"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.]

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)

***

Veteran's Day--11/11/11

On July 28, 2014, it will have been exactly one-hundred years since the beginning of the First World War.  This great war--"The War to End All Wars"--ended on the 'eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month' of 1918, and of the 70 million combatants involved in the four years of conflict, more than 9 million were killed!  My grandfather, a young U.S. Army officer, served with General Pershing's army in France in 1918, and I can remember him telling me stories about watching aerial dogfights between German and Allied airplanes.  He didn't talk much about any of the on-the-ground fighting that he experienced though.  I served in the United States Coast Guard from 1973 through 1977, and my oldest stepson is currently a Sergeant First-Class in the United States Army, and has done tours of duty in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  On this Veteran's Day, I ask you to remember the millions who've served their country, and especially those who've paid the ultimate price.  In turn, I salute and honor your family members and friends who have served, or are now serving our country in our nation's armed forces.

Great Britain paid a particularly high price during the First World War.  Virtually an entire generation of young Englishmen were killed, maimed, or were psychologically damaged during the four years of that horrific great war.  Many young British writers and poets were among those who enlisted and served their country, and many did not return.  For example, Hector Hugh Munro, better known as the author, 'Saki', an acknowledged master of the short story genre, was killed in action on November 13, 1916, during the Battle of the Somme.  Another young British officer, Charles Sorley, was killed in action at the Battle of Loos, in France, on October 13, 1915.  Found among Sorley's personal possessions following his death was the following poem that he had written--

When you see millions of the mouthless dead'
When you see millions of the mouthless dead
Across your dreams in pale battalions go,
Say not soft things as other men have said,
That you'll remember. For you need not so.
Give them not praise. For, deaf, how should they know
It is not curses heaped on each gashed head?
Nor tears. Their blind eyes see not your tears flow.
Nor honour. It is easy to be dead.
Say only this, 'They are dead.' Then add thereto,
'Yet many a better one has died before.'
Then, scanning all the o'ercrowded mass, should you
Perceive one face that you loved heretofore,
It is a spook. None wears the face you knew.
Great death has made all his for evermore.

Poignant to the point of being almost painful and hauntingly beautiful, this sonnet seems to me to be written in Homeric style.  Toward this end, have another look at the poem's Line 10--'Yet many a better one has died before.'  This is a direct allusion to a line in Book 21 of Homer's The Iliad when Priam's son, Lycaon, begs Achilles for mercy on the battlefield, and Achilles replies, Even Patroclus died, a far, far better man than you (Translation by Robert Fagles, Book 21, Line 120).

Charles Sorley may have been brutally killed on the battlefield, but his words live on in his eloquent poem, and his poem makes us recall all of those killed on the field of battle over the ages--even back as far 4,000 years to Homer's descriptions of the combat deaths of Patroclus and the young Trojan Prince, Lycaon.

***

A Poem for the Day: "Autumn" by Christina G. Rossetti

Here is a poem by one of my favorite Victorian poets, Christina Georgina Rossetti (1830-1894).  Christina was the younger sister of the PreRaphaelite poet and painter, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (at left, is his pencil and chalk portrait of his sister).  She was a prolific poet who, through the course of her life, wrote something over 1,000 poems, and is perhaps best known for her epic poem, Goblin Market (1859).  Also, about two years ago I read Jan Marsh's seminal biography of Rossetti entitled Christina Rossetti: A Literary Biography.  While it was tough to find a copy (my used copy came from Britain), it was well worth the effort (and money!) as it shed so much light on this lesser known, but very important poet.  If you're interested in learning more about Christina Rossetti and Marsh's wonderful biography, have a look at my book review in this earlier posting here.

The poem I'm posting is entitled Autumn and was written in April 1858.  I have always loved this poem for its introspection, vivid imagery, and similes.  For some reason, I have always kind of looked upon Rossetti's Autumn as being akin to Tennyson's The Lady of Shalott (originally written in 1832, but revised in 1842).  Obviously, Rossetti must have been very much aware of Tennyson's poetry (he was, after all, Poet Laureate during much of her life).  Anyway, without further ado, here is Christina Rossetti's poem--

***

AUTUMN

I dwell alone--I dwell alone, alone,
Whilst full my river flows down to the sea,
Gilded with flashing boats
That bring no friend to me:
O love-songs, gurgling from a hundred throats,
O love-pangs, let me be.

Fair fall the freighted boats which gold and stone
And spices bear to sea:
Slim, gleaming maidens swell their mellow notes,
Love-promising, entreating--
Ah! sweet, but fleeting--
Beneath the shivering, snow-white sails.
Hush! the wind flags and fails--
Hush! they will lie becalmed in sight of strand--
Sight of my strand, where I do dwell alone;
Their songs wake singing echoes in my land--
They cannot hear me moan.

One latest, solitary swallow flies
Across the sea, rough autumn-tempest tost,
Poor bird, shall it be lost?
Dropped down into this uncongenial sea,
With no kind eyes
To watch it while it dies,
Unguessed, uncared for, free:
Set free at last,
The short pang past,
In sleep, in death, in dreamless sleep locked fast.

Mine avenue is all a growth of oaks,
Some rent by thunder-strokes,
Some rustling leaves and acorns in the breeze:
Fair fall my fertile trees,
That rear their goodly heads, and live at ease.

A spider's web blocks all mine avenue;
He catches down and foolish painted flies,
That spider wary and wise.
Each morn it hangs a rainbow strung with dew
Betwixt boughs green with sap,
So fair, few creatures guess it is a trap:
I will not mar the web,
Tho' sad I am to see the small lives ebb.

It shakes--my trees shake--for a wind is roused
In cavern where it housed:
Each white and quivering sail,
Of boats among the water leaves
Hollows and strains in the full-throated gale:
Each maiden sings again--
Each languid maiden, whom the calm
Had lulled to sleep with rest and spice and balm,
Miles down my river to the sea
They float and wane,
Long miles away from me.

Perhaps they say: "She grieves,
Uplifted, like a beacon, on her tower."
Perhaps they say: "One hour
More, and we dance among the golden sheaves."
Perhaps they say: "One hour
More, and we stand,
Face to face, hand in hand;
Make haste, O slack gale, to the looked-for land!"

My trees are not in flower,
I have no bower,
And gusty creaks my tower,
And lonesome, very lonesome, is my strand.

(Composed, April 14, 1858)

***

The painting that I've attached to the right of the poem is by the famous American landscape painter, Thomas Moran (1837-1926), and is entitled A Scene on the Tohickon Creek: Autumn and was painted in 1868.  Please, please do 'click' on the painting and enjoy the larger view of this exquisite work of art!

Moran is one of my favorite landscape painters, and is one of the artists from the mid-19th century American artistic movement known as the "Hudson River School".  Other artists in this 'school' included, for example, Frederic Church, Thomas Cole, Albert Bierstadt, and Martin Johnson Heade.  The artists of the Hudson River School were influenced by Romanticism and the earlier artistic works of landscape painters like J.M.W. Turner and John Constable, as well as by the literary works of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Thomas Moran traveled out west with one of the early exploratory teams from the U.S. Geological Survey (the Hayden Survey, 1871) and made many beautiful sketches and paintings of the scenery that he encountered.  It was largely because of his landscapes and sketches being exhibited back east that Yellowstone National Park was created.  In fact, the U.S. Congress purchased several of his large canvasses that were then hung in the Capitol building for years (they are now in the Smithsonian Museum).  Some of Moran's paintings can currently be found in the Department of the Interior building, the Smithsonian, and in the Oval Office of the White House.

I have always very much admired the compositions and lighting conditions depicted in the landscape paintings of Moran, Bierstadt, Church, and Cole, and continue to strive to duplicate the qualities of those elements in my own photography.  Whether or not I have been successful is a determination I leave entirely to the judgment of the viewer.  If you're interested in taking a look at my current portfolio of landscape photography, please have a look here.

***

Literary Blog Hop: "What is your favorite poem and why?"

The folks over at The Blue Bookcase sponsor "The Literary Blog Hop," a weekly meme, that gives all of us who read and write about books an opportunity to find and make new friends, and exchange ideas.  This week's question was submitted by Gary at The Parrish Lantern.

What is your favorite poem and why?

I normally do not qualify answers to questions, but I'm making an exception here.  I consider myself quite the connoisseur and a serious student of poetry.  As many of you know, I post lots and lots of poetry here at ProSe.  I also have an extensive collection of poetry that I am continually delving into.

Okay, so why do I feel compelled to qualify my answer to Gary's question?  For me, it just isn't as simple as saying that this poem, or that poem, is my most favorite poem.  Depending upon my mood, time, or place, I can think of many, many poems that would, or could, be my favorite poem.  From the perspective of the most perfectly written poem that really packs a punch, I might be inclined to suggest that John Keats' La Belle Dame sans Merci. A Ballad rises to the top.  At another moment it might very well be Emily Dickinson's poem No. 712, Because I could not stop for Death--.

Be that as it may, at this moment in time my favorite poem is by Christina Georgina Rossetti, an English poet of the Victorian era.  She was the youngest sister of the Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet, Dante Gabriel Rossetti (at right is his pencil sketch of Christina).  Christina Rossetti was born in 1830, and died in 1895.  She was truly a prolific poet, writing something over 1,000 poems over the course of her life, and is perhaps best known for her epic poem, Goblin Market.

An Echo From Willowwood

"O ye, all ye that walk in Willowwood." D.G. Rosetti

Two gazed into a pool, he gazed and she,
Not hand in hand, yet heart in heart, I think,
Pale and reluctant on the water's brink
As on the brink of parting which must be.
Each eyed the other's aspect, she and he,
Each felt one hungering heart leap up and sink,
Each tasted bitterness which both must drink,
There on the brink of life's dividing sea.
Lilies upon the surface, deep below
Two wistful faces craving each for each,
Resolute and reluctant without speech: —
A sudden ripple made the faces flow
One moment joined, to vanish out of reach:
So those hearts joined, and ah! were parted so.

***

One of the things that I love so much about this poem is its relationship to the back-story.  This poem is an example of the poet utilizing his/her unique life experiences.  In An Echo from Willowwood, Christina is telling the story of the love between her brother, Dante, one of the founders of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and his wife, Lizzie Siddal.  At the same time, Christina has crafted her sonnet to play off of Dante's earlier 'Willowwood' sonnets that were written about his wife, who died in 1862 due to laudanum addiction. So the story goes, Lizzie had left sketches of herself and Dante looking into pools of water together; these sketches then inspired the poetry of both of the Rossetti siblings. Finally, you might also be interested to learn that Lizzie Siddal served as the model for Sir John Everett Millais's famous Pre-Raphaelite painting "Ophelia."  Somehow, I think that Christina has perfectly captured the tenderness and deep love that Dante and Lizzie shared, but I also think she very effectively touches upon the sadness to come.  To me, this is a meaningful, very beautiful and poignant poem.

***

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.]