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Read Ebook: Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses by Hardy Thomas
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Ebook has 795 lines and 52548 words, and 16 pages
MOMENTS OF VISION
THAT mirror Which makes of men a transparency, Who holds that mirror And bids us such a breast-bare spectacle see Of you and me?
That mirror Whose magic penetrates like a dart, Who lifts that mirror And throws our mind back on us, and our heart, Until we start?
That mirror Works well in these night hours of ache; Why in that mirror Are tincts we never see ourselves once take When the world is awake?
That mirror Can test each mortal when unaware; Yea, that strange mirror May catch his last thoughts, whole life foul or fair, Glassing it--where?
THE VOICE OF THINGS
FORTY Augusts--aye, and several more--ago, When I paced the headlands loosed from dull employ, The waves huzza'd like a multitude below In the sway of an all-including joy Without cloy.
Blankly I walked there a double decade after, When thwarts had flung their toils in front of me, And I heard the waters wagging in a long ironic laughter At the lot of men, and all the vapoury Things that be.
Wheeling change has set me again standing where Once I heard the waves huzza at Lammas-tide; But they supplicate now--like a congregation there Who murmur the Confession--I outside, Prayer denied.
"WHY BE AT PAINS?"
WHY be at pains that I should know You sought not me? Do breezes, then, make features glow So rosily? Come, the lit port is at our back, And the tumbling sea; Elsewhere the lampless uphill track To uncertainty!
"WE SAT AT THE WINDOW"
WE sat at the window looking out, And the rain came down like silken strings That Swithin's day. Each gutter and spout Babbled unchecked in the busy way Of witless things: Nothing to read, nothing to see Seemed in that room for her and me On Swithin's day.
AFTERNOON SERVICE AT MELLSTOCK
ON afternoons of drowsy calm We stood in the panelled pew, Singing one-voiced a Tate-and-Brady psalm To the tune of "Cambridge New."
We watched the elms, we watched the rooks, The clouds upon the breeze, Between the whiles of glancing at our books, And swaying like the trees.
So mindless were those outpourings!-- Though I am not aware That I have gained by subtle thought on things Since we stood psalming there.
AT THE WICKET-GATE
Greater, wiser, may part there than we three Who parted there then, But never will Fates colder-featured Hold sway there again. Of the churchgoers through the still meadows No single one knew What a play was played under their eyes there As thence we withdrew.
IN A MUSEUM
HERE'S the mould of a musical bird long passed from light, Which over the earth before man came was winging; There's a contralto voice I heard last night, That lodges in me still with its sweet singing.
Such a dream is Time that the coo of this ancient bird Has perished not, but is blent, or will be blending Mid visionless wilds of space with the voice that I heard, In the full-fugued song of the universe unending.
EXETER.
APOSTROPHE TO AN OLD PSALM TUNE
I MET you first--ah, when did I first meet you? When I was full of wonder, and innocent, Standing meek-eyed with those of choric bent, While dimming day grew dimmer In the pulpit-glimmer.
Much riper in years I met you--in a temple Where summer sunset streamed upon our shapes, And you spread over me like a gauze that drapes, And flapped from floor to rafters, Sweet as angels' laughters.
I grew accustomed to you thus. And you hailed me Through one who evoked you often. Then at last Your raiser was borne off, and I mourned you had passed From my life with your late outsetter; Till I said, "'Tis better!"
But you waylaid me. I rose and went as a ghost goes, And said, eyes-full "I'll never hear it again! It is overmuch for scathed and memoried men When sitting among strange people Under their steeple."
Now, a new stirrer of tones calls you up before me And wakes your speech, as she of Endor did Samuel's spirit.
So, your quired oracles beat till they make me tremble As I discern your mien in the old attire, Here in these turmoiled years of belligerent fire Living still on--and onward, maybe, Till Doom's great day be!
AT THE WORD "FAREWELL"
SHE looked like a bird from a cloud On the clammy lawn, Moving alone, bare-browed In the dim of dawn. The candles alight in the room For my parting meal Made all things withoutdoors loom Strange, ghostly, unreal.
The hour itself was a ghost, And it seemed to me then As of chances the chance furthermost I should see her again. I beheld not where all was so fleet That a Plan of the past Which had ruled us from birthtime to meet Was in working at last:
No prelude did I there perceive To a drama at all, Or foreshadow what fortune might weave From beginnings so small; But I rose as if quicked by a spur I was bound to obey, And stepped through the casement to her Still alone in the gray.
FIRST SIGHT OF HER AND AFTER
A DAY is drawing to its fall I had not dreamed to see; The first of many to enthrall My spirit, will it be? Or is this eve the end of all Such new delight for me?
I journey home: the pattern grows Of moonshades on the way: "Soon the first quarter, I suppose," Sky-glancing travellers say; I realize that it, for those, Has been a common day.
THE RIVAL
I DETERMINED to find out whose it was-- The portrait he looked at so, and sighed; Bitterly have I rued my meanness And wept for it since he died!
I searched his desk when he was away, And there was the likeness--yes, my own! Taken when I was the season's fairest, And time-lines all unknown.
I smiled at my image, and put it back, And he went on cherishing it, until I was chafed that he loved not the me then living, But that past woman still.
Well, such was my jealousy at last, I destroyed that face of the former me; Could you ever have dreamed the heart of woman Would work so foolishly!
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.
"YOU WERE THE SORT THAT MEN FORGET"
YOU were the sort that men forget; Though I--not yet!-- Perhaps not ever. Your slighted weakness Adds to the strength of my regret!
You'd not the art--you never had For good or bad-- To make men see how sweet your meaning, Which, visible, had charmed them glad.
You would, by words inept let fall, Offend them all, Even if they saw your warm devotion Would hold your life's blood at their call.
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