Thomas Hardy

Why did you give no hint that night That quickly after the morrow's dawn, And calmly, as if indifferent quite, You would close your term here, up and be gone Where I could not follow With wing of swallow

The Immanent Will that stirs and urges everything.

In a solitude of the sea Deep from human vanity, And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she. Steel chambers, late the pyres Of her salamandrine fires, Cold currents thrid, and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres. Over the mirrors …

We two kept house, the Past and I, The Past and I; I tended while it hovered nigh, Leaving me never alone.

When I set out for Lyonnesse, A hundred miles away, The rime was on the spray, And starlight lit my lonesomeness When I set out for Lyonnesse A hundred miles away.

Let me enjoy the earth no less Because the all-enacting Might That fashioned forth its loveliness Had other aims than my delight.

Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down You'd treat if met where any bar is, Or help to half-a-crown.

Here by the baring bough Raking up leaves, Often I ponder how Springtime deceives,— I, an old woman now, Raking up leaves.

The victors and the vanquished then the storm it tossed and tore, As hard they strove, those worn-out men, upon that surly shore; Dead Nelson and his half-dead crew, his foes from near and far, Were rolled together on the deep that night …

My argument is that War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading.

Ere systemed suns were globed and lit The slaughters of the race were writ.

Aggressive Fancy working spells Upon a mind o’erwrought.

A local thing called Christianity.

What of the Immanent Will and its designs? It works unconsciously as heretofore, External artistries in circumstance.

Why doth IT so and so, and ever so, This viewless, voiceless Turner of the Wheel?

It works unconsciously, as heretofore, Eternal artistries in Circumstance.

O memory, where is now my youth, Who used to say that life was truth?

Con the dead page as ’twere live love: press on! Cold wisdom’s words will ease thy track for thee.

My ardours for emprize nigh lost Since Life has bared its bones to me, I shrink to seek a modern coast Whose riper times have yet to be; Where the new regions claim them free From that long drip of human tears

Time’s central city, Rome.

The world-imprinting power of perished Rome.

When shall the saner softer polities Whereof we dream, have play in each proud land, And patriotism, grown Godlike, scorn to stand Bondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas?

And feign like truth, for one mad day, That Earth is Paradise?

A shaded lamp and a waving blind, And the beat of a clock from a distant floor: On this scene enter—winged, horned, and spined— A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore; While ’mid my page there idly stands A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands...