Wessex Poems and Other Verses

All the vast various moils that mean a world alive.

Yet saw he something in the lives

Of those who'd ceased to live

That rounded them with majesty

Which living failed to give.

For incensed love breathes quick and dies,

When famished love a-lingering lies.

These purblind Doomsters had as readily strown

Blisses about my pilgrimage as pain.

O, doth a bird deprived of wings

Go earth-bound wilfully!

William Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,

Robert's kin, and John's, and Ned's,

And the Squire, and Lady Susan, lie in Mellstock churchyard now!

You may prate of your prowess in lusty times,

But as years gnaw inward you blink your bays,

And see too well your crimes!

"Gone," I call them, gone for good, that group of local hearts and heads;

Yet at mothy curfew-tide,

And at midnight when the noon-heat breathes it back from walls and leads, They've a way of whispering to me—fellow-wight who yet abide.

Numb as a vane that cankers on its point,

True to the wind that kissed ere canker came.

For winning love we win the risk of losing,

And losing love is as one's life were riven.

Love is lovelier

The more it shapes its moan in selfish-wise.

Those house them best who house for secrecy.

If but some vengeful god would call to me

From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing,

Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,

That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!"

I look into my glass,

And viewing wasting skin,

And say, ‘Would God it came to pass

My heart had shrunk as thin!’For then, I, undistrest

By hearts grown cold to me,

Could lonely wait my endless rest

With equanimity.But Time, to make me grieve,

Part steals, lets part abide;

And shakes this fragile frame at eve

With throbbings of noontide.

Like chastened children sitting silent in a school.

When Lawyers strive to heal a breach,

And Parsons practise what they preach.