The Little Old Table

Creak, little wood thing, creak,
When I touch you with elbow or knee;
That is the way you speak
Of one who gave you to me!

You, little table, she brought -
Brought me with her own hand,
As she looked at me with a thought
That I did not understand.

- Whoever owns it anon,
And hears it, will never know
What a history hangs upon
This creak from long ago.

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was an English novelist and poet. Born in Dorset, his works often featured the semi-fictional region of Wessex. Hardy was initially trained as an architect, but he later pursued writing full-time. His novels, including 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles,' 'Far from the Madding Crowd,' and 'Jude the Obscure,' are known for their critical portrayal of Victorian society and its mores. As a poet, he is recognized for his explorations of human suffering and the indifferent forces of nature. Hardy's legacy is profound, influencing both literature and criticism.

Thomas Hardy

The Background And The Figure - Lover's Ditty

Thomas Hardy, Simple Poetry

The Minute Before Meeting

Thomas Hardy, Simple Poetry

I Say I'll Seek Her

Thomas Hardy, Simple Poetry

The Phantom Horsewoman

Thomas Hardy, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

Old Furniture

I know not how it may be with others
Who sit amid relics of householdry
That date from the days of their mothers' mothers,
But well I know how it is with me
Continually.

I see the hands of the generations
That owned each shiny familiar thing
In play on its knobs and indentations,
And with its ancient fashioning
Still dallying:

Hands behind hands, growing paler and paler,
As in a mirror a candle-flame
Shows images of itself, each frailer
As it recedes, though the eye may frame
Its shape the same.

On the clock's dull dial a foggy finger,
Moving to set the minutes right
With tentative touches that lift and linger
In the wont of a moth on a summer night,
Creeps to my sight.

On this old viol, too, fingers are dancing -

Thomas Hardy

A House With A History

There is a house in a city street
Some past ones made their own;
Its floors were criss-crossed by their feet,
And their babblings beat
From ceiling to white hearth-stone.

And who are peopling its parlours now?
Who talk across its floor?
Mere freshlings are they, blank of brow,
Who read not how
Its prime had passed before

Their raw equipments, scenes, and says
Afflicted its memoried face,
That had seen every larger phase
Of human ways
Before these filled the place.

To them that house's tale is theirs,
No former voices call
Aloud therein. Its aspect bears
Their joys and cares
Alone, from wall to wall.

Thomas Hardy

The Tree - An Old Man's Story

I

Its roots are bristling in the air
Like some mad Earth-god's spiny hair;
The loud south-wester's swell and yell
Smote it at midnight, and it fell.
Thus ends the tree
Where Some One sat with me.

II

Its boughs, which none but darers trod,
A child may step on from the sod,
And twigs that earliest met the dawn
Are lit the last upon the lawn.
Cart off the tree
Beneath whose trunk sat we!

III

Yes, there we sat: she cooed content,
And bats ringed round, and daylight went;
The gnarl, our seat, is wrenched and sunk,
Prone that queer pocket in the trunk
Where lay the key
To her pale mystery.

IV

"Years back, within this pocket-hole
I found, my Love, a hurried scrawl
Meant not for me," at ...

Thomas Hardy

The Cheval-Glass

Why do you harbour that great cheval-glass
    Filling up your narrow room?
    You never preen or plume,
Or look in a week at your full-length figure -
    Picture of bachelor gloom!

"Well, when I dwelt in ancient England,
    Renting the valley farm,
    Thoughtless of all heart-harm,
I used to gaze at the parson's daughter,
    A creature of nameless charm.

"Thither there came a lover and won her,
    Carried her off from my view.
    O it was then I knew
Misery of a cast undreamt of -
    More than, indeed, my due!

"Then far rumours of her ill-usage
    Came, like a chilling breath
    When a man languisheth;
Followed by news that her mind lost balance,
    And, in a space, of her death.

"Soon sank her father; an...

Thomas Hardy

The Strange House

"I hear the piano playing
Just as a ghost might play."
" O, but what are you saying?
There's no piano to-day;
Their old one was sold and broken;
Years past it went amiss."
" I heard it, or shouldn't have spoken:
A strange house, this!

"I catch some undertone here,
From some one out of sight."
" Impossible; we are alone here,
And shall be through the night."
" The parlour-door what stirred it?"
" No one: no soul's in range."
" But, anyhow, I heard it,
And it seems strange!

"Seek my own room I cannot
A figure is on the stair!"
" What figure? Nay, I scan not
Any one lingering there.
A bough outside is waving,
And that's its shade by the moon."
" Well, all is strange! I am craving
Strength to leave soon."

"...

Thomas Hardy

At The Dinner-Table

I sat at dinner in my prime,
And glimpsed my face in the sideboard-glass,
And started as if I had seen a crime,
And prayed the ghastly show might pass.

Wrenched wrinkled features met my sight,
Grinning back to me as my own;
I well-nigh fainted with affright
At finding me a haggard crone.

My husband laughed. He had slily set
A warping mirror there, in whim
To startle me. My eyes grew wet;
I spoke not all the eve to him.

He was sorry, he said, for what he had done,
And took away the distorting glass,
Uncovering the accustomed one;
And so it ended? No, alas,

Fifty years later, when he died,
I sat me in the selfsame chair,
Thinking of him. Till, weary-eyed,
I saw the sideboard facing there;

And from its mirror look...

Thomas Hardy