The Complete Poetical Works. Томас ХардиЧитать онлайн книгу.
Living over Blackmoor way.
Come then, brethren, let us sing,
From the dawn till evening!—
For we know not that we go not
When the day’s pale pinions fold
Unto those who sang of old.
God-Forgotten
I towered far, and lo! I stood within
The presence of the Lord Most High,
Sent thither by the sons of earth, to win
Some answer to their cry.
—“The Earth, say’st thou? The Human race?
By Me created? Sad its lot?
Nay: I have no remembrance of such place:
Such world I fashioned not.”—
—“O Lord, forgive me when I say
Thou spak’st the word, and mad’st it all.”—
“The Earth of men—let me bethink me . . . Yea!
I dimly do recall
“Some tiny sphere I built long back
(Mid millions of such shapes of mine)
So named . . . It perished, surely—not a wrack
Remaining, or a sign?
“It lost my interest from the first,
My aims therefor succeeding ill;
Haply it died of doing as it durst?”—
“Lord, it existeth still.”—
“Dark, then, its life! For not a cry
Of aught it bears do I now hear;
Of its own act the threads were snapt whereby
Its plaints had reached mine ear.
“It used to ask for gifts of good,
Till came its severance self-entailed,
When sudden silence on that side ensued,
And has till now prevailed.
“All other orbs have kept in touch;
Their voicings reach me speedily:
Thy people took upon them overmuch
In sundering them from me!
“And it is strange—though sad enough—
Earth’s race should think that one whose call
Frames, daily, shining spheres of flawless stuff
Must heed their tainted ball! . . .
“But say’st thou ’tis by pangs distraught,
And strife, and silent suffering?—
Deep grieved am I that injury should be wrought
Even on so poor a thing!
“Thou should’st have learnt that Not to Mend For Me could mean but Not to Know: Hence, Messengers! and straightway put an end To what men undergo.” . . .
Homing at dawn, I thought to see
One of the Messengers standing by.
—Oh, childish thought! . . . Yet oft it comes to me
When trouble hovers nigh.
The Bedridden Peasant
To an Unknowing God
Much wonder I—here long low-laid—
That this dead wall should be
Betwixt the Maker and the made,
Between Thyself and me!
For, say one puts a child to nurse,
He eyes it now and then
To know if better ’tis, or worse,
And if it mourn, and when.
But Thou, Lord, giv’st us men our clay
In helpless bondage thus
To Time and Chance, and seem’st straightway
To think no more of us!
That some disaster cleft Thy scheme
And tore us wide apart,
So that no cry can cross, I deem;
For Thou art mild of heart,
And would’st not shape and shut us in
Where voice can not he heard:
’Tis plain Thou meant’st that we should win
Thy succour by a word.
Might but Thy sense flash down the skies
Like man’s from clime to clime,
Thou would’st not let me agonize
Through my remaining time;
But, seeing how much Thy creatures bear—
Lame, starved, or maimed, or blind—
Thou’dst heal the ills with quickest care
Of me and all my kind.
Then, since Thou mak’st not these things be,
But these things dost not know,
I’ll praise Thee as were shown to me
The mercies Thou would’st show!
By the Earth’s Corpse
I
“O Lord, why grievest Thou?—
Since Life has ceased to be
Upon this globe, now cold
As lunar land and sea,
And humankind, and fowl, and fur
Are gone eternally,
All is the same to Thee as ere
They knew mortality.”
II
“O Time,” replied the Lord,
“Thou read’st me ill, I ween;
Were all the same, I should not grieve At that late earthly scene, Now blestly past—though planned by me With interest close and keen!— Nay, nay: things now are not the same As they have earlier been.
III
“Written indelibly
On my eternal mind
Are all the wrongs endured
By Earth’s poor patient kind,
Which my too oft unconscious hand
Let enter undesigned.
No god can cancel deeds foredone,
Or thy old coils unwind!
IV
“As when, in Noë’s days,
I whelmed the plains with sea,
So at this last, when flesh
And herb but fossils be,