Tuesday Poem - and we're still Hardying on...

Seeing the Moon Rise

We used to go to Froom-hill Barrow
    To see the round moon rise
    Into the heath-rimmed skies,
Trudging thither by plough and harrow
Up the pathway, steep and narrow,
    Singing a song.
Now we do not go there. Why?
   Zest burns not so high!

Latterly we've only conned her
    With a passing glance
    From wondow or door by chance,
Hoping to go again, high yonder,
As we used, and gaze, and ponder,
    Singing a song.
Thitherward we do not go:
    Feet once quick are slow!

August, 1927.

Thomas Hardy, The Complete Poems,  Macmillan, 1976.

One of the exercises recommended as you age, is to make a list of those things you used to do which you no longer do - and think why you've given them up. At the age of 87 as Hardy was when he wrote this poem, his trudging days were over, but it's heartwarming to think of him still examining his life and still moon-watching, even if only by chance.

Moon-watchers, star-gazers and poem-hunters - it's Tuesday! Over at the Tuesday poetry blog you can read Pascale Petit's haunting poem, brought to you this week by Kathleen James. From the hub you can travel to other cities and other poems on the cyber-pathway, neither narrow nor steep. Have a lyrical week!

Tuesday Poem - more Thomas Hardy!

The Voice

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I heard? Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you wait for me: yes, as I knew you then,
Even to the original air-blue gown!

Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness
Travelling across the wet mead to me here,
You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness,
Heard no more again far or near?

      Thus I; faltering forward,
      Leaves around me falling,
Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward,
      And the woman calling.

 December 1912
 
Thomas Hardy, Collected Poems, Macmillan, 1976

A haunting poem, written after the death of Hardy's first wife, Emma, from whom he was estranged. After his death Hardy wrote many poems, recreating their early love. Of these poems, Lytton Strachey wrote:

 They are, in fact, modern as no other poems are. The author of Jude the Obscure speaks in them, but with concentration, the intensity, the subtle disturbing force of poetry....He fumbles; but it is that very fumbling that brings him so near to ourselves.

Don't forget to check out the Tuesday Poem blog for the featured Tuesday poem and, from there, navigate to other poems. 

If it's Ever Spring Again (Song) by Thomas Hardy

If it's ever spring again,
          Spring again,
I shall go where went I when
Down the moor-cock splashed, and hen,
Seeing me now, amid their flounder,
Standing with my arm around her;
If it's ever spring again,
          Spring again,
I shall go where went I then.

If it's ever summer-time,
          Summer-time,
With the hay crop at the prime,
And the cuckoos - two - in rhyme,
As they used to be, or seemed to,
We shall do as long we've dreamed to,
If it's ever summer-time,
           Summer-time,
With the hay, and bees achime.

From: Thomas Hardy, The Complete Poems, Macmillan, 1976.

This lilting lyric has a definite edge of melancholy underneath that musicality. It's interesting that he thought of himself as firstly a poet. I think, having read Tess recently, prior to teaching it later this month, I do prefer the poems! But it's always interesting teaching a novel about which you feel some ambivalence. Often I find that in the process of discussion I unearth bits of the novel that I really do love and feel quite differently about it after the classes end.

Do make your way over to the Tuesday Poem Blog and read Chris Tse's beautifully measured and elegiac  poem about the SS Ventor. Chris Tse's debut collection, How to be Dead in a Year of Snakes is available in hard copy and as an ebook. Thanks to guest editor Renee Liang for bringing this exciting voice to our attention. From the Tuesday Poem hub, you can enter a rich world of poetry - immerse yourself! While there is much to be gloomy about in the world, at least there is poetry.