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Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy

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?

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Other works by Thomas Hardy...
“How Great my Grief” (Triolet)

How great my grief, my joys how fe… Since first it was my fate to know… —Have the slow years not brought t… How great my grief, my joys how fe… Nor memory shaped old times anew,
The Oxen

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the… “Now they are all on their knees,” An elder said as we sat in a flock By the embers in hearthside ease. We pictured the meek mild creature…
In Time of “The Breaking of Nations”

Only a man harrowing clods In a slow silent walk, With an old horse that stumbles an… Half asleep as they stalk. Only thin smoke without flame
Epeisodia

Past the hills that peep Where the leaze is smiling, On and on beguiling Crisply-cropping sheep; Under boughs of brushwood
A Man (In Memory of H. of M.)

In Casterbridge there stood a nob… Wrought with pilaster, bay, and ba… In tactful times when shrewd Eliz…    On burgher, squire, and clown It smiled the long street down for…
Afterwards

When the Present has latched its… And the May month flaps its glad… Delicate—filmed as new—spun silk,… 'He was a man who used to notice s… If it be in the dusk when, like an…
An August Midnight

A shaded lamp and a waving blind, And the beat of a clock from a dis… On this scene enter—winged, horned… A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledo… While 'mid my page there idly stan…
Ditty

(E. L. G.) BENEATH a knap where flown Nestlings play, Within walls of weathered stone, Far away
Valenciennes

By Corporal Tullidge. See “The… In Memory of S. C. (Pensioner).… WE trenched, we trumpeted and dru… And from our mortars tons of iron… Ath’art the ditch, the month we bo…
Last Words to a Dumb Friend

Pet was never mourned as you, Purrer of the spotless hue, Plumy tail, and wistful gaze While you humoured our queer ways, Or outshrilled your morning call
At a Bridal

WHEN you paced forth, to wait ma… A dream of other offspring held my… Compounded of us twain as Love de… Rare forms, that corporate now wil… Should I, too, wed as slave to Mo…
A Broken Appointment

You did not come, And marching Time drew on, and wo… Yet less for loss of your dear pre… Than that I thus found lacking in… That high compassion which can ove…
 1
In Tenebris

Wintertime nighs; But my bereavement—pain It cannot bring again: Twice no one dies. Flower—petals flee;
At the War Office, London.

Last year I called this world of… The darkest thinkable, and questio… If my own land could heave its pul… So charged it seemed with circumst… The tragedy of things.
At a Lunar Eclipse

Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to… Now steals along upon the Moon’s… In even monochrome and curving lin… Of imperturbable serenity. How shall I link such sun—cast sy…



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