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

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.

You lacked the eye to understand Those friends offhand Whose mode was crude, though whose dim purport Outpriced the courtesies of the bland.

I am now the only being who Remembers you It may be. What a waste that Nature Grudged soul so dear the art its due!

SHE, I, AND THEY

I WAS sitting, She was knitting, And the portraits of our fore-folk hung around; When there struck on us a sigh; "Ah--what is that?" said I: "Was it not you?" said she. "A sigh did sound."

I had not breathed it, Nor the night-wind heaved it, And how it came to us we could not guess; And we looked up at each face Framed and glazed there in its place, Still hearkening; but thenceforth was silentness.

Half in dreaming, "Then its meaning," Said we, "must be surely this; that they repine That we should be the last Of stocks once unsurpassed, And unable to keep up their sturdy line."

NEAR LANIVET, 1872

THERE was a stunted handpost just on the crest, Only a few feet high: She was tired, and we stopped in the twilight-time for her rest, At the crossways close thereby.

She leant back, being so weary, against its stem, And laid her arms on its own, Each open palm stretched out to each end of them, Her sad face sideways thrown.

Her white-clothed form at this dim-lit cease of day Made her look as one crucified In my gaze at her from the midst of the dusty way, And hurriedly "Don't," I cried.

I do not think she heard. Loosing thence she said, As she stepped forth ready to go, "I am rested now.--Something strange came into my head; I wish I had not leant so!"

And wordless we moved onward down from the hill In the west cloud's murked obscure, And looking back we could see the handpost still In the solitude of the moor.

"It struck her too," I thought, for as if afraid She heavily breathed as we trailed; Till she said, "I did not think how 'twould look in the shade, When I leant there like one nailed."

And we dragged on and on, while we seemed to see In the running of Time's far glass Her crucified, as she had wondered if she might be Some day.--Alas, alas!

JOYS OF MEMORY

WHEN the spring comes round, and a certain day Looks out from the brume by the eastern copsetrees And says, Remember, I begin again, as if it were new, A day of like date I once lived through, Whiling it hour by hour away; So shall I do till my December, When spring comes round.

I take my holiday then and my rest Away from the dun life here about me, Old hours re-greeting With the quiet sense that bring they must Such throbs as at first, till I house with dust, And in the numbness my heartsome zest For things that were, be past repeating When spring comes round.

TO THE MOON

"WHAT have you looked at, Moon, In your time, Now long past your prime?" "O, I have looked at, often looked at Sweet, sublime, Sore things, shudderful, night and noon In my time."

"What have you mused on, Moon, In your day, So aloof, so far away?" "O, I have mused on, often mused on Growth, decay, Nations alive, dead, mad, aswoon, In my day!"

"Have you much wondered, Moon, On your rounds, Self-wrapt, beyond Earth's bounds?" "Yea, I have wondered, often wondered At the sounds Reaching me of the human tune On my rounds."

"What do you think of it, Moon, As you go? Is Life much, or no?" "O, I think of it, often think of it As a show God ought surely to shut up soon, As I go."

COPYING ARCHITECTURE IN AN OLD MINSTER

HOW smartly the quarters of the hour march by That the jack-o'-clock never forgets; Ding-dong; and before I have traced a cusp's eye, Or got the true twist of the ogee over, A double ding-dong ricochetts.

Just so did he clang here before I came, And so will he clang when I'm gone Through the Minster's cavernous hollows--the same Tale of hours never more to be will he deliver To the speechless midnight and dawn!

I grow to conceive it a call to ghosts, Whose mould lies below and around. Yes; the next "Come, come," draws them out from their posts, And they gather, and one shade appears, and another, As the eve-damps creep from the ground.

See--a Courtenay stands by his quatre-foiled tomb, And a Duke and his Duchess near; And one Sir Edmund in columned gloom, And a Saxon king by the presbytery chamber; And shapes unknown in the rear.

Maybe they have met for a parle on some plan To better ail-stricken mankind; I catch their cheepings, though thinner than The overhead creak of a passager's pinion When leaving land behind.

Or perhaps they speak to the yet unborn, And caution them not to come To a world so ancient and trouble-torn, Of foiled intents, vain lovingkindness, And ardours chilled and numb.

They waste to fog as I stir and stand, And move from the arched recess, And pick up the drawing that slipped from my hand, And feel for the pencil I dropped in the cranny In a moment's forgetfulness.

TO SHAKESPEARE AFTER THREE HUNDRED YEARS

BRIGHT baffling Soul, least capturable of themes, Thou, who display'dst a life of common-place, Leaving no intimate word or personal trace Of high design outside the artistry Of thy penned dreams, Still shalt remain at heart unread eternally.

Through human orbits thy discourse to-day, Despite thy formal pilgrimage, throbs on In harmonies that cow Oblivion, And, like the wind, with all-uncared effect Maintain a sway Not fore-desired, in tracks unchosen and unchecked.

And yet, at thy last breath, with mindless note The borough clocks but samely tongued the hour, The Avon just as always glassed the tower, Thy age was published on thy passing-bell But in due rote With other dwellers' deaths accorded a like knell.

And at the strokes some townsman may have given thy name, With, "Yes, a worthy man and well-to-do; Though, as for me, I knew him but by just a neighbour's nod, 'tis true.

"I' faith, few knew him much here, save by word, He having elsewhere led his busier life; Though to be sure he left with us his wife." --"Ah, one of the tradesmen's sons, I now recall . . . Witty, I've heard . . . We did not know him . . . Well, good-day. Death comes to all."

So, like a strange bright bird we sometimes find To mingle with the barn-door brood awhile, Then vanish from their homely domicile-- Into man's poesy, we wot not whence, Flew thy strange mind, Lodged there a radiant guest, and sped for ever thence.

QUID HIC AGIS?

When later, by chance Of circumstance, It befel me to read On a hot afternoon At the lectern there The selfsame words As the lesson decreed, To the gathered few From the hamlets near-- Folk of flocks and herds Sitting half aswoon, Who listened thereto As women and men Not overmuch Concerned at such-- So, like them then, I did not see What drought might be With me, with her, As the Kalendar Moved on, and Time Devoured our prime.

But now, at last, When our glory has passed, And there is no smile From her in the aisle, But where it once shone A marble, men say, With her name thereon Is discerned to-day; And spiritless In the wilderness I shrink from sight And desire the night, , I feel the shake Of wind and earthquake, And consuming fire Nigher and nigher, And the voice catch clear, "What doest thou here?"

ON A MIDSUMMER EVE

I IDLY cut a parsley stalk, And blew therein towards the moon; I had not thought what ghosts would walk With shivering footsteps to my tune.

I went, and knelt, and scooped my hand As if to drink, into the brook, And a faint figure seemed to stand Above me, with the bygone look.

I lipped rough rhymes of chance, not choice, I thought not what my words might be; There came into my ear a voice That turned a tenderer verse for me.

TIMING HER

LALAGE'S coming: Where is she now, O? Turning to bow, O, And smile, is she, Just at parting, Parting, parting, As she is starting To come to me?

Where is she now, O, Now, and now, O, Shadowing a bough, O, Of hedge or tree As she is rushing, Rushing, rushing, Gossamers brushing To come to me?

Lalage's coming; Where is she now, O; Climbing the brow, O, Of hills I see? Yes, she is nearing, Nearing, nearing, Weather unfearing To come to me.

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