The Sun On The Bookcase

(Student's Love-song)



Once more the cauldron of the sun
Smears the bookcase with winy red,
And here my page is, and there my bed,
And the apple-tree shadows travel along.
Soon their intangible track will be run,
    And dusk grow strong
    And they be fled.

Yes: now the boiling ball is gone,
And I have wasted another day . . .
But wasted WASTED, do I say?
Is it a waste to have imaged one
Beyond the hills there, who, anon,
    My great deeds done
    Will be mine alway?

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 Re-Enactment

Thomas Hardy, Simple Poetry

Autumn In King's Hintock Park

Thomas Hardy, Simple Poetry

A Procession Of Dead Days

Thomas Hardy, Simple Poetry

The Sun On The Letter

Thomas Hardy, Simple Poetry

English

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The Sun On The Letter

I drew the letter out, while gleamed
The sloping sun from under a roof
Of cloud whose verge rose visibly.

The burning ball flung rays that seemed
Stretched like a warp without a woof
Across the levels of the lea

To where I stood, and where they beamed
As brightly on the page of proof
That she had shown her false to me

As if it had shown her true - had teemed
With passionate thought for my behoof
Expressed with their own ardency!

Thomas Hardy

A Commonplace Day

The day is turning ghost,
And scuttles from the kalendar in fits and furtively,
To join the anonymous host
Of those that throng oblivion; ceding his place, maybe,
To one of like degree.

I part the fire-gnawed logs,
Rake forth the embers, spoil the busy flames, and lay the ends
Upon the shining dogs;
Further and further from the nooks the twilight's stride extends,
And beamless black impends.

Nothing of tiniest worth
Have I wrought, pondered, planned; no one thing asking blame or praise,
Since the pale corpse-like birth
Of this diurnal unit, bearing blanks in all its rays -
Dullest of dull-hued Days!

Wanly upon the panes
The rain slides as have slid since morn my colourless thoughts; and yet
Here, while Day's presence wanes,
And over...

Thomas Hardy

A Spot

In years defaced and lost,
Two sat here, transport-tossed,
Lit by a living love
The wilted world knew nothing of:
Scared momently
By gaingivings,
Then hoping things
That could not be.

Of love and us no trace
Abides upon the place;
The sun and shadows wheel,
Season and season sereward steal;
Foul days and fair
Here, too, prevail,
And gust and gale
As everywhere.

But lonely shepherd souls
Who bask amid these knolls
May catch a faery sound
On sleepy noontides from the ground:
"O not again
Till Earth outwears
Shall love like theirs
Suffuse this glen!"

Thomas Hardy

Shut Out That Moon

Close up the casement, draw the blind,
Shut out that stealing moon,
She wears too much the guise she wore
Before our lutes were strewn
With years-deep dust, and names we read
On a white stone were hewn.

Step not out on the dew-dashed lawn
To view the Lady's Chair,
Immense Orion's glittering form,
The Less and Greater Bear:
Stay in; to such sights we were drawn
When faded ones were fair.

Brush not the bough for midnight scents
That come forth lingeringly,
And wake the same sweet sentiments
They breathed to you and me
When living seemed a laugh, and love
All it was said to be.

Within the common lamp-lit room
Prison my eyes and thought;
Let dingy details crudely loom,
Mechanic speech be wrought:
Too fragrant was Lif...

Thomas Hardy

Before And After Summer

I

Looking forward to the spring
One puts up with anything.
On this February day,
Though the winds leap down the street,
Wintry scourgings seem but play,
And these later shafts of sleet
Sharper pointed than the first -
And these later snows the worst -
Are as a half-transparent blind
Riddled by rays from sun behind.

II

Shadows of the October pine
Reach into this room of mine:
On the pine there stands a bird;
He is shadowed with the tree.
Mutely perched he bills no word;
Blank as I am even is he.
For those happy suns are past,
Fore-discerned in winter last.
When went by their pleasure, then?
I, alas, perceived not when.

Thomas Hardy

The Re-Enactment

    Between the folding sea-downs,
    In the gloom
    Of a wailful wintry nightfall,
    When the boom
Of the ocean, like a hammering in a hollow tomb,

    Throbbed up the copse-clothed valley
    From the shore
    To the chamber where I darkled,
    Sunk and sore
With gray ponderings why my Loved one had not come before

    To salute me in the dwelling
    That of late
    I had hired to waste a while in -
    Vague of date,
Quaint, and remote wherein I now expectant sate;

    On the solitude, unsignalled,
    Broke a man
    Who, in air as if at home there,
    Seemed to scan
Every fire-flecked nook of the apartment span by span.

    A stranger's and no lover's
    Eyes were these,
    Eyes of a man wh...

Thomas Hardy