon of my prime.

When at night he thinks me sleeping,

I feel him boring sly

Within my bones, and heaping

Quaintest pains for by-and-by.

Still, I'd go the world with Beauty,

I would laugh with her and sing,

I would shun divinest duty

To resume her worshipping.

But she'd scorn my brave endeavour,

She would not balm the breeze

By murmuring, "Thine for ever!"

As she did upon this leaze.

   1890.

The Bride-night Fire

(A Wessex Tradition)

They had long met o' Zundays--her true love and she--

And at junketings, maypoles, and flings;

But she bode wi' a thirtover uncle, and he

Swore by noon and by night that her goodman should be

Naibour Sweatley--a gaffer oft weak at the knee

From taking o' sommat more cheerful than tea--

Who tranted, and moved people's things.

She cried, "O pray pity me!" Nought would he hear;

Then with wild rainy eyes she obeyed,

She chid when her Love was for clinking off wi' her.

The pa'son was told, as the season drew near

To throw over pu'pit the names of the pair

As fitting one flesh to be made.

The wedding-day dawned and the morning drew on;

The couple stood bridegroom and bride;

The evening was passed, and when midnight had gone

The feasters horned, "God save the King," and anon

The pair took their homealong ride.

The lover Tim Tankens mourned heart-sick and leer

To be thus of his darling deprived:

He roamed in the dark ath'art field, mound, and mere,

And, a'most without knowing it, found himself near

The house of the tranter, and now of his Dear,

Where the lantern-light showed 'em arrived.

The bride sought her chamber so calm and so pale

That a Northern had thought her resigned;

But to eyes that had seen her in tide-times of weal,

Like the white cloud o' smoke, the red battlefield's vail,

That look spak' of havoc behind.

The bridegroom yet laitered a beaker to drain,

Then reeled to the linhay for more,

When the candle-snoff kindled some chaff from his grain--

Flames spread, and red vlankers, wi' might and wi' main,

And round beams, thatch, and chimley-tun roar.

Young Tim away yond, rafted up by the light,

Through brimble and underwood tears,

Till he comes to the orchet, when crooping thereright

In the lewth of a codlin-tree, bivering wi' fright,

Wi' on'y her night-rail to screen her from sight,

His lonesome young Barbree appears.

Her cwold little buzzoms half-naked he views

Played about by the frolicsome breeze,

Her light-tripping totties, her ten little tooes,

All bare and besprinkled wi' Fall's chilly dews,

While her great gallied eyes, through her hair hanging loose,

Sheened as stars through a tardle o' trees.

She eyed en; and, as when a weir-hatch is drawn,

Her tears, penned by terror afore,

With a rushing of sobs in a shower were strawn,

Till her power to pour 'em seemed wasted and gone

From the heft o' misfortune she bore.

"O Tim, my own Tim I must call 'ee--I will!

All the world ha' turned round on me so!

Can you help her who loved 'ee, though acting so ill?

Can you pity her misery--feel for her still?

When worse than her body so quivering and chill

Is her heart in its winter o' woe!

"I think I mid almost ha' borne it," she said,

"Had my griefs one by one come to hand;

But O, to be slave to thik husbird, for bread,

And then, upon top o' that, driven to wed,

And then, upon top o' that, burnt out o' bed,

Is more than my nater can stand!"

Like a lion 'ithin en Tim's spirit outsprung--

(Tim had a great soul when his feelings were wrung)--

"Feel for 'ee, dear Barbree?" he cried;

And his warm working-jacket then straightway he flung,

Round about her, and horsed her by jerks til she clung

Like a chiel on a gipsy, her figure uphung

By the sleeves that he tightly had tied.

Over piggeries, and mixens, and apples, and hay,

They lumpered straight into the night;

And finding bylong where a halter-path lay,

Sighted Tim's house by dawn, on'y seen on their way

By a naiboir or two who were up wi' the day;

But who gathered no clue to the sight.

Then tender Tim Tankens he searched here and there

For some garment to clothe her fair skin;

But though he had breeches and waistcoats to spare,

He had nothing quite seemly for Barbree to wear,

Who, half shrammed to death, stood and cried on a chair

At the caddle she found herself in.

There was one thing to do, and that one thing he did,

He lent her some cloths of his own,

And she took 'em perforce; and while swiftly she slid,

Then upon her Tim turned to the winder, as bid,

Thinking, "O that the picter my duty keeps hid

To the sight o' my eyes mid be shown!"

In the tallet he stowed her; there huddied she lay,

Shortening sleeves, legs, and tails to her limbs;

But most o' the time in a mortal bad way,

Well knowing that there'd be the divel to pay

If 'twere found that, instead o' the elements' prey,

She was living in lodgings at Tim's.

"Where's the tranter?" said men and boys; "where can he be?"

"Where's the tranter?" said Barbree alone.

"Where on e'th is the tranter?" said everybod-y:

They sifted the dust of his perished roof-tree,

And all they could find was a bone.

Then the uncle cried, "Lord, pray have mercy on me!"

And in terror began to repent.

But before 'twas complete, and till sure she was free,

Barbree drew up her loft-ladder, tight turned her key--

Tim bringing up breakfast and dinner and tea--

Till the news of her hiding got vent.

Then followed the custom-kept rout, shout, and flare

Of a skimmity-ride through the naibourhood, ere

Folk had proof o' wold Sweatley's decay.

Whereupon decent people all stood in a stare,

Saying Tim and his lodger should risk it, and pair:

So he took her to church. An' some laughing lads there

Cried to Tim, "After Sweatley!" She said, "I declare

I stand as a maiden to-day!"

Written 1866; printed 1875.