Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with Miscellaneous Pieces. Thomas Hardy

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         Over the mirrors meant

         To glass the opulent

      The sea-worm crawls – grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.

         Jewels in joy designed

         To ravish the sensuous mind

      Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.

         Dim moon-eyed fishes near

         Gaze at the gilded gear

      And query: “What does this vaingloriousness down here?”.

         Well: while was fashioning

         This creature of cleaving wing,

      The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything

         Prepared a sinister mate

         For her – so gaily great —

      A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.

         And as the smart ship grew

         In stature, grace, and hue,

      In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.

         Alien they seemed to be:

         No mortal eye could see

      The intimate welding of their later history,

         Or sign that they were bent

         By paths coincident

      On being anon twin halves of one august event,

         Till the Spinner of the Years

         Said “Now!”  And each one hears,

      And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.

      We two kept house, the Past and I,

         The Past and I;

      I tended while it hovered nigh,

         Leaving me never alone.

      It was a spectral housekeeping

         Where fell no jarring tone,

      As strange, as still a housekeeping

         As ever has been known.

      As daily I went up the stair

         And down the stair,

      I did not mind the Bygone there —

         The Present once to me;

      Its moving meek companionship

         I wished might ever be,

      There was in that companionship

         Something of ecstasy.

      It dwelt with me just as it was,

         Just as it was

      When first its prospects gave me pause

         In wayward wanderings,

      Before the years had torn old troths

         As they tear all sweet things,

      Before gaunt griefs had torn old troths

         And dulled old rapturings.

      And then its form began to fade,

         Began to fade,

      Its gentle echoes faintlier played

         At eves upon my ear

      Than when the autumn’s look embrowned

         The lonely chambers here,

      The autumn’s settling shades embrowned

         Nooks that it haunted near.

      And so with time my vision less,

         Yea, less and less

      Makes of that Past my housemistress,

         It dwindles in my eye;

      It looms a far-off skeleton

         And not a comrade nigh,

      A fitful far-off skeleton

         Dimming as days draw by.

         Come again to the place

      Where your presence was as a leaf that skims

      Down a drouthy way whose ascent bedims

         The bloom on the farer’s face.

         Come again, with the feet

      That were light on the green as a thistledown ball,

      And those mute ministrations to one and to all

         Beyond a man’s saying sweet.

         Until then the faint scent

      Of the bordering flowers swam unheeded away,

      And I marked not the charm in the changes of day

         As the cloud-colours came and went.

         Through the dark corridors

      Your walk was so soundless I did not know

      Your form from a phantom’s of long ago

         Said to pass on the ancient floors,

         Till you drew from the shade,

      And I saw the large luminous living eyes

      Regard me in fixed inquiring-wise

         As those of a soul that weighed,

         Scarce consciously,

      The eternal question of what Life was,

      And why we were there, and by whose strange laws

         That which mattered most could not be.

      Whether to sally and see thee, girl of my dreams,

         Or whether to stay

      And see thee not!  How vast the difference seems

         Of Yea from Nay

      Just now.  Yet this same sun will slant its beams

         At no far day

      On our two mounds, and then what will the difference weigh!

      Yet I will see thee, maiden dear, and make

         The most I can

      Of what remains to us amid this brake Cimmerian

      Through which we grope, and from whose thorns we ache,

         While still we scan

      Round our frail faltering progress for some path or plan.

      By briefest meeting something sure is won;

         It will have been:

      Nor God nor Daemon can undo the done,

         Unsight the seen,

      Make muted music be as unbegun,

         Though things terrene

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