Thomas Hardy – Darkling, I Listen

The House of Silence by Thomas Hardy

That is a quiet place –
That house in the trees with the shady lawn.“
”–If, child, you knew what there goes on
You would not call it a quiet place.
Why, a phantom abides there, the last of its race,
And a brain spins there till dawn.“

“But I see nobody there, –
Nobody moves about the green,
Or wanders the heavy trees between.”
“–Ah, that’s because you do not bear
The visioning powers of souls who dare
To pierce the material screen.

“Morning, noon, and night,
Mid those funereal shades that seem
The uncanny scenery of a dream,
Figures dance to a mind with sight,
And music and laughter like floods of light
Make all the precincts gleam.

“It is a poet’s bower,
Through which there pass, in fleet arrays,
Long teams of all the years and days,
Of joys and sorrows, of earth and heaven,
That meet mankind in its ages seven,
An aion in an hour.”

The Glimpse by Thomas Hardy

She sped through the door

And, following in haste,

And stirred to the core,

I entered hot-faced;

But I could not find her,

No sign was behind her.

‘Where is she?’ I said:

“Who?” they asked that sat there;

“Not a soul’s come in sight.”

‘A maid with red hair.’

“Ah.” They paled. “She is dead.

People see her at night,

But you are the first

On whom she has burst

In the keen common light.”
It was ages ago,

When I was quite strong:

I have waited since,—O,

I have waited so long!

Yea, I set me to own

The house, where now lone

I dwell in void rooms

Booming hollow as tombs!

But I never come near her,

Though nightly I hear her.

And my cheek has grown thin

And my hair has grown gray

With this waiting therein;

But she still keeps away!

The Shadow On The Stone by Thomas Hardy

I went by the Druid stone
That broods in the garden white and lone,
And I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows
That at some moments fall thereon
From the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing,
And they shaped in my imagining
To the shade that a well-known head and shoulders
Threw there when she was gardening.

I thought her behind my back,
Yea, her I long had learned to lack,
And I said: ‘I am sure you are standing behind me,
Though how do you get into this old track?’
And there was no sound but the fall of a leaf
As a sad response; and to keep down grief
I would not turn my head to discover
That there was nothing in my belief.

Yet I wanted to look and see
That nobody stood at the back of me;
But I thought once more: ‘Nay, I’ll not unvision
A shape which, somehow, there may be.’
So I went on softly from the glade,
And left her behind me throwing her shade,
As she were indeed an apparition—
My head unturned lest my dream should fade.

Something Tapped by Thomas Hardy

Something tapped on the pane of my room

When there was never a trace

Of wind or rain, and I saw in the gloom

My weary Belovèd’s face.
“O I am tired of waiting,” she said,

“Night, morn, noon, afternoon;

So cold it is in my lonely bed,

And I thought you would join me soon!”
I rose and neared the window-glass,

But vanished thence had she:

Only a pallid moth, alas,

Tapped at the pane for me.

At The Piano by Thomas Hardy

A Woman was playing,
A man looking on;
And the mould of her face,
And her neck, and her hair,
Which the rays fell upon
Of the two candles there,
Sent him mentally straying
In some fancy-place
Where pain had no trace.
A cowled Apparition
Came pushing between;
And her notes seemed to sigh;
And the lights to burn pale,
As a spell numbed the scene.
But the maid saw no bale,
And the man no monition;
And Time laughed awry,
And the Phantom hid nigh.

I Say I’ll Seek Her by Thomas Hardy

I say, “I’ll seek her side
Ere hindrance interposes;”
But eve in midnight closes,
And here I still abide.

When darkness wears I see
Her sad eyes in a vision;
They ask, “What indecision
Detains you, Love, from me? –

“The creaking hinge is oiled,
I have unbarred the backway,
But you tread not the trackway;
And shall the thing be spoiled?

“Far cockcrows echo shrill,
The shadows are abating,
And I am waiting, waiting;
But O, you tarry still!”

On A Heath by Thomas Hardy

I could hear a gown-skirt rustling

Before I could see her shape,

Rustling through the heather

That wove the common’s drape,

On that evening of dark weather

When I hearkened, lips agape.
And the town-shine in the distance

Did but baffle here the sight,

And then a voice flew forward:

“Dear, is’t you? I fear the night!”

And the herons flapped to norward

In the firs upon my right.
There was another looming

Whose life we did not see’

There was one stilly blooming

Full nigh to where walked we ;

There was a shade entombing

All that was bright of me.

After a Journey by Thomas Hardy

Hereto I come to view a voiceless ghost;

Whither, O whither will its whim now draw me?

Up the cliff, down, till I’m lonely, lost,

And the unseen waters’ ejaculations awe me.

Where you will next be there’s no knowing,

Facing round about me everywhere,

With your nut-coloured hair,

And gray eyes, and rose-flush coming and going.
Yes: I have re-entered your olden haunts at last;

Through the years, through the dead scenes I have tracked you;

What have you now found to say of our past—

Scanned across the dark space wherein I have lacked you?

Summer gave us sweets, but autumn wrought division?

Things were not lastly as firstly well

With us twain, you tell?

But all’s closed now, despite Time’s derision.
I see what you are doing: you are leading me on

To the spots we knew when we haunted here together,

The waterfall, above which the mist-bow shone

At the then fair hour in the then fair weather,

And the cave just under, with a voice still so hollow

That it seems to call out to me from forty years ago,

When you were all aglow,

And not the thin ghost that I now frailly follow!
Ignorant of what there is flitting here to see,

The waked birds preen and the seals flop lazily;

Soon you have, Dear, to vanish from me,

For the stars close their shutters and the dawn whitens hazily.

Trust me, I mind not, though Life lours,

The bringing me here; nay, bring me here again!

I am just the same as when

Our days were a joy, and our paths through flowers.

Her Haunting-Ground by Thomas Hardy

Can it be so? It must be so,
That visions have not ceased to be
In this the chiefest sanctuary
Of her whose form we used to know.
– Nay, but her dust is far away,
And “where her dust is, shapes her shade,
If spirit clings to flesh,” they say:
Yet here her life-parts most were played!

Her voice explored this atmosphere,
Her foot impressed this turf around,
Her shadow swept this slope and mound,
Her fingers fondled blossoms here;
And so, I ask, why, why should she
Haunt elsewhere, by a slighted tomb,
When here she flourished sorrow-free,
And, save for others, knew no gloom?

The Voice by Thomas Hardy

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,

Saying that now you are not as you were

When you had changed from the one who was all to me,

But as at first, when our day was fair.
Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then,

Standing as when I drew near to the town

Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,

Even to the original air-blue gown!
Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness

Travelling across the wet mead to me here,

You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,

Heard no more again far or near?
Thus I; faltering forward,

Leaves around me falling,

Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,

And the woman calling.