The Voice of Things, by Thomas Hardy

Forty years—aye, and several more—ago,       When I paced the headlands loosed from dull employ, The waves huzza’d like a multitude below,        In the sway of an all-including joy               Without cloy. Blankly I walked there a double decade after,       When thwarts had flung their toils in front of me, And I heard the waters wagging in a long ironic laughter       At the lot of men, and all the vapoury               Things that be. Wheeling change has set me again standing where       Once I heard the waves huzza at Lammas-tide; But they supplicate now—like a congregation there       Who murmur the Confession—I outside,               Prayer denied.

THE WOODLANDERS (1887) by Thomas Hardy

“He Looked and smelt like Autumn's very brother, his face being sunburnt to wheat-colour, his eyes blue as corn-flowers, his sleeves and leggings dyed with fruit-stains, his hands clammy with the sweet juice of apples, his hat sprinkled with pips, and everywhere about him the sweet atmosphere of cider which at its first return each season has such an indescribable fascination for those who have been born and bred among the orchards.”

That mirror, by Thomas Hardy

         Which makes of men a transparency,
            Who holds that mirror
And bids us such a breast-bared spectacle to 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,
            Reflecting it—where?

A Confession to a Friend in Trouble, by Thomas Hardy, 1840 - 1928

Your troubles shrink not, though I feel them less
Here, far away, than when I tarried near;
I even smile old smiles—with listlessness—
Yet smiles they are, not ghastly mockeries mere.

A thought too strange to house within my brain
Haunting its outer precincts I discern:
—That I will not show zeal again to learn
Your griefs, and, sharing them, renew my pain. . . .

It goes, like murky bird or buccaneer
That shapes its lawless figure on the main,
And each new impulse tends to make outflee
The unseemingly instinct that had lodgment here;
Yet, comrade old, can bitterer knowledge be
Than that, though banned, such instinct was in me!

Thomas Hardy, The Return of the Native

Her nerves extended into those tresses, and her temper could always be softened by stroking them down. When her hair was brushed she would instantly sink into stillness and look like the Sphinx. If, in passing under one of the Edgon banks, any of its thick skeins were caught, as they sometimes were, by a prickly tuft of the large Ulex Europaeus--which will act as a sort of hairbrush--she would go back a few steps, and pass against it a second time.”

In a Whispering Gallery, by Thomas Hardy

That whisper takes the voice
Of a Spirit, speaking to me,
Close, but invisible,
And throws me under a spell
At the kindling vision it brings;
And for a moment I rejoice,
And believe in transcendent things
That would make of this muddy earth
A spot for the splendid birth
Of everlasting lives,
Whereto no night arrives;
And this gaunt gray gallery
A tabernacle of worth
On this drab-aired afternoon,
When you can barely see
Across its hazed lacune
If opposite aught there be
Of fleshed humanity
Wherewith I may commune;
Or if the voice so near
Be a soul’s voice floating here.

FAR FROM THE MADDING CROWD

Her love was entire as a child's, and though warm as summer it was fresh as spring

The Oxen, by Thomas Hardy

 

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
    "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 creatures where
    They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
    To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
    In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
    "Come; see the oxen kneel,

"In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
    Our childhood used to know,"
I should go with him in the gloom,
    Hoping it might be so.

The Oxen, by Thomas Hardy

 

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
    "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 creatures where
    They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
    To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
    In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
    "Come; see the oxen kneel,

"In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
    Our childhood used to know,"
I should go with him in the gloom,
    Hoping it might be so.

The Oxen, by Thomas Hardy

 

Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
    "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 creatures where
    They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
    To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would weave
    In these years! Yet, I feel,
If someone said on Christmas Eve,
    "Come; see the oxen kneel,

"In the lonely barton by yonder coomb
    Our childhood used to know,"
I should go with him in the gloom,
    Hoping it might be so.