Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses

Transcribed from the 1919 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
BY THOMAS HARDY
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON 1929
COPYRIGHT
First Edition 1917 Reprinted 1919 Pocket Edition 1919 Reprinted 1923, 1925, 1929 Wessex Edition 1919
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY R. & R. CLARK, LIMITED, EDINBURGH
That mirror Which makes of men a transparency, Who holds that mirror And bids us such a breast-bare spectacle 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, Glassing it—where?
Forty Augusts—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.