Time's Laughingstocks, and Other Verses

Автор

Томас Харди

Жанр

Зарубежная классика

Год написания книги

2017

<< 1 ... 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 ... 44 >>

На страницу:

Перейти

12 из 44

Настройки чтения

Размер шрифта

Высота строк

Поля

There was no tragic transit,
No catch of breath,
When silent seasons inched me
On to this death.

– A Troubadour-youth I rambled
With Life for lyre,
The beats of being raging
In me like fire.

But when I practised eyeing
The goal of men,
It iced me, and I perished
A little then.

When passed my friend, my kinsfolk
Through the Last Door,
And left me standing bleakly,
I died yet more;

And when my Love’s heart kindled
In hate of me,
Wherefore I knew not, died I
One more degree.

And if when I died fully
I cannot say,
And changed into the corpse-thing
I am to-day;

Yet is it that, though whiling
The time somehow
In walking, talking, smiling,
I live not now.

MORE LOVE LYRICS

1967

In five-score summers! All new eyes,
New minds, new modes, new fools, new wise;
New woes to weep, new joys to prize;
With nothing left of me and you

In that live century’s vivid view
Beyond a pinch of dust or two;
A century which, if not sublime,
Will show, I doubt not, at its prime,

A scope above this blinkered time.
– Yet what to me how far above?
For I would only ask thereof
That thy worm should be my worm, Love!

    16 Westbourne Park Villas, 1867.

HER DEFINITION

I lingered through the night to break of day,
Nor once did sleep extend a wing to me,
Intently busied with a vast array
Of epithets that should outfigure thee.

Full-featured terms – all fitless – hastened by,
And this sole speech remained: “That maiden mine!” —
Debarred from due description then did I
Perceive the indefinite phrase could yet define.

As common chests encasing wares of price
Are borne with tenderness through halls of state,
For what they cover, so the poor device
Of homely wording I could tolerate,
Knowing its unadornment held as freight
The sweetest image outside Paradise.

    W. P. V.,
    Summer: 1866.

THE DIVISION

Rain on the windows, creaking doors,
With blasts that besom the green,
And I am here, and you are there,
And a hundred miles between!

O were it but the weather, Dear,
O were it but the miles
That summed up all our severance,
There might be room for smiles.

But that thwart thing betwixt us twain,
Which nothing cleaves or clears,
Is more than distance, Dear, or rain,
And longer than the years!

    1893.

ON THE DEPARTURE PLATFORM