Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with Miscellaneous Pieces. Томас Харди

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      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.

AFTER THE VISIT

       (To F. E. D.)

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      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.

TO MEET, OR OTHERWISE

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      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

       Groan in their bondage till oblivion supervene.

      So, to the one long-sweeping symphony

       From times remote

       Till now, of human tenderness, shall we

       Supply one note,

       Small and untraced, yet that will ever be

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