Moments of Vision

MOMENTS OF VISION AND MISCELLANEOUS VERSES
by Thomas Hardy
Contents:
Moments of Vision?The Voice of Things?"Why be at pains?"?"We sat at the window"?Afternoon Service at Mellstock?At the Wicket-gate?In a Museum?Apostrophe to an Old Psalm Tune?At the Word "Farewell"?First Sight of Her and After?The Rival?Heredity?"You were the sort that men forget"?She, I, and They?Near Lanivet, 1872?Joys of Memory?To the Moon?Copying Architecture in an Old Minster?To Shakespeare?Quid hic agis??On a Midsummer Eve?Timing Her?Before Knowledge?The Blinded Bird?"The wind blew words"?The Faded Face?The Riddle?The Duel?At Mayfair Lodgings?To my Father's Violin?The Statue of Liberty?The Background and the Figure?The Change?Sitting on the Bridge?The Young Churchwarden?"I travel as a phantom now"?Lines to a Movement in Mozart's E-flat Symphony?"In the seventies"?The Pedigree?This Heart. A Woman's Dream?Where they lived?The Occultation?Life laughs Onward?The Peace-offering?"Something tapped"?The Wound?A Merrymaking in Question?"I said and sang her excellence"?A January Night. 1879?A Kiss?The Announcement?The Oxen?The Tresses?The Photograph?On a Heath?An Anniversary?"By the Runic Stone"?The Pink Frock?Transformations?In her Precincts?The Last Signal?The House of Silence?Great Things?The Chimes?The Figure in the Scene?"Why did I sketch"?Conjecture?The Blow?Love the Monopolist?At Middle-field Gate in February?The Youth who carried a Light?The Head above the Fog?Overlooking the River Stour?The Musical Box?On Sturminster Foot-bridge?Royal Sponsors?Old Furniture?A Thought in Two Moods?The Last Performance?"You on the tower"?The Interloper?Logs on the Hearth?The Sunshade?The Ageing House?The Caged Goldfinch?At Madame Tussaud's in Victorian Years?The Ballet?The Five Students?The Wind's Prophecy?During Wind and Rain?He prefers her Earthly?The Dolls?Molly gone?A Backward Spring?Looking Across?At a Seaside Town in 1869?The Glimpse?The Pedestrian?"Who's in the next room?"?At a Country Fair?The Memorial Brass: 186-?Her Love-birds?Paying Calls?The Upper Birch-Leaves?"It never looks like summer"?Everything comes?The Man with a Past?He fears his Good Fortune?He wonders about Himself?Jubilate?He revisits his First School?"I thought, my heart"?Fragment?Midnight on the Great Western?Honeymoon Time at an Inn?The Robin?"I rose and went to Rou'tor town"?The Nettles?In a Waiting-room?The Clock-winder?Old Excursions?The Masked Face?In a Whispering Gallery?The Something that saved Him?The Enemy's Portrait?Imaginings?On the Doorstep?Signs and Tokens?Paths of Former Time?The Clock of the Years?At the Piano?The Shadow on the Stone?In the Garden?The Tree and the Lady?An Upbraiding?The Young Glass-stainer?Looking at a Picture on an Anniversary?The Choirmaster's Burial?The Man who forgot?While drawing in a Churchyard?"For Life I had never cared greatly"
POEMS OF WAR AND PATRIOTISM:?"Men who march away" (Song of the Soldiers)?His Country?England to Germany in 1914?On the Belgian Expatriation?An Appeal to America on behalf of the Belgian Destitute?The Pity of It?In Time of Wars and Tumults?In Time of "the Breaking of nations"?Cry of the Homeless?Before Marching and After?"Often when warring"?Then and Now?A Call to National Service?The Dead and the Living One?A New Year's Eve in War Time?"I met a man"?"I looked up from my writing"
FINALE:?The Coming of the End?Afterwards
MOMENTS OF VISION
That mirror?Which makes of men a transparency,
Who holds that mirror?And bids us such a breast-bare spectacle see
Of you and me?
That mirror?Whose magic penetrates like a dart,
Who lifts that mirror?And throws our mind back on us, and our heart,
Until we start?
That mirror?Works well in these night hours of ache;
Why in that mirror?Are tincts we never see ourselves once take
When the world is awake?
That mirror?Can test each mortal when unaware;
Yea, that strange mirror?May catch his last thoughts, whole life foul or fair,
Glassing it--where?
THE VOICE OF THINGS
Forty Augusts--aye, and several more--ago,
When I paced the headlands loosed from dull employ,?The waves huzza'd like a multitude below
In the sway of an all-including joy
Without cloy.
Blankly I walked there a double decade after,
When thwarts had flung their toils in front of me,?And I heard the waters wagging in a long ironic laughter
At the lot of men, and all the vapoury
Things that be.
Wheeling change has set me again standing where
Once I heard the waves huzza at Lammas-tide;?But they supplicate now--like a congregation there
Who murmur the Confession--I outside,
Prayer denied.
"WHY BE AT PAINS?"?(Wooer's Song)
Why be at pains that I should know
You sought not me??Do breezes, then, make features glow
So rosily??Come, the lit port is at our back,
And the tumbling sea;?Elsewhere the lampless uphill track
To uncertainty!
O should not we two waifs join hands?
I am alone,?You would enrich me more than lands
By being my own.?Yet, though this facile moment flies,
Close is your tone,?And ere to-morrow's dewfall dries
I plough the unknown.
"WE SAT AT THE WINDOW"?(Bournemouth, 1875)
We sat at the window looking out,?And the rain came down like silken strings?That Swithin's day. Each gutter and spout?Babbled unchecked in the busy way
Of witless things:?Nothing to read, nothing to see?Seemed in that room for her and me
On Swithin's day.
We were irked by the scene, by our own selves; yes,?For I did not know, nor did she infer?How much there was to read and guess?By her in me, and to see and crown
By me in her.?Wasted were two souls in their prime,?And great was the waste, that July time
When the rain came down.
AFTERNOON SERVICE AT MELLSTOCK?(Circa 1850)
On afternoons of drowsy calm
We stood in the panelled pew,?Singing one-voiced a Tate-and-Brady psalm
To the tune of "Cambridge New."
We watched the elms, we watched the rooks,
The clouds upon the breeze,?Between the whiles