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Wessex Poems and Other Verses

Thomas Hardy

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Section 1 of 22

WESSEX POEMS AND OTHER VERSES

by Thomas Hardy




Contents

Preface
The Temporary The All
Amabel
Hap
"In Vision I Roamed"
At a Bridal
Postponement
A Confession to a Friend in Trouble
Neutral Tones
She
Her Initials
Her Dilemma
Revulsion
She, To Him, I.
    "     "   II.
    "     "   III.
    "     "   IV.
Ditty
The Sergeant's Song
Valenciennes
San Sebastian
The Stranger's Song
The Burghers
Leipzig
The Peasant's Confession
The Alarm
Her Death and After
The Dance at the Phoenix
The Casterbridge Captains
A Sign-Seeker
My Cicely
Her Immortality
The Ivy-Wife
A Meeting with Despair
Unknowing
Friends Beyond
To Outer Nature
Thoughts of Phena
Middle-Age Enthusiasms
In a Wood
To a Lady
To an Orphan Child
Nature's Questioning
The Impercipient
At An Inn
The Slow Nature
In a Eweleaze Near Weatherbury
ADDITIONS:
   The Fire at Tranter Sweatley's
   Heiress and Architect
   The Two Men
   Lines
   "I Look into my Glass"




PREFACE

Of the miscellaneous collection of verse that follows, only four
pieces have been published, though many were written long ago, and
other partly written.  In some few cases the verses were turned into
prose and printed as such, it having been unanticipated at that time
that they might see the light.

Whenever an ancient and legitimate word of the district, for which
there was no equivalent in received English, suggested itself as the
most natural, nearest, and often only expression of a thought, it has
been made use of, on what seemed good grounds.

The pieces are in a large degree dramatic or personative in
conception; and this even where they are not obviously so.

The dates attached to some of the poems do not apply to the rough
sketches given in illustration, which have been recently made, and,
as may be surmised, are inserted for personal and local reasons
rather than for their intrinsic qualities.

T. H.
September 1898.




THE TEMPORARY THE ALL



Change and chancefulness in my flowering youthtime,
Set me sun by sun near to one unchosen;
Wrought us fellow-like, and despite divergence,
   Friends interlinked us.

"Cherish him can I while the true one forthcome -
Come the rich fulfiller of my prevision;
Life is roomy yet, and the odds unbounded."
   So self-communed I.

Thwart my wistful way did a damsel saunter,
Fair, the while unformed to be all-eclipsing;
"Maiden meet," held I, "till arise my forefelt
   Wonder of women."

Long a visioned hermitage deep desiring,
Tenements uncouth I was fain to house in;
"Let such lodging be for a breath-while," thought I,
   "Soon a more seemly.

"Then, high handiwork will I make my life-deed,
Truth and Light outshow; but the ripe time pending,
Intermissive aim at the thing sufficeth."
   Thus I . . . But lo, me!

Mistress, friend, place, aims to be bettered straightway,
Bettered not has Fate or my hand's achieving;
Sole the showance those of my onward earth-track -
   Never transcended!

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