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 1869The 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 VISIONThat 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 of glancing at our books, And swaying like the trees.
So mindless were those outpourings! -
Though I am not aware That I have gained by subtle thought on things Since we stood psalming there.
AT THE WICKET-GATE
