Thomas Hardy

Wessex Poems and Other Verses Thomas Hardy

WHEN you paced forth, to wait maternity, A dream of other offspring held my mind, Compounded of us twain as Love designed; Rare forms, that corporate now will never be!Should I, too, wed as slave to Mode's decree, And each thus found apart, of false desire, A stolid line, whom no high aims will fireAs had fired ours could ever have mingled we; And, grieved that lives so matched should mis-compose, Each mourn the double waste; and question dareTo the Great Dame whence incarnation flows. Why those high-purposed children never were: What will she answer? That she does not careIf the race all such sovereign types unknows.1866.9POSTPONEMENTSNOW-BOUND in woodland, a mournful word, Dropt now and then from the bill of a bird, Reached me on wind-wafts; and thus I heard, Wearily waiting: -"I planned her a nest in a leafless tree, But the passers eyed and twitted me, And said: 'How reckless a bird is he, Cheerily mating!'"Fear-filled, I stayed me till summer-tide, In lewth of leaves to throne her bride; But alas! her love for me waned and died, Wearily waiting."Ah, had I been like some I see, Born to an evergreen nesting-tree, None had eyed and twitted me, Cheerily mating!"1866.10A CONFESSION TO A FRIEND IN TROUBLEYOUR troubles shrink not, though I feel them lessHere, far away, than when I tarried near; I even smile old smiles-with listlessness-Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries mere. A thought too strange to house within my brainHaunting its outer precincts I discern: -That I will not show zeal again to learnYour griefs, and sharing them, renew my pain . . . It goes, like murky bird or buccaneerThat shapes its lawless figure on the main, And each new impulse tends to make outfleeThe unseemly instinct that had lodgment here; Yet, comrade old, can bitterer knowledge beThan that, though banned, such