DESPERATE REMEDIES

By Thomas Hardy



CONTENTS

PREFATORY NOTE
I. THE EVENTS OF THIRTY YEARS
II. THE EVENTS OF A FORTNIGHT
III. THE EVENTS OF EIGHT DAYS
IV. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY
V. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY
VI. THE EVENTS OF TWELVE HOURS
VII. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN DAYS
VIII. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN DAYS
IX. THE EVENTS OF TEN WEEKS
X. THE EVENTS OF A DAY AND NIGHT
XI. THE EVENTS OF FIVE DAYS
XII. THE EVENTS OF TEN MONTHS
XIII. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY
XIV. THE EVENTS OF FIVE WEEKS
XV. THE EVENTS OF THREE WEEKS
XVI. THE EVENTS OF ONE WEEK
XVII. THE EVENTS OF ONE DAY
XVIII. THE EVENTS OF THREE DAYS
XIX. THE EVENTS OF A DAY AND NIGHT
XX. THE EVENTS OF THREE HOURS
XXI. THE EVENTS OF EIGHTEEN HOURS
SEQUEL






POEMS OF THE PAST AND THE PRESENT

By Thomas Hardy

CONTENTS

 

PAGE

V.R.  1819–1901

231

WAR POEMS—

 

Embarcation

235

 

Departure

237

 

The Colonel’s Soliloquy

239

 

The Going of the Battery

242

 

At the War Office

245

 

A Christmas Ghost-Story

247

 

The Dead Drummer

249

 

A Wife in London

251

 

The Souls of the Slain

253

 

Song of the Soldiers’ Wives

260

 

The Sick God

263

POEMS OF PILGRIMAGE—

 

Genoa and the Mediterranean

269

 

Shelley’s Skylark

272

 

In the Old Theatre, Fiesole

274

 

Rome: on the Palatine

276

 

   ,, Building a New Street in the Ancient Quarter

278

 

   ,, The Vatican: Sala Delle Muse

280

 

   ,, At the Pyramid of Cestius

283

 

Lausanne: In Gibbon’s Old Garden

286

 

Zermatt: To the Matterhorn

288

 

The Bridge of Lodi

290

 

On an Invitation to the United States

295

MISCELLANEOUS POEMS—

 

The Mother Mourns

299

 

I said to Love

305

 

A Commonplace Day

307

 

At a Lunar Eclipse

310

 

The Lacking Sense

312

 

To Life

316

 

Doom and She

318

 

The Problem

321

 

The Subalterns

323

 

The Sleep-worker

325

 

The Bullfinches

327

 

God-Forgotten

329

 

The Bedridden Peasant to an Unknowing God

333

 

By the Earth’s Corpse

336

 

Mute Opinion

339

 

To an Unborn Pauper Child

341

 

To Flowers from Italy in Winter

344

 

On a Fine Morning

346

 

To Lizbie Browne

348

 

Song of Hope

352

 

The Well-Beloved

354

 

Her Reproach

358

 

The Inconsistent

360

 

A Broken Appointment

362

 

Between us now

364

 

How great my Grief

366

 

I need not go

367

 

The Coquette, and After

369

 

A Spot

371

 

Long Plighted

373

 

The Widow

375

 

At a Hasty Wedding

378

 

The Dream-Follower

379

 

His Immortality

380

 

The To-be-Forgotten

382

 

Wives in the Sere

385

 

The Superseded

387

 

An August Midnight

389

 

The Caged Thrush Freed and Home Again

391

 

Birds at Winter Nightfall

393

 

The Puzzled Game-Birds

394

 

Winter in Durnover Field

395

 

The Last Chrysanthemum

397

 

The Darkling Thrush

399

 

The Comet at Yalbury or Yell’ham

402

 

Mad Judy

403

 

A Wasted Illness

405

 

A Man

408

 

The Dame of Athelhall

412

 

The Seasons of her Year

416

 

The Milkmaid

418

 

The Levelled Churchyard

420

 

The Ruined Maid

422

 

The Respectable Burgher on “the Higher Criticism”

425

 

Architectural Masks

428

 

The Tenant-for-Life

430

 

The King’s Experiment

432

 

The Tree: an Old Man’s Story

435

 

Her Late Husband

439

 

The Self-Unseeing

441

 

De Profundis i.

443

 

De Profundis ii.

445

 

De Profundis iii.

448

 

The Church-Builder

451

 

The Lost Pyx: a Mediæval Legend

457

 

Tess’s Lament

462

 

The Supplanter: A Tale

465

IMITATIONS, Etc.—

 

Sapphic Fragment

473

 

Catullus: xxxi

474

 

After Schiller

476

 

Song: From Heine

477

 

From Victor Hugo

479

 

Cardinal Bembo’s Epitaph on Raphael

480

RETROSPECT—

 

“I have Lived with Shades

483

 

Memory and I

486

 

ΑΓΝΩΣΤΩ.  ΘΕΩ

489






MOMENTS OF VISION AND MISCELLANEOUS VERSES

By Thomas Hardy

CONTENTS

 

PAGE

Moments of Vision

1

The Voice of Things

2

“Why be at pains?”

3

“We sat at the window”

4

Afternoon Service at Mellstock

5

At the Wicket-gate

6

In a Museum

7

Apostrophe to an Old Psalm Tune

8

At the Word “Farewell”

11

First Sight of Her and After

13

The Rival

14

Heredity

15

“You were the sort that men forget”

16

She, I, and They

17

Near Lanivet, 1872

18

Joys of Memory

20

To the Moon

21

Copying Architecture in an Old Minster

22

To Shakespeare

24

Quid hic agis?

27

On a Midsummer Eve

30

Timing Her

31

Before Knowledge

34

The Blinded Bird

35

“The wind blew words”

36

The Faded Face

37

The Riddle

38

The Duel

39

At Mayfair Lodgings

42

To my Father’s Violin

44

The Statue of Liberty

47

The Background and the Figure

50

The Change

51

Sitting on the Bridge

54

The Young Churchwarden

56

“I travel as a phantom now”

57

Lines to a Movement in Mozart’s E-flat Symphony

58

“In the seventies”

60

The Pedigree

62

This Heart.  A Woman’s Dream

65

Where they lived

68

The Occultation

69

Life laughs Onward

70

The Peace-offering

71

“Something tapped”

72

The Wound

73

A Merrymaking in Question

74

“I said and sang her excellence”

75

A January Night.  1879

77

A Kiss

78

The Announcement

79

The Oxen

80

The Tresses

81

The Photograph

82

On a Heath

84

An Anniversary

85

“By the Runic Stone”

87

The Pink Frock

88

Transformations

89

In her Precincts

90

The Last Signal

91

The House of Silence

93

Great Things

95

The Chimes

97

The Figure in the Scene

98

“Why did I sketch”

99

Conjecture

100

The Blow

101

Love the Monopolist

103

At Middle-field Gate in February

105

The Youth who carried a Light

106

The Head above the Fog

108

Overlooking the River Stour

109

The Musical Box

111

On Sturminster Foot-bridge

113

Royal Sponsors

114

Old Furniture

116

A Thought in Two Moods

118

The Last Performance

119

“You on the tower”

120

The Interloper

122

Logs on the Hearth

124

The Sunshade

126

The Ageing House

128

The Caged Goldfinch

129

At Madame Tussaud’s in Victorian Years

130

The Ballet

132

The Five Students

133

The Wind’s Prophecy

135

During Wind and Rain

137

He prefers her Earthly

139

The Dolls

140

Molly gone

141

A Backward Spring

143

Looking Across

144

At a Seaside Town in 1869

146

The Glimpse

149

The Pedestrian

151

“Who’s in the next room?”

153

At a Country Fair

155

The Memorial Brass: 186-

156

Her Love-birds

158

Paying Calls

160

The Upper Birch-Leaves

161

“It never looks like summer”

162

Everything comes

163

The Man with a Past

164

He fears his Good Fortune

166

He wonders about Himself

167

Jubilate

168

He revisits his First School

171

“I thought, my heart”

173

Fragment

174

Midnight on the Great Western

176

Honeymoon Time at an Inn

177

The Robin

181

“I rose and went to Rou’tor town”

183

The Nettles

184

In a Waiting-room

185

The Clock-winder

187

Old Excursions

189

The Masked Face

191

In a Whispering Gallery

192

The Something that saved Him

193

The Enemy’s Portrait

195

Imaginings

197

On the Doorstep

198

Signs and Tokens

199

Paths of Former Time

201

The Clock of the Years

203

At the Piano

205

The Shadow on the Stone

206

In the Garden

208

The Tree and the Lady

209

An Upbraiding

211

The Young Glass-stainer

212

Looking at a Picture on an Anniversary

213

The Choirmaster’s Burial

215

The Man who forgot

217

While drawing in a Churchyard

219

“For Life I had never cared greatly”

221

Poems of War and Patriotism

 

“Men who march away” (Song of the Soldiers)

225

 

His Country

227

 

England to Germany in 1914

229

 

On the Belgian Expatriation

230

 

An Appeal to America on behalf of the Belgian Destitute

231

 

The Pity of It

232

 

In Time of Wars and Tumults

233

 

In Time of “the Breaking of nations”

234

 

Cry of the Homeless

235

 

Before Marching and After

237

 

“Often when warring”

239

 

Then and Now

240

 

A Call to National Service

242

 

The Dead and the Living One

243

 

A New Year’s Eve in War Time

246

 

“I met a man”

248

 

“I looked up from my writing”

250

Finale

 

The Coming of the End

255

 

Afterwards

257