Poems of the Past and the Present

BY THOMAS HARDY
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON 1919
COPYRIGHT
“ Wessex Poems ”: First Edition , Crown 8vo, 1898. New Edition 1903. First Pocket Edition June 1907. Reprinted January 1909, 1913
“ Poems , Past and Present ”: First edition 1901 (dated 1902) Second Edition 1903. First Pocket Edition June 1907 Reprinted January 1908, 1913, 1918, 1919
Moments the mightiest pass uncalendared, And when the Absolute In backward Time outgave the deedful word Whereby all life is stirred: “Let one be born and throned whose mould shall constitute The norm of every royal-reckoned attribute,” No mortal knew or heard. But in due days the purposed Life outshone— Serene, sagacious, free; —Her waxing seasons bloomed with deeds well done, And the world’s heart was won . . . Yet may the deed of hers most bright in eyes to be Lie hid from ours—as in the All-One’s thought lay she— Till ripening years have run.
Sunday Night, 27 th January 1901.
Here, where Vespasian’s legions struck the sands, And Cerdic with his Saxons entered in, And Henry’s army leapt afloat to win Convincing triumphs over neighbour lands,
Vaster battalions press for further strands, To argue in the self-same bloody mode Which this late age of thought, and pact, and code, Still fails to mend.—Now deckward tramp the bands, Yellow as autumn leaves, alive as spring; And as each host draws out upon the sea Beyond which lies the tragical To-be, None dubious of the cause, none murmuring,
Wives, sisters, parents, wave white hands and smile, As if they knew not that they weep the while.
While the far farewell music thins and fails, And the broad bottoms rip the bearing brine— All smalling slowly to the gray sea line— And each significant red smoke-shaft pales,
Keen sense of severance everywhere prevails, Which shapes the late long tramp of mounting men To seeming words that ask and ask again: “How long, O striving Teutons, Slavs, and Gaels Must your wroth reasonings trade on lives like these, That are as puppets in a playing hand?— When shall the saner softer polities Whereof we dream, have play in each proud land, And patriotism, grown Godlike, scorn to stand Bondslave to realms, but circle earth and seas?”