"A Sound in the Night" by Thomas Hardy

Woodsford Castle (c) Mike Searle

Here is another one of my favorite poems by Thomas Hardy.  This well-crafted macabre poem even features a spooky castle on a cold, dark, and stormy night.  Woodsford Castle is considered an excellent example of a fortified medieval manor house of the mid-14th Century.  The construction of Woodsford Castle was completed in 1370, and it is located just a few miles south of Dorchester in Dorset County, in the heart of the 'Wessex' countryside that Thomas Hardy lived in and wrote about in much of his fiction and poetry.  In fact, Hardy's builder father, Thomas Hardy, Sr., was involved in an extensive restoration effort at Woodsford Castle in 1850.  One simply has to imagine that the ten-year-old Hardy would have accompanied his father to the castle during the restoration and must have prowled about all of the nooks and crannies of this old building.

A Sound in the Night
(Woodsford Castle: 17--)

"What do I catch upon the night-wind, husband?--
What is it sounds in this house so eerily?
It seems to be a woman's voice: each little while I hear it,
And it much troubles me!"

''Tis but the eaves dripping down upon the plinth-slopes:
Letting fancies worry thee!--sure 'tis a foolish thing,
When we were on'y coupled half-an-hour before the noontide,
And now it's but evening.'

'Yet seems it still a woman's voice outside the castle, husband,
And 'tis cold to-night, and rain beats, and this is a lonely place.
Didst thou fathom much of womankind in travel or adventure
Ere ever thou sawest my face?'

'It may be a tree, bride, that rubs his arms acrosswise,
If it is not the eaves-drip upon the lower slopes,
Or the river at the bend, where it whirls about the hatches
Like a creature that sighs and mopes.'

'Yet it still seems to me like the crying of a woman,
And it saddens me much that so piteous a sound
On this my bridal night when I would get agone from sorrow
Should so ghost-like wander round!'

'To satisfy thee, Love, I will strike the flint-and-steel, then,
And set the rush-candle up, and undo the door,
And take the new horn-lantern that we bought upon our journey,
And throw the light over the moor.'

He struck a light, and breeched and booted in the further chamber,
And lit the new horn-lantern and went from her sight,
And vanished down the turret; and she heard him pass the postern,
And go out into the night.

She listened as she lay, till she heard his step returning,
And his voice as he unclothed him: "'Twas nothing, as I said,
But the nor'-west wind a-blowing from the moor ath'art the river,
And the tree that taps the gurgoyle-head."

"Nay, husband, you perplex me; for if the noise I heard here,
Awaking me from sleep so, were but as you avow,
The rain-fall, and the wind, and the tree-bough, and the river,
Why is it silent now?

"And why is thy hand and thy clasping arm so shaking,
And thy sleeve and tags of hair so muddy and so wet,
And why feel I thy heart a-thumping every time thou kissest me,
And thy breath as if hard to get?"

He lay there in silence for a while, still quickly breathing,
Then started up and walked about the room resentfully:
"O woman, witch, whom I, in sooth, against my will have wedded,
Why castedst thou thy spells on me?

"There was one I loved once: the cry you heard was her cry:
She came to me to-night, and her plight was passing sore,
As no woman . . . Yea, and it was e'en the cry you heard, wife,
But she will cry no more!

"And now I can't abide thee: this place, it hath a curse on't,
This farmstead once a castle: I'll get me straight away!"
He dressed this time in darkness, unspeaking, as she listened,
And went ere the dawn turned day.

They found a woman's body at a spot called Rocky Shallow,
Where the Froom stream curves amid the moorland, washed aground,
And they searched about for him, the yeoman, who had darkly
  known her,
But he could not be found.

And the bride left for good-and-all the farmstead once a castle,
And in a county far away lives, mourns, and sleeps alone,
And thinks in windy weather that she hears a woman crying,
And sometimes an infant's moan.

***
A Sound in the Night was published by Hardy in 1922 in a volume of poetry entitled Late Lyrics and Earlier.

"A Trampwoman's Tragedy" By Thomas Hardy

A Trampwoman’s Tragedy

                                I

From Wynyard's Gap the livelong day,
The livelong day,
We beat afoot the northward way
We had travelled times before.
The sun-blaze burning on our backs,
Our shoulders sticking to our packs,
By fosseway, fields, and turnpike tracks
We skirted sad Sedge-Moor.

                                 II

Full twenty miles we jaunted on,
We jaunted on, —
My fancy-man, and jeering John,
And Mother Lee, and I.
And, as the sun drew down to west,
We climbed the toilsome Polden crest,
And saw, of landskip sights the best,
The inn that beamed thereby.

                                 III

Ay, side by side
Through the Great Forest, Blackmoor wide,
And where the Parret ran.
We'd faced the gusts on Mendip ridge,
Had crossed the Yeo unhelped by bridge,
Been stung by every Marshwood midge,
I and my fancy-man.

                                 IV

Lone inns we loved, my man and I,
My man and I;
'King's Stag', 'Windwhistle' high and dry,
'The Horse' on Hintock Green,
The cosy house at Wynyard's Gap,
'The Hut', renowned on Bredy Knap,
And many another wayside tap
Where folk might sit unseen.

                                 V

O deadly day,
O deadly day! —
I teased my fancy man in play
And wanton idleness.
I walked alongside jeering John,
I laid his hand my waist upon;
I would not bend my glances on
My lover's dark distress.

                                 VI

Thus Poldon top at last we won,
At last we won,
And gained the inn at sink of sun
Far-famed as 'Marshal's Elm'.
Beneath us figured tor and lea,
From Mendip to the western sea —
I doubt if any finer sight there be
Within this royal realm.

                                 VII

Inside the settle all a-row —
All four a-row
We sat, I next to John, to show
That he had wooed and won.
And then he took me on his knee,
And swore it was his turn to be
My favoured mate, and Mother Lee
Passed to my former one.

                                 VIII

Then in a voice I had never heard,
I had never heard,
My only love to me: 'One word,
My lady, if you please!
Whose is the child you are like to bear? —
His? After all my months o' care?'
Gods knows 'twas not! But, O despair!
I nodded — still to tease.

                                 IX

Then he sprung, and with his knife —
And with his knife,
He let out jeering Johnny's life,
Yes; there at set of sun.
The slant ray through the window nigh
Gilded John's blood and glazing eye,
Ere scarcely Mother Lee and I
Knew that the deed was done.

                                 X

The taverns tell the gloomy tale,
The gloomy tale,
How that at Ivel-Chester jail
My love, my sweetheart swung;
Though stained till now by no misdeed
Save one horse ta'en in time of need;
(Blue Jimmy stole right many a steed
Ere his last fling he flung.)

                                 XI

Thereaft I walked the world alone
Alone, alone!
On his death-day I gave my groan
And dropt his dead-born child.
'Twas nigh the jail, beneath a tree,
None tending me; for Mother Lee
Had died at Glaston, leaving me
Unfriended on the wild.

                                 XII

And in the night as I lay weak,
As I lay weak,
The leaves a-falling on my cheek,
The red moon low declined —
The ghost of him I'd die to kiss
Rose up and said: 'Ah, tell me this!
Was the child mine, or was it his?
Speak, that I my rest may find!'

                                 XIII

O doubt but I told him then,

I told him then,

That I had kept me from all men

Since we joined lips and swore.

Whereat he smiled, and thinned away

As the wind stirred to call up day. . .

--'Tis past! And here alone I stray
Haunting the Western Moor.

***

NOTES--

Stanza I 

Fosseway - The "Fosse Way" a very straight Roman road that runs from southwest England all the way up to Lincoln, a distance of over 180 miles.  The Somerset portion of the Fosse Way actually touches Windwhistle, mentioned in the poem.

Stanza II

Fancy-man - common-law husband, or a man living off the earnings of a prostitute. 

Landskip - archaic form of "landscape," descriptive of inland scenery (from 17th c. Dutch painting).

Stanza III 

Blackmoor - This, like most of the other places mentioned, is in south-west England, especially Dorset. Blackmore Vale (Valley) is just beyond the Dorset Uplands, north-west of Dorchester. 

Marshwood midge - a stinging, gnat-like insect.

Stanza IV 

King's Stag, Windwhistle, The Horse - the names of inns located along the Fosse Way.  Hardy's reference to the "Windwhistle high and dry" refers to its location on top of a hill and had no well and only alcohol to drink.

Stanza VI 

Tor and lea - The Tor at Glastonbury is a medieval watchtower on a steep incline known as Tor Hill. "Lea" means "a tract of open ground."

Stanza VII 

Settle - a wooden bench with high back and arms.

Stanza X 

Blue Jimmy - a British horse-thief of some renown.

Stanza XI 

Glaston - Glastonbury, an ancient town in southwestern England famous for its abbey.

***

Thomas Hardy and his bicycle

It is October, and fall is upon us.  I thought it might be fun to post a few of Thomas Hardy's narrative poems that are somewhat spooky or border on the macabre, and A Trampwoman's Tragedy certainly qualifies on both counts.  Apparently, Hardy had taken a bicycle ride up around Glastonbury in Somerset County and had heard a story about a woman named Mary Ann Taylor, and when he returned to his home (Max Gate) in Dorset he crafted this poem in 1902 and submitted it for publication to the Cornhill Magazine for publication.  It was rejected as "unsuitable for a family periodical".  It was, however, published in the North American Review in the November 1903 issue.  Hardy came to believe that A Trampwoman's Tragedy was "upon the whole his most successful poem", and included it among his collection of poems entitled Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses published in 1909.  

[The black and white photograph at the top of the post is an image that I took in 2007 on a cold and blustery day on Tehachapi Pass in the southern Sierras east of Bakersfield, California.  It very much reminds me of some of the landscapes Hardy describes in this poem.]

"At a Pause in a Country Dance" By Thomas Hardy

At a Pause in a Country Dance
(Middle of Last Century)

THEY stood at the foot of the figure,
And panted: they'd danced it down through--
That 'Dashing White Serjeant' they loved so:--
A window, uncurtained, was nigh them
That end of the room. Thence in view

Outside it a valley updrew,
Where the frozen moon lit frozen snow:
At the furthermost reach of the valley
A light from the window shone low.
'They are inside that window,' said she,

As she looked, 'They sit up there for me;
And baby is sleeping there, too.'
He glanced. 'Yes,' he said. 'Never mind,
Let's foot our way up again; do!
And dance down the line as before.

Pierre Auguste Renoir, 1883

What's the world to us, meeting once more!'
'--Not much, when your husband full trusts you,
And thinks the child his that I bore!'
He was silent. The fiddlers six-eighted
With even more passionate vigour.

The pair swept again up the figure,
The child's cuckoo-father and she,
And the next couples threaded below,
And the twain wove their way to the top
Of 'The Dashing White Serjeant' they loved so,
Restarting: right, left, to and fro.

--From the homestead, seen yon, the small glow
Still adventured forth over the white,
Where the child still slept, unknowing who sired it,
In the cradle of wicker tucked tight,
And its grandparents, nodding, admired it
In elbow chairs through the slow night.

***

Edel Rodriguez, NY Times

I love Thomas Hardy's poetry on so many levels, and this poem is just such a fine example.  First, Hardy is incredibly adept at portraying the 'country rustics'--the people--of his beloved Dorset; and, in fact, much of his fiction and poetry centers upon this part of southwestern England that he called "Wessex".  The people he writes about are fun-loving, earthy, and incredibly connected to the landscape around them--the farms and fields, the forests and orchards, the rolling hills, the villages and towns, and the streams and rivers.

Hardy, as many of you know, is a master story-teller; who absolutely excelled at his craft, and it doesn't matter if it is one of his poems, a short story, or one of his famous novels--Hardy can can tell a tale.  Hardy typically takes his reader to the heart of the matter--and it is generally an unbridled mix of passion and joy, sadness and grief, and sometimes even a touch of the macabre.  Somehow, Hardy was able to unerringly hone in on the fabric of Life and what it is that we like to think of as the 'total human experience'.  And it was in that dynamic between a man and a woman that Hardy truly found ever so much to write about.  I have to think that "At a Pause in a Country Dance" was spawned from the fond memories Hardy had of accompanying his father to country dances where they both played the fiddle for the dancers.  Perhaps there's even a remnant of some bit of idle gossip he heard whilst at one of these dances.  Who knows?  It is simply a wonderful example of the brilliant little poetic vignettes that Hardy was so fond of writing. 

["At a Pause in a Country Dance" was published in a collection entitled Human Shows, Far Phantasies, Songs and Trifles in 1925, three years before Hardy's death in 1928]

Veteran's Day--"And There Was a Great Calm" by Thomas Hardy

'And There Was a Great Calm'
(On the Signing of the Armistice, November 11, 1918)

I
There had been years of Passion--scorching, cold,
And much Despair, and Anger heaving high,
Care whitely watching, Sorrows manifold,
Among the young, among the weak and old,
And the pensive Spirit of Pity whispered, "Why?"

II
Men had not paused to answer. Foes distraught
Pierced the thinned peoples in a brute-like blindness,
Philosophies that sages long had taught,
And Selflessness, were as an unknown thought,
And "Hell!" and "Shell!" were yapped at Lovingkindness.

III
The feeble folk at home had grown full-used
To "dug-outs," "snipers," "Huns," from the war-adept
In the mornings heard, and at evetides perused;
To day--dreamt men in millions, when they mused--
To nightmare-men in millions when they slept.

IV
Waking to wish existence timeless, null,
Sirius they watched above where armies fell;
He seemed to check his flapping when, in the lull
Of night a boom came thencewise, like the dull
Plunge of a stone dropped into some deep well.

V
So, when old hopes that earth was bettering slowly
Were dead and damned, there sounded "War is done!"
One morrow. Said the bereft, and meek, and lowly,
"Will men some day be given to grace? yea, wholly,
And in good sooth, as our dreams used to run?"

VI
Breathless they paused. Out there men raised their glance
To where had stood those poplars lank and lopped,
As they had raised it through the four years' dance
Of Death in the now familiar flats of France;
And murmured, "Strange, this! How? All firing stopped?"

VII
Aye; all was hushed. The about-to-fire fired not,
The aimed-at moved away in trance-lipped song.
One checkless regiment slung a clinching shot
And turned. The Spirit of Irony smirked out, "What?
Spoil peradventures woven of Rage and Wrong?"

VIII
Thenceforth no flying fires inflamed the gray,
No hurtlings shook the dewdrop from the thorn,
No moan perplexed the mute bird on the spray;
Worn horses mused: "We are not whipped to-day";
No weft-winged engines blurred the moon's thin horn.

IX
Calm fell. From Heaven distilled a clemency;
There was peace on earth, and silence in the sky;
Some could, some could not, shake off misery:
The Sinister Spirit sneered: "It had to be!"
And again the Spirit of Pity whispered, "Why?"

(First published in Late Lyrics, by Thomas Hardy, 1922)

***

A Poem for the Day: "The Last Chrysanthemum" by Thomas Hardy

Here we are just a couple of days after the Fall Equinox, and it feels like it is time to share another favorite poem of mine.  I recently ran across a wonderful review of one of Thomas Hardy's volumes of poetry, Poems of the Past and the Present (1901), over on the Ordinary Reader's blog, and it inspired me to look through my own collections of Hardy poetry again.  I came across The Last Chrysanthemum, and it just felt like a great poem to share in celebration of the beginning of the fall season.  I hope you enjoy it too.

The Last Chrysanthemum

Why should this flower delay so long
         To show its tremulous plumes?
Now is the time of plaintive robin-song,
         When flowers are in their tombs.

Through the slow summer, when the sun
         Called to each frond and whorl
That all he could for flowers was being done,
         Why did it not uncurl?

It must have felt that fervid call
         Although it took no heed,
Waking but now, when leaves like corpses fall,
         And saps all retrocede.

Too late its beauty, lonely thing,
         The season's shine is spent,
Nothing remains for it but shivering
         In tempests turbulent.

Had it a reason for delay,
         Dreaming in witlessness
That for a bloom so delicately gay
         Winter would stay its stress?

- I talk as if the thing were born
         With sense to work its mind;
Yet it is but one mask of many worn
         By the Great Face behind.

***

Reviews: Thomas Hardy: The Neglected Novels--Part II

I mentioned a week or so ago that I was in the process of reading the remaining four novels written by Thomas Hardy that I'd not gotten to before.  Hardy wrote fourteen novels over the period from 1871 through 1897.  Actually, his very first novel, The Poor Man and the Lady was completed in 1868, but was never published.  Hardy's first published novel was Desperate Remedies in 1871.  His last novel was The Well-Beloved and was published in 1897.  Of Hardy's fourteen published novels, I had read all but the following:  Desperate Remedies, The Hand of Ethelberta, A Laodicean, and The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved & The Well-Beloved.  So, I ordered the the Penguin Classics editions of these four 'neglected', or 'minor', Hardy novels and started reading.

While, after finishing all four books, I can say that it is my opinion that none of these novels quite rise to the level of Hardy's best work, i.e., Far From the Madding Crowd, The Return of the Native, The Woodlanders, Tess of the d'Urbervilles, or Jude the Obscure.  Oh, they are each quite good, well written, and have engaging plots.  Interestingly, at least to me, they are quite different from one another too.

Desperate Remedies was really a rollicking good read--a real pot-boiler of a mystery and romance.  Of all of Hardy's novels this is the one that perhaps most closely emulates some of the literary creations of Charles Dickens or Wilkie Collins.  This has it all--scheming and intrigue, blackmail, illegitimacy, adultery, murder and more.  Sure it was maybe a bit rough around the edges, but that is to be expected as this was Hardy's first published novel and he was really just learning his craft.  Personally, I thought the character development was terrific in the novel, with characters that I very much liked and some that I utterly despised.  Desperate Remedies was a fun novel to read and one that I look forward to picking up again in a few years for a re-read.  If you're looking for something that's kind of edgy and mysterious, yet with a good dose of romance and set in the heart of the Victorian Era, I highly recommend Desperate Remedies.

The next book that I read was Thomas Hardy's fifth published novel, The Hand of Ethelberta.  This was very, very good!  What I loved about this novel was that Hardy's protagonist is a savvy and very street-smart young woman, Ethelberta, from a very poor family of ten children.  Without giving much of the plot away, suffice it to say that this young woman sets out to make something of herself (and also indirectly benefit the members of her family).  She is an accomplished poet, and publishes a volume of poetry that is well received by the critics (Remember, Hardy always considered himself, first and foremost, a poet).  She also is put in the position of ultimately having to find herself a wealthy husband if she is going to be able to provide for her parents and siblings.  Most of the novel is taken up with telling the story of Ethelberta's trials and tribulations in honorably finding a decent man and marriage.  All in all, I found this to be quite funny at times, and a pretty rich satire on Victorian society and the roles men and women were expected to adhere to among the upper class.  Like in many of Hardy's novels, the common folk, or 'rustics', figure prominently; so, one really does get a pretty good feel for the 'upstairs' and the 'downstairs' folks during the time-period of the novel.  Again, good character development makes this a fun book to read.  I found myself anxiously turning the page to find out what would happen next to our heroine and the other characters.  Apparently, Hardy even drew upon his wife's diaries in plotting this novel, along with material he found in the popular romances of the day, weekly magazines, and even ladies fashion journals.  The book does provide a wonderful window into upper-crust Victorian society.

Finally, I just finished the third book of Hardy's 'minor' novels yesterday.  A Laodicean is my favorite of the three I've just read.  It is a sophisticated novel with a superb plot.  Again, there's mystery, some really nasty and nefarious scheming on the part of the bad guys, and a wonderful romantic triangle involving a very wealthy and beautiful young woman and her two very poor suitors.  This novel revolves around architecture and the restoration of an old ruined castle.  Knowing what I know of Hardy's life, one can really see many autobiographical elements in the telling of this tale.  Hardy, as a young architect, spent much of his initial career in restoring old Norman and Gothic churches across Dorset, a task he seemed to thoroughly enjoy.  I found it intriguing too, that this novel, like Desperate Remedies, involve a very poor man falling in love with and courting a woman much wealthier and from the upper class.  A Laodicean is also, in my opinion, a moral treatise on the conflict between maintenance of the old way of life in rural southwest England (i.e., Hardy's 'Wessex') and the new modern age that is fast changing the landscape and people's lives (e.g., the railroad, the telegraph, new religions, etc.).  This examination of the impacts of modernity upon the people and cultures of southwest England is a theme that Hardy will return to time and time again in his subsequent novels and much of his poetry.  I highly recommend reading A Laodicean, and further recommend that you follow up by reading his very next novel, Two on a Tower.  Hardy always considered these two novels to be a diptych--and read together.

So, if you're looking for something new to read; something maybe a bit off of the beaten path and not typically read by the masses, I urge you to seek out these three rather neglected novels of Thomas Hardy (and please do throw Hardy's Two on a Tower onto the pile too).  Pull up a chair next to the window or on your porch or veranda, pour yourself a cup of nice tea, and allow yourself to enter the world of Hardy's Wessex and Victorian England.  You won't be sorry, I promise.  If you read one or more of 'em, do drop me a note and let me know what you thought of the book(s).

Thomas Hardy: The Neglected Novels--Part I

I love serendipity!  Actually, I really love the word too.  It just rolls off of the tongue, and it even sounds 'serendipitous.'  Well, I had kind of a serendipitous morning today, and I'm still grooving on it.  I was up nice and early and made the coffee, settled in on the couch to finish the tenth, and final, volume--"The Crippled God"--in Steven Erikson's magnificent "Tale of the Malazan Book of the Fallen" series of fantasy novels.  After drying my eyes and reshelving the book, I watered the plants and then got ready to head off to work.

I was waiting on the train platform, and noticed the station marquee was broadcasting a message.  My train to Los Angeles was going to be 45 minutes to an hour delayed because of mechanical issues.  I thought about it for a moment, and said, "What the heck?"  I headed back to the house and a nice unscheduled day off.  I immediately changed into my running togs and took off for a nice hour-long five-mile run.  By ten o'clock I was back, freshly showered, and sitting down here posting on my blog, and feeling like a million bucks!  That's serendipity--at least to me!

***

Okay, now that I've bored you with my 'off-the-top-of-my-head' thoughts, I want to let you know what's going on with my reading these days.  As many of you know, I am a huge fan of the works of Thomas Hardy.  Hardy is one of the great novelists of the Victorian period, and is one of the great poets of the early modern era.  While many of his novels and short stories are widely read and hugely popular, Hardy always considered himself, first and foremost, to be a poet--and I would agree wholeheartedly.  I spent much of the last year and half reading most of Hardy's fourteen published novels, his short stories, all of his poetry, and several excellent biographies.  Thomas Hardy is, without a doubt, one of my favorite authors and poets.  If you are interested, you can go back through the archives of this blog and find my many postings, thoughts and observations about all of the Hardy novels and poetical works that I devoured over the past eighteen months or so.

I just wanted to bring to your attention a few of Thomas Hardy's novels that are less well known, three of which I have yet to read.  Personally, I would include the following novels in a list of his lesser known books:

"Desperate Remedies" (1871),
"The Hand of Ethelberta" (1876),
"The Trumpet Major" (1880),
"A Laodicean" (1881),
"Two on a Tower" (1882), and
"The Well-Beloved" and "The Pursuit of the Well-Beloved" (1892)

Of the novels on this list, I've only read "The Trumpet Major" and "Two on a Tower" (which I loved, and is reviewed here).  I recently went ahead and ordered copies of the remaining books (all of them are available in the Penguin Classics paperback editions), and I am very much looking forward to reading them over the next few weeks.  In fact, I started, Thomas Hardy's first published novel, "Desperate Remedies" this morning.
So, if you're at all interested in these lesser known novels of Thomas Hardy, please stay tuned as I promise to post a review of each book as I finish it.  I am very much looking forward to finishing off my reading of Hardy's entire literary oeuvre, and seeing how these remaining lesser known or 'neglected' novels stack up against my faves like, "The Return of the Native," "Far From the Madding Crowd," "Tess of the d'Urbervilles," "The Woodlanders," or "Jude the Obscure."

A Poem for the Day: "The Pine Planters" By Thomas Hardy

This morning, on a whim, I picked up Thomas Hardy's novel The Woodlanders again.  Yes, I just read it a few months ago; but it doesn't matter at all, I just felt that I needed to read it again.  Interestingly, now that I have completed reading most of the classical ancient Greek tragedies, I am realizing just how Sophoclean this tragic tale of Hardy's is.  While folks will tell you to read Tess of the d'Urbervilles and Jude the Obscure (and you certainly should), you would be certainly remiss in not reading his beautiful and lyrical The Woodlanders.  To reinforce the point, I am sharing Hardy's beautiful poem, written in 1909, that he mated up with his novel, The Woodlanders.  Can the man write a love poem?  What a lamentation--it simply breaks my heart every time I read this poem...

The Pine Planters

(Marty South's Reverie)

I

We work here together
In blast and breeze;
He fills the earth in,
I hold the trees.

He does not notice
That what I do
Keeps me from moving
And chills me through.

He has seen one fairer
I feel by his eye,
Which skims me as though
I were not by.

And since she passed here
He scarce has known
But that the woodland
Holds him alone.

I have worked here with him
Since morning shine,
He busy with his thoughts
And I with mine.

I have helped him so many,
So many days,
But never win any
Small word of praise!

Shall I not sigh to him
That I work on
Glad to be nigh to him
Though hope is gone?

Nay, though he never
Knew love like mine,
I'll bear it ever
And make no sign!

II

From the bundle at hand here
I take each tree,
And set it to stand, here
Always to be;
When, in a second,
As if from fear
Of Life unreckoned
Beginning here,
It starts a sighing
Through day and night,
Though while there lying
'Twas voiceless quite.

It will sigh in the morning,
Will sigh at noon,
At the winter's warning,
In wafts of June;
Grieving that never
Kind Fate decreed
It should for ever
Remain a seed,
And shun the welter
Of things without,
Unneeding shelter
From storm and drought.

Thus, all unknowing
For whom or what
We set it growing
In this bleak spot,
It still will grieve here
Throughout its time,
Unable to leave here,
Or change its clime;
Or tell the story
Of us to-day
When, halt and hoary,
We pass away.

(1909)

***

The photograph I have included is one that I took late one evening in the Bartholomew's Cobble Preserve near Sheffield, in south-western Massachusetts.  I went back east with my oldest daughter to attend an Edith Wharton biennial conference that was being held in Pittsfield, Massachusetts.  I invite you to 'click' on the photograph for the larger view.  In some respects this photograph reminds of the woodland country that Hardy's Giles Winterborne were living and working in around the little 'Wessex' hamlet of 'Little Hintock.'  I do hope that the poem and the photograph inspire you to read this beautiful novel.  I'd love to hear your thoughts about the novel if you read it.

A Poem for the Day: "Retty's Phases" by Thomas Hardy

The poem I want to share with you tonight is one that haunts me in many respects.  I come back to it, time, and time again.  It is a sad, poignant, and beautiful lament associated with young love.  This poem has the distinction of being thought to be the oldest surviving manuscript of any of Thomas Hardy's poetry, and was written in 1868.  The original manuscript of the poem is preserved in the Dorset Museum.

Retty's Phases

 I

 Retty used to shake her head,
Look with wicked eye;
Say, 'I'd tease you, simple Ned,
If I cared to try!'
Then she'd hot-up scarlet red,
Stilly step away,
Much afraid of what she'd said
Sounded bold to say.

II

Retty used to think she loved
(Just a little) me.
Not untruly, as it proved
Afterwards to be.
For, when weakness forced her rest
If we walked a mile,
She would whisper she was blest
By my clasp awhile.

III

Retty used at last to say
When she neared the Vale,
'Mind that you, Dear, on that day
Ring my wedding peal!'
And we all, with pulsing pride,
Vigorous sounding gave
Those six bells, the while outside
John filled in her grave.

IV

Retty used to draw me down
To the turfy heaps,
Where, with yeoman, squire, and clown
Noticeless she sleeps.
Now her silent slumber-place
Seldom do I know,
For when last I saw  her face
Was so long ago!

***

Thomas Hardy appended the following note to the manuscript--

"NOTE.--In many villages it was customary after the funeral of an unmarried woman to ring a peal as for her wedding while the grave was being filled in, as if Death were not to be allowed to balk her of bridal honours.  Young unmarried men were always her bearers."

Now, isn't that a tale?  Beautiful, lyrical, and oh so sad.  It never fails but to bring the tears to my eyes as I read it.  And it did again tonight...

I have mated this poem with a beautiful painting by the English painter, Edwin Harris (1855-1906).  The painting is entitled, "Apple Blossom at Newlyn," and it just seems to fit the image of young Retty that I carry in my head.  [Be sure to 'click' on the image for a larger view of the painting.]

A Poem for the Day: "The Revisitation" by Thomas Hardy

The poem I am featuring tonight is another by Thomas Hardy. It is entitled, "The Revisitation" and was published in 1904. What I love the most about much of Hardy's poetry is his ability to tell a story, and this is a whopper! Of the nearly 1,000 poems that Hardy wrote, many have this almost ballad or folktale quality about them.  From reading biographies of Hardy, it seems that he was an inveterate listener and note-taker.  Apparently, he crafted these poetic tales from the stories he heard and collected from his older relatives and people he spoke with across Dorset.  This particular poem seems to refer back to the days when England was at war with France (i.e., the Napoleonic wars).  It seems an unrequited love revisited, with essentially disastrous results. Methinks, knowing Hardy, this would have made an equally good short story. I look at it as essentially macabre and terribly poignant at the same time. Vintage Hardy, in my humble opinion, and a sad, sad poem.  Read it and tell me what you think. 

The photograph that I have attached (at right) is one that I took on a very blustery and cold late-afternoon in the spring on Tehachapi Pass in the southern Sierra Nevada Mountains in southern California. Please feel free to 'click' on the image for a larger view.


The Revisitation

As I lay awake at night-time
In an ancient country barrack known to ancient cannoneers,
And recalled the hopes that heralded each seeming brave and bright time
Of my primal purple years,

Much it haunted me that, nigh there,
I had borne my bitterest loss--when One who went, came not again;
In a joyless hour of discord, in a joyless-hued July there -
A July just such as then.

And as thus I brooded longer,
With my faint eyes on the feeble square of wan-lit window frame,
A quick conviction sprung within me, grew, and grew yet stronger,
That the month-night was the same,

Too, as that which saw her leave me
On the rugged ridge of Waterstone, the peewits plaining round;
And a lapsing twenty years had ruled that--as it were to grieve me -
I should near the once-loved ground.

Though but now a war-worn stranger
Chance had quartered here, I rose up and descended to the yard.
All was soundless, save the troopers' horses tossing at the manger,
And the sentry keeping guard.

Through the gateway I betook me
Down the High Street and beyond the lamps, across the battered bridge,
Till the country darkness clasped me and the friendly shine forsook me,
And I bore towards the Ridge,

With a dim unowned emotion
Saying softly: "Small my reason, now at midnight, to be here . . .
Yet a sleepless swain of fifty with a brief romantic notion
May retrace a track so dear."

Thus I walked with thoughts half-uttered
Up the lane I knew so well, the grey, gaunt, lonely Lane of Slyre;
And at whiles behind me, far at sea, a sullen thunder muttered
As I mounted high and higher.

Till, the upper roadway quitting,
I adventured on the open drouthy downland thinly grassed,
While the spry white scuts of conies flashed before me, earthward flitting,
And an arid wind went past.

Round about me bulged the barrows
As before, in antique silence--immemorial funeral piles -
Where the sleek herds trampled daily the remains of flint-tipt arrows
Mid the thyme and chamomiles;

And the Sarsen stone there, dateless,
On whose breast we had sat and told the zephyrs many a tender vow,
Held the heat of yester sun, as sank thereon one fated mateless
From those far fond hours till now.

Maybe flustered by my presence
Rose the peewits, just as all those years back, wailing soft and loud,
And revealing their pale pinions like a fitful phosphorescence
Up against the cope of cloud,

Where their dolesome exclamations
Seemed the voicings of the self-same throats I had heard when life was
green,
Though since that day uncounted frail forgotten generations
Of their kind had flecked the scene. -

And so, living long and longer
In a past that lived no more, my eyes discerned there, suddenly,
That a figure broke the skyline--first in vague contour, then stronger,
And was crossing near to me.

Some long-missed familiar gesture,
Something wonted, struck me in the figure's pause to list and heed,
Till I fancied from its handling of its loosely wrapping vesture
That it might be She indeed.

'Twas not reasonless: below there
In the vale, had been her home; the nook might hold her even yet,
And the downlands were her father's fief; she still might come and go there;-
So I rose, and said, "Agnette!"

With a little leap, half-frightened,
She withdrew some steps; then letting intuition smother fear
In a place so long-accustomed, and as one whom thought enlightened,
She replied: "What--that voice?--here!"

"Yes, Agnette!--And did the occasion
Of our marching hither make you think I might walk where we two--'
"O, I often come," she murmured with a moment's coy evasion,
"('Tis not far),--and--think of you."

Then I took her hand, and led her
To the ancient people's stone whereon I had sat. There now sat we;
And together talked, until the first reluctant shyness fled her,
And she spoke confidingly.

"It is just as ere we parted!"
Said she, brimming high with joy.--"And when, then, came you here, and why?"
"--Dear, I could not sleep for thinking of our trystings when twin-hearted."
She responded, "Nor could I.

"There are few things I would rather
Than be wandering at this spirit-hour--lone-lived, my kindred dead -
On this wold of well-known feature I inherit from my father:
Night or day, I have no dread . . .

"O I wonder, wonder whether
Any heartstring bore a signal-thrill between us twain or no? -
Some such influence can, at times, they say, draw severed souls together."
I said, "Dear, we'll dream it so."

Each one's hand the other's grasping,
And a mutual forgiveness won, we sank to silent thought,
A large content in us that seemed our rended lives reclasping,
And contracting years to nought.

Till I, maybe overweary
From the lateness, and a wayfaring so full of strain and stress
For one no longer buoyant, to a peak so steep and eery,
Sank to slow unconsciousness . . .

How long I slept I knew not,
But the brief warm summer night had slid when, to my swift surprise,
A red upedging sun, of glory chambered mortals view not,
Was blazing on my eyes,

From the Milton Woods to Dole-Hill
All the spacious landscape lighting, and around about my feet
Flinging tall thin tapering shadows from the meanest mound and mole-hill,
And on trails the ewes had beat.

She was sitting still beside me,
Dozing likewise; and I turned to her, to take her hanging hand;
When, the more regarding, that which like a spectre shook and tried me
In her image then I scanned;

That which Time's transforming chisel
Had been tooling night and day for twenty years, and tooled too well,
In its rendering of crease where curve was, where was raven, grizzle -
Pits, where peonies once did dwell.

She had wakened, and perceiving
(I surmise) my sigh and shock, my quite involuntary dismay,
Up she started, and--her wasted figure all throughout it heaving -
Said, "Ah, yes: I am thus by day!

"Can you really wince and wonder
That the sunlight should reveal you such a thing of skin and bone,
As if unaware a Death's-head must of need lie not far under
Flesh whose years out-count your own?

"Yes: that movement was a warning
Of the worth of man's devotion!--Yes, Sir, I am old," said she,
"And the thing which should increase love turns it quickly into scorning -
And your new-won heart from me!"

Then she went, ere I could call her,
With the too proud temper ruling that had parted us before,
And I saw her form descend the slopes, and smaller grow and smaller,
Till I caught its course no more . . .

True; I might have dogged her downward;
- But it may be (though I know not) that this trick on us of Time
Disconcerted and confused me.--Soon I bent my footsteps townward,
Like to one who had watched a crime.

Well I knew my native weakness,
Well I know it still. I cherished her reproach like physic-wine,
For I saw in that emaciate shape of bitterness and bleakness
A nobler soul than mine.

Did I not return, then, ever? -
Did we meet again?--mend all?--Alas, what greyhead perseveres! -
Soon I got the Route elsewhither.--Since that hour I have seen her never:
Love is lame at fifty years.

***

["The Revisitation", No. 152 in the variorum edition of Thomas Hardy: The Complete Poems, edited by James Gibson, Palgrave, 2001]

Review: "Two on a Tower" By Thomas Hardy

Well, I am sad to say, but I am slowly winding up my summer of reading the literary works of George Eliot and Thomas Hardy.  I recently finished Thomas Hardy's Two on a Tower, one of his more obscure novels. Two on a Tower was first serialized in the Atlantic Monthly and then published in book-form in 1882, and was categorized by Hardy as a novel of "Romance and Fantasies."   I had the devil of a time finding a copy of this novel, and short of ordering a brand-new copy from an on-line source, I continued to diligently search the shelves of every used bookstore I encountered.  On a recent business trip to Arizona, I finally found a nearly new copy for six dollars!

In my opinion, Hardy has crafted an incredibly fascinating plot for the novel, and at times it reminded me of the plotting of Wilkie Collins.  Also, the novel pivots almost entirely around just two characters, versus the more normal Hardyan plot with a larger number of country rustics intermingled with the protagonists.  In Two on a Tower, much of the plot is solely focused on young Swithin St. Cleeve and the older Lady Constantine.  St. Cleeve is a twenty-year old consumed with becoming a famous professional astronomer, who has been surreptitiously using an old tower on a hill in an isolated portion of Lady Constantine's absent husband's estate.  Lady Viviette Constantine is a beautiful dark-haired woman, nearly ten years older than Swithin, who has been left alone for several years by her husband who is off adventuring on safari in Africa.

Over time the two meet and young St. Cleeve introduces Lady Constantine to the majesty and awe of the night sky above the rural Wessex countryside.  Hardy's portrayal of the stars and planets, through Swithin's descriptions and patient tutelage of Lady Constantine as they huddle on top of the tower with his telescope, is one of the truly unique and particularly beautiful elements of this novel.  It really illustrates Hardy's fascination and reverence for the natural world around him.  Hardy obviously spent a lot of time researching the astronomical portions of his plot, as these sections are extremely well written and factually correct; both the descriptions of the night sky, and techniques that they use to view it, as well as the equipment Swithin constructs in the tower observatory.  Fundamentally then, it seems to me, the novel is a story of the relationship of the human species with the universe in which we reside, and a relationship at its most elemental level--the Love between two humans.

Ah, but it is a plot written by Hardy; therefore this growing love between Swithin and Lady Constantine must of necessity become complicated, doesn't it?  Well, yes it does, and here's where the similarities to Collins crop up.  There are mysterious reports concerning Lady Constantine's missing husband; Lady Constantine's scheming older brother, Louis, shows up; and the pompous Bishop of Melchester, Lord Helmsdale, begins meddling in everyone's affairs.  Oh, it gets good now, real good!  I couldn't put it down at all from about the novel's mid-point on.  I also found myself becoming quite attached to the characters, what few there are; and because there aren't that many, Hardy does a superb job of fleshing them out and bringing them to life on the page.

I want to share just a bit of Hardy's beautiful prose from the novel with you.  This is from a scene, late at night at the height of a violent windstorm that catches Lady Constantine and Swithin atop the old tower attempting to perform some astronomical observations

"Under any other circumstances Lady Constantine might have felt a nameless fear in thus sitting aloft on a lonely column, with a forest groaning under her feet, and paleolithic dead men feeding its roots; but the passionate decision stirred her pulses to an intensity beside which the ordinary tremors of feminine existence asserted themselves in vain.  The apocalyptic effect of the scene surrounding her was, indeed, not inharmonious, and afforded an appropriate background to her intentions.

After what seemed to her an interminable space of time, quick steps in the staircase became audible above the roar of the firs, and in a few instants St. Cleeve again stood by her."

Wow!  Was that not just awesome?  In just a few sentences, Hardy has managed to establish a connection between the raw power of Nature, the hundreds of generations of humans that have occupied this ancient landscape, and the genuine and palpable love that these two beings on the tower share for one another.  Great stuff, and vintage Thomas Hardy!  Find yourself a copy of this wonderful novel, and put it on your shelf and wait for a rainy day with no interruptions.  You'll soon find yourself completely swept away and engrossed in the lives of Swithin St. Cleeve and his love, the beautiful Lady Constantine.  This was a terrific novel, and I would give it 4.5 stars out of 5 stars.

Post Script--I actually found two copies of the novel, and presented one to my elderly father.  He has been a quite serious amateur astronomer most of his life.  He began reading it the day I gave it to him.  I can't wait to hear his reaction when he's finished.