Moments of Vision.

by Thomas Hardy.

MOMENTS OF VISION

That mirror Which makes of men a transparency, Who holds that mirror And bids us such a breast-bare spectacle see Of you and me?

That mirror Whose magic penetrates like a dart, Who lifts that mirror And throws our mind back on us, and our heart, Until we start?

That mirror Works well in these night hours of ache; Why in that mirror Are tincts we never see ourselves once take When the world is awake?

That mirror Can test each mortal when unaware; Yea, that strange mirror May catch his last thoughts, whole life foul or fair, Gla.s.sing it--where?

THE VOICE OF THINGS

Forty Augusts--aye, and several more--ago, When I paced the headlands loosed from dull employ, The waves huzza'd like a mult.i.tude below In the sway of an all-including joy Without cloy.

Blankly I walked there a double decade after, When thwarts had flung their toils in front of me, And I heard the waters wagging in a long ironic laughter At the lot of men, and all the vapoury Things that be.

Wheeling change has set me again standing where Once I heard the waves huzza at Lammas-tide; But they supplicate now--like a congregation there Who murmur the Confession--I outside, Prayer denied.

"WHY BE AT PAINS?"

(Wooer's Song)

Why be at pains that I should know You sought not me?

Do breezes, then, make features glow So rosily?

Come, the lit port is at our back, And the tumbling sea; Elsewhere the lampless uphill track To uncertainty!

O should not we two waifs join hands?

I am alone, You would enrich me more than lands By being my own.

Yet, though this facile moment flies, Close is your tone, And ere to-morrow's dewfall dries I plough the unknown.

"WE SAT AT THE WINDOW"

(Bournemouth, 1875)

We sat at the window looking out, And the rain came down like silken strings That Swithin's day. Each gutter and spout Babbled unchecked in the busy way Of witless things: Nothing to read, nothing to see Seemed in that room for her and me On Swithin's day.

We were irked by the scene, by our own selves; yes, For I did not know, nor did she infer How much there was to read and guess By her in me, and to see and crown By me in her.

Wasted were two souls in their prime, And great was the waste, that July time When the rain came down.

AFTERNOON SERVICE AT MELLSTOCK (Circa 1850)

On afternoons of drowsy calm We stood in the panelled pew, Singing one-voiced a Tate-and-Brady psalm To the tune of "Cambridge New."

We watched the elms, we watched the rooks, The clouds upon the breeze, Between the whiles of glancing at our books, And swaying like the trees.

So mindless were those outpourings! - Though I am not aware That I have gained by subtle thought on things Since we stood psalming there.

AT THE WICKET-GATE

There floated the sounds of church-chiming, But no one was nigh, Till there came, as a break in the loneness, Her father, she, I.

And we slowly moved on to the wicket, And downlooking stood, Till anon people pa.s.sed, and amid them We parted for good.

Greater, wiser, may part there than we three Who parted there then, But never will Fates colder-featured Hold sway there again.

Of the churchgoers through the still meadows No single one knew What a play was played under their eyes there As thence we withdrew.

IN A MUSEUM

I

Here's the mould of a musical bird long pa.s.sed from light, Which over the earth before man came was winging; There's a contralto voice I heard last night, That lodges in me still with its sweet singing.

II

Such a dream is Time that the coo of this ancient bird Has perished not, but is blent, or will be blending Mid visionless wilds of s.p.a.ce with the voice that I heard, In the full-fugued song of the universe unending.

EXETER.

APOSTROPHE TO AN OLD PSALM TUNE