The Complete Poetical Works. Томас Харди
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Название: The Complete Poetical Works
Автор: Томас Харди
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 9788027241361
isbn:
And her—her whose name had once opened
My heart as a key—
I’d looked on, unknowing, and witnessed
Her jests with the tapsters,
Her liquor-fired face, her thick accents
In naming her fee.
“O God, why this seeming derision!”
I cried in my anguish:
“O once Loved, O fair Unforgotten—
That Thing—meant it thee!
“Inurned and at peace, lost but sainted,
Were grief I could compass;
Depraved—’tis for Christ’s poor dependent
A cruel decree!”
I backed on the Highway; but passed not
The hostel. Within there
Too mocking to Love’s re-expression
Was Time’s repartee!
Uptracking where Legions had wayfared,
By cromlechs unstoried,
And lynchets, and sepultured Chieftains,
In self-colloquy,
A feeling stirred in me and strengthened
That she was not my Love, But she of the garth, who lay rapt in Her long reverie.
And thence till to-day I persuade me
That this was the true one;
That Death stole intact her young dearness
And innocency.
Frail-witted, illuded they call me;
I may be. ’Tis better
To dream than to own the debasement
Of sweet Cicely.
Moreover I rate it unseemly
To hold that kind Heaven
Could work such device—to her ruin
And my misery.
So, lest I disturb my choice vision,
I shun the West Highway,
Even now, when the knaps ring with rhythms
From blackbird and bee;
And feel that with slumber half-conscious
She rests in the church-hay,
Her spirit unsoiled as in youth-time
When lovers were we.
Her Immortality
Upon a noon I pilgrimed through
A pasture, mile by mile,
Unto the place where I last saw
My dead Love’s living smile.
And sorrowing I lay me down
Upon the heated sod:
It seemed as if my body pressed
The very ground she trod.
I lay, and thought; and in a trance
She came and stood me by—
The same, even to the marvellous ray
That used to light her eye.
“You draw me, and I come to you,
My faithful one,” she said,
In voice that had the moving tone
It bore ere breath had fled.
She said: “’Tis seven years since I died:
Few now remember me;
My husband clasps another bride;
My children’s love has she.
“My brethren, sisters, and my friends
Care not to meet my sprite:
Who prized me most I did not know
Till I passed down from sight.”
I said: “My days are lonely here;
I need thy smile alway:
I’ll use this night my ball or blade,
And join thee ere the day.”
A tremor stirred her tender lips,
Which parted to dissuade:
“That cannot be, O friend,” she cried;
“Think, I am but a Shade!
“A Shade but in its mindful ones
Has immortality;
By living, me you keep alive,
By dying you slay me.
“In you resides my single power
Of sweet continuance here;
On your fidelity I count
Through many a coming year.”
—I started through me at her plight,
So suddenly confessed:
Dismissing late distaste for life,
I craved its bleak unrest.
“I will not die, my One of all!—
To lengthen out thy days
I’ll guard me from minutest harms