Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with Miscellaneous Pieces

Автор

Томас Харди

Жанр

Зарубежная классика

Год написания книги

2017

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The other bowed, and left,
Crestfallen in sentiment, as one bereft
Of some fair object he had been moved to cherish,
By hands more deft.

And as he slept that night
The phantoms of the ensepulchred stood up-right
Before him, trembling that he had set him seeking
Their charnel-site.

And, as unknowing his ruth,
Asked as with terrors founded not on truth
Why he should want them. “Ha,” they hollowly hackered,
“You come, forsooth,

“By stealth to obliterate
Our graven worth, our chronicle, our date,
That our descendant may not gild the record
Of our past state,

“And that no sage may say
In pensive progress near where we decay:
‘This stone records a luminous line whose talents
Told in their day.’”

Upon the morrow he went
And to that town and churchyard never bent
His ageing footsteps till, some twelvemonths onward,
An accident

Once more detained him there;
And, stirred by hauntings, he must needs repair
To where the tomb was. Lo, it stood still wasting
In no man’s care.

“The travelled man you met
The last time,” said the sexton, “has not yet
Appeared again, though wealth he had in plenty.
– Can he forget?

“The architect was hired
And came here on smart summons as desired,
But never the descendant came to tell him
What he required.”

And so the tomb remained
Untouched, untended, crumbling, weather-stained,
And though the one-time foe was fain to right it
He still refrained.

“I’ll set about it when
I am sure he’ll come no more. Best wait till then.”
But so it was that never the stranger entered
That city again.

And the well-meaner died
While waiting tremulously unsatisfied
That no return of the family’s foreign scion
Would still betide.

And many years slid by,
And active church-restorers cast their eye
Upon the ancient garth and hoary building
The tomb stood nigh.

And when they had scraped each wall,
Pulled out the stately pews, and smartened all,
“It will be well,” declared the spruce church-warden,
“To overhaul

“And broaden this path where shown;
Nothing prevents it but an old tombstone
Pertaining to a family forgotten,
Of deeds unknown.

“Their names can scarce be read,
Depend on’t, all who care for them are dead.”
So went the tomb, whose shards were as path-paving
Distributed.

Over it and about
Men’s footsteps beat, and wind and water-spout,
Until the names, aforetime gnawed by weathers,
Were quite worn out.

So that no sage can say
In pensive progress near where they decay,
“This stone records a luminous line whose talents
Told in their day.”

“REGRET NOT ME”

Regret not me;
Beneath the sunny tree
I lie uncaring, slumbering peacefully.

Swift as the light
I flew my faery flight;
Ecstatically I moved, and feared no night.