Satires of Circumstance   By: Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

by Thomas Hardy

Contents:

Lyrics and Reveries In Front of the Landscape Channel Firing The Convergence of the Twain The Ghost of the Past After the Visit To Meet, or Otherwise The Difference The Sun on the Bookcase "When I set out for Lyonnesse" A Thunderstorm in Town The Torn Letter Beyond the Last Lamp The Face at the Casement Lost Love "My spirit will not haunt the mound" "Wessex Heights In Death divided The Place on the Map Where the Picnic was The Schreckhorn A Singer asleep A Plaint to Man God's Funeral Spectres that grieve "Ah, are you digging on my grave?" Satires of Circumstance At Tea In Church By her Aunt's Grave In the Room of the Bride elect At the Watering place In the Cemetery Outside the Window In the Study At the Altar rail In the Nuptial Chamber In the Restaurant At the Draper's On the Death bed Over the Coffin In the Moonlight Self unconscious The Discovery Tolerance Before and after Summer At Day close in November The Year's Awakening Under the Waterfall The Spell of the Rose St. Launce's revisited Poems of 1912 13 The Going Your Last Drive The Walk Rain on a Grace "I found her out there" Without Ceremony Lament The Haunter The Voice His Visitor A Circular A Dream or No After a Journey A Death ray recalled Beeny Cliff At Castle Boterel Places The Phantom Horsewoman Miscellaneous Pieces The Wistful Lady The Woman in the Rye The Cheval Glass The Re enactment Her Secret "She charged me" The Newcomer's Wife A Conversation at Dawn A King's Soliloquy The Coronation Aquae Sulis Seventy four and Twenty The Elopement "I rose up as my custom is" A Week Had you wept Bereft, she thinks she dreams In the British Museum In the Servants' Quarters The Obliterate Tomb "Regret not me" The Recalcitrants Starlings on the Roof The Moon looks in The Sweet Hussy The Telegram The Moth signal Seen by the Waits The Two Soldiers The Death of Regret In the Days of Crinoline The Roman Gravemounds The Workbox The Sacrilege The Abbey Mason The Jubilee of a Magazine The Satin Shoes Exeunt Omnes A Poet Postscript "Men who march away"

IN FRONT OF THE LANDSCAPE

Plunging and labouring on in a tide of visions, Dolorous and dear, Forward I pushed my way as amid waste waters Stretching around, Through whose eddies there glimmered the customed landscape Yonder and near,

Blotted to feeble mist. And the coomb and the upland Foliage crowned, Ancient chalk pit, milestone, rills in the grass flat Stroked by the light, Seemed but a ghost like gauze, and no substantial Meadow or mound.

What were the infinite spectacles bulking foremost Under my sight, Hindering me to discern my paced advancement Lengthening to miles; What were the re creations killing the daytime As by the night?

O they were speechful faces, gazing insistent, Some as with smiles, Some as with slow born tears that brinily trundled Over the wrecked Cheeks that were fair in their flush time, ash now with anguish, Harrowed by wiles.

Yes, I could see them, feel them, hear them, address them Halo bedecked And, alas, onwards, shaken by fierce unreason, Rigid in hate, Smitten by years long wryness born of misprision, Dreaded, suspect.

Then there would breast me shining sights, sweet seasons Further in date; Instruments of strings with the tenderest passion Vibrant, beside Lamps long extinguished, robes, cheeks, eyes with the earth's crust Now corporate.