Book: Wessex Poems and Other Verses

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.

• Amabel

  I MARKED her ruined hues,
  Her custom-straitened views,

  32 lines
• In Vision I Roamed

  IN vision I roamed the flashing Firmament,
  So fierce in blazon that the Night waxed wan,

  14 lines, 1 comment
• In A Eweleaze Near Weatherbury

  THE years have gathered grayly
  Since I danced upon this leaze

  24 lines
• At A Bridal

  WHEN you paced forth, to wait maternity,
  A dream of other offspring held my mind,

  14 lines
• Friends Beyond

  WILLIAM Dewy, Tranter Reuben, Farmer Ledlow late at plough,
  Robert's kin, and John's, and Ned's,

  41 lines
• Postponement

  SNOW-BOUND in woodland, a mournful word,
  Dropt now and then from the bill of a bird,

  16 lines, 1 comment
• In A Wood

  Pale beech and pine-tree blue, 
    Set in one clay, 

  43 lines
• A Confession To A Friend In Trouble

  YOUR troubles shrink not, though I feel them less
        Here, far away, than when I tarried near;

  15 lines, 2 comments
• Nature's Questioning

  WHEN I look forth at dawning, pool,
  Field, flock, and lonely tree,

  28 lines
• Neutral Tones

  WE stood by a pond that winter day,
  And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,

  16 lines, 2 comments
• I Look Into My Glass

      I LOOK into my glass,
        And view my wasting skin,

  13 lines, 1 comment
• Her Dilemma

  THE two were silent in a sunless church,
  Whose mildewed walls, uneven paving-stones,

  16 lines, 3 comments
• She, To Him, III

  I will be faithful to thee; aye, I will! 
    And Death shall choose me with a wondering eye 

  16 lines, 1 comment
• Revulsion

  THOUGH I waste watches framing words to fetter
  Some spirit to mine own in clasp and kiss,

  14 lines
• Middle-Age Enthusiasms

  We passed where flag and flower
  Signalled a jocund throng;

  24 lines
• Ditty

  BENEATH a knap where flown
  Nestlings play,

  45 lines
• At An Inn

  WHEN we as strangers sought
  Their catering care,

  40 lines, 1 comment
• The Sergeant's Song

  WHEN Lawyers strive to heal a breach,
  And Parsons practise what they preach;

  22 lines
• The Two Men

  THERE were two youths of equal age,
  Wit, station, strength, and parentage;

  105 lines
• Valenciennes

  We trenched, we trumpeted and drummed,
  And from our mortars tons of iron hummed

  56 lines
• Thoughts Of Phena

  Not a line of her writing have I
  Not a thread of her hair,

  25 lines
• San Sebastian

  Why Sergeant, stray on the Ivel Way,
  As though at home there were spectres rife?

  70 lines
• She, To Him, I

  When you shall see me lined by tool of Time, 
    My lauded beauties carried off from me, 

  15 lines
• The Stranger's Song

  O My trade it is the rarest one,
  Simple shepherds all--

  15 lines, 1 comment
• Unknowing

  WHEN, soul in soul reflected,
  We breathed an æthered air,

  32 lines
• The Burghers

  THE sun had wheeled from Grey's to Dammer's Crest,
  And still I mused on that Thing imminent:

  69 lines
• To Outer Nature

  SHOW thee as I thought thee
  When I early sought thee,

  31 lines
• Leipzig

  "Old Norbert with the flat blue cap--
  A German said to be--

  144 lines
• To A Lady

  Offended by a Book of the Writer's
  NOW that my page upcloses, doo

  15 lines
• The Alarm

  In a ferny byway
  Near the great South-Wessex Highway,

  117 lines
• The Impercipient

  That from this bright believing band
  An outcast I should be,

  33 lines
• Her Death And After

  'TWAS a death-bed summons, and forth I went
  By the way of the Western Wall, so drear

  135 lines
• The Slow Nature

  "THY husband--poor, poor Heart!--is dead--
  Dead, out by Moreford Rise;

  32 lines
• The Dance At The Phoenix

  TO Jenny came a gentle youth
  From inland leazes lone;

  161 lines
• Heiress And Architect

  She sought the Studios, beckoning to her side
  An arch-designer, for she planned to build.

  61 lines
• The Casterbridge Captains

  THREE captains went to Indian wars,
  And only one returned:

  28 lines
• Lines

  BEFORE we part to alien thoughts and aims,
  Permit the one brief word the occasion claims;

  40 lines
• A Sign-Seeker

  I MARK the months in liveries dank and dry,
  The day-tides many-shaped and hued;

  48 lines
• The Temporary The All

  CHANGE and chancefulness in my flowering youthtime,
  Set me sun by sun near to one unchosen;

  30 lines
• My Cicely

  "Alive?"--And I leapt in my wonder,
  Was faint of my joyance

  124 lines
• Her Initials

  Upon a poet’s page I wrote
  Of old two letters of her name;

  8 lines, 2 comments
• Her Immortality

  UPON a noon I pilgrimed through
  A pasture, mile by mile,

  56 lines
• The Peasant's Confession

  Good Father!… ’Twas an eve in middle June,
  And war was waged anew

  174 lines
• The Ivy-Wife

  I LONGED to love a full-boughed beech
  And be as high as he:

  24 lines
• She, To Him, II

  Perhaps, long hence, when I have passed away,
    Some other’s feature, accent, thought like mine, 

  15 lines
• A Meeting With Despair

  AS evening shaped I found me on a moor
  Which sight could scarce sustain:

  28 lines
• To An Orphan Child

  Ah, child, thou art but half thy darling mother’s; 
    Hers couldst thou wholly be, 

  16 lines

• By me, right now

  Adding your comment:

Online: 239

All online members

239 visitors