The Complete Poetical Works. Томас Харди
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Название: The Complete Poetical Works

Автор: Томас Харди

Издательство: Bookwire

Жанр: Языкознание

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isbn: 9788027241361

isbn:

СКАЧАТЬ No burning faith I find;

       The deeper thinkers sneer and smirk,

       And give my toil no mind;

       From nod and wink

       I read they think

       That I am fool and blind.

      VIII

      My gift to God seems futile, quite;

       The world moves as erstwhile;

       And powerful wrong on feeble right

       Tramples in olden style.

       My faith burns down,

       I see no crown;

       But Cares, and Griefs, and Guile.

      IX

      So now, the remedy? Yea, this:

       I gently swing the door

       Here, of my fane—no soul to wis—

       And cross the patterned floor

       To the rood-screen

       That stands between

       The nave and inner chore.

      X

      The rich red windows dim the moon,

       But little light need I;

       I mount the prie-dieu, lately hewn

       From woods of rarest dye;

       Then from below

       My garment, so,

       I draw this cord, and tie

      XI

      One end thereof around the beam

       Midway ’twixt Cross and truss:

       I noose the nethermost extreme,

       And in ten seconds thus

       I journey hence—

       To that land whence

       No rumour reaches us.

      XII

      Well: Here at morn they’ll light on one

       Dangling in mockery

       Of what he spent his substance on

       Blindly and uselessly! . . .

       “He might,” they’ll say,

       “Have built, some way.

       A cheaper gallows-tree!”

      The Lost Pyx

       Table of Contents

      Some say the spot is banned; that the pillar Cross-and-Hand

       Attests to a deed of hell;

       But of else than of bale is the mystic tale

       That ancient Vale-folk tell.

      Ere Cernel’s Abbey ceased hereabout there dwelt a priest,

       (In later life sub-prior

       Of the brotherhood there, whose bones are now bare

       In the field that was Cernel choir).

      One night in his cell at the foot of yon dell

       The priest heard a frequent cry:

       “Go, father, in haste to the cot on the waste,

       And shrive a man waiting to die.”

      Said the priest in a shout to the caller without,

       “The night howls, the tree-trunks bow;

       One may barely by day track so rugged a way,

       And can I then do so now?”

      No further word from the dark was heard,

       And the priest moved never a limb;

       And he slept and dreamed; till a Visage seemed

       To frown from Heaven at him.

      In a sweat he arose; and the storm shrieked shrill,

       And smote as in savage joy;

       While High-Stoy trees twanged to Bubb-Down Hill,

       And Bubb-Down to High-Stoy.

      There seemed not a holy thing in hail,

       Nor shape of light or love,

       From the Abbey north of Blackmore Vale

       To the Abbey south thereof.

      Yet he plodded thence through the dark immense,

       And with many a stumbling stride

       Through copse and briar climbed nigh and nigher

       To the cot and the sick man’s side.

      When he would have unslung the Vessels uphung

       To his arm in the steep ascent,

       He made loud moan: the Pyx was gone

       Of the Blessed Sacrament.

      Then in dolorous dread he beat his head:

       “No earthly prize or pelf

       Is the thing I’ve lost in tempest tossed,

       But the Body of Christ Himself!”

      He thought of the Visage his dream revealed,

       And turned towards whence he came,

       Hands groping the ground along foot-track and field,

       And head in a heat of shame.

      Till here on the hill, betwixt vill and vill,

       He noted a clear straight ray

       Stretching down from the sky to a spot hard by,

       Which shone with the light of day.

      And gathered around СКАЧАТЬ