| |
| “ALIVE?”—And I leapt in my wonder, | |
| Was faint of my joyance, | |
| And grasses and grove shone in garments | |
| Of glory to me. | |
| |
| “She lives, in a plenteous well-being, | 5 |
| To-day as aforehand; | |
| The dead bore the name—though a rare one— | |
| The name that bore she.” | |
| |
| She lived … I, afar in the city | |
| Of frenzy-led factions, | 10 |
| Had squandered green years and maturer | |
| In bowing the knee | |
| |
| To Baals illusive and specious, | |
| Till chance had there voiced me | |
| That one I loved vainly in nonage | 15 |
| Had ceased her to be. | |
| |
| The passion the planets had scowled on, | |
| And change had let dwindle, | |
| Her death-rumor smartly relifted | |
| To full apogee. | 20 |
| |
| I mounted a steed in the dawning | |
| With acheful remembrance, | |
| And made for the ancient West Highway | |
| To far Exonb’ry. | |
| |
| Passing heaths, and the House of Long Sieging, | 25 |
| I neared the thin steeple | |
| That tops the fair fane of Poore’s olden | |
| Episcopal see; | |
| |
| And, changing anew my onbearer, | |
| I traversed the downland | 30 |
| Whereon the bleak hill-graves of Chieftains | |
| Bulge barren of tree; | |
| |
| And still sadly onward I followed | |
| That Highway the Icen, | |
| Which trails its pale ribbon down Wessex | 35 |
| O’er lynchet and lea. | |
| |
| Along through the Stour-bordered Forum, | |
| Where Legions had wayfared, | |
| And where the slow river upglasses | |
| Its green canopy, | 40 |
| |
| And by Weatherbury Castle, and therence | |
| Through Casterbridge, bore I, | |
| To tomb her whose light, in my deeming, | |
| Extinguished had He. | |
| |
| No highwayman’s trot blew the night-wind | 45 |
| To me so life-weary, | |
| But only the creak of the gibbets | |
| Or wagoners’ jee. | |
| |
| Triple-ramparted Maidon gloomed grayly | |
| Above me from southward, | 50 |
| And north the hill-fortress of Eggar, | |
| And square Pummerie. | |
| |
| The Nine-Pillared Cromlech, the Bride-streams, | |
| The Axe, and the Otter | |
| I passed, to the gate of the city | 55 |
| Where Exe scents the sea; | |
| |
| Till, spent, in the graveacre pausing, | |
| I learnt ’twas not my Love | |
| To whom Mother Church had just murmured | |
| A last lullaby. | 60 |
| |
| —“Then, where dwells the Canon’s kinswoman, | |
| My friend of aforetime?”— | |
| (‘Twas hard to repress my heart-heavings | |
| And new ecstasy.) | |
| |
| “She wedded.”—“Ah!”—“Wedded beneath her— | 65 |
| She keeps the stage-hostel | |
| Ten miles hence, beside the great Highway— | |
| The famed Lions-Three. | |
| |
| “Her spouse was her lackey—no option | |
| ’Twixt wedlock and worse things; | 70 |
| A lapse over-sad for a lady | |
| Of her pedigree!” | |
| |
| I shuddered, said nothing, and wandered | |
| To shades of green laurel: | |
| Too ghastly had grown those first tidings | 75 |
| So brightsome of blee! | |
| |
| For, on my ride hither, I’d halted | |
| Awhile at the Lions, | |
| And her—her whose name had once opened | |
| My heart as a key— | 80 |
| |
| I’d looked on, unknowing, and witnessed | |
| Her jests with the tapsters, | |
| Her liquor-fired face, her thick accents | |
| In naming her fee. | |
| |
| “O God, why this hocus satiric!” | 85 |
| I cried in my anguish: | |
| “O once Loved, of fair Unforgotten— | |
| That Thing—meant it thee! | |
| |
| “Inurned and at peace, lost but sainted, | |
| Where grief I could compass; | 90 |
| Depraved—’tis for Christ’s poor dependent | |
| A cruel decree!” | |
| |
| I backed on the Highway; but passed not | |
| The hostel. Within there | |
| Too mocking to Love’s re-expression | 95 |
| Was Time’s repartee! | |
| |
| Uptracking where Legions had wayfared, | |
| By cromlechs unstoried, | |
| And lynchets, and sepultured Chieftains, | |
| In self-colloquy, | 100 |
| |
| A feeling stirred in me and strengthened | |
| That she was not my Love, | |
| But she of the garth, who lay rapt in | |
| Her long reverie. | |
| |
| And thence till to-day I persuade me | 105 |
| That this was the true one; | |
| That Death stole intact her young dearness | |
| And innocency. | |
| |
| Frail-witted, illuded they call me; | |
| I may be. ’Tis better | 110 |
| To dream than to own the debasement | |
| Of sweet Cicely. | |
| |
| Moreover I rate it unseemly | |
| To hold that kind Heaven | |
| Could work such device—to her ruin | 115 |
| And my misery. | |
| |
| So, lest I disturb my choice vision, | |
| I shun the West Highway, | |
| Even now, when the knaps ring with rhythms | |
| From blackbird and bee; | 120 |
| |
| And feel that with slumber half-conscious | |
| She rests in the church-hay, | |
| Her spirit unsoiled as in youth-time | |
| When lovers were we. | |
| |
