Satires of Circumstance, Lyrics and Reveries, with Miscellaneous Pieces

“I. At TeaTHE kettle descants in a cosy drone,And the young wife looks in her husband's face,And then in her guest's, and shows in her ownHer sense that she fills an envied place;And the visiting lady is all abloom,And says there was never so sweet a room.And the happy young housewife does not knowThat the woman beside her was his first choice,Till the fates ordained it could not be so....Betraying nothing in look or voiceThe guest sits smiling and sips her tea,And he throws her a stray glance yearningly.””

— Thomas Hardy

“That night your great guns, unawares,Shook all our coffins as we lay,And broke the chancel window-squares,We thought it was the Judgment-dayAnd sat upright. While drearisomeArose the howl of wakened hounds:The mouse let fall the altar-crumb,The worms drew back into the mounds,The glebe cow drooled. Till God called, “No;It’s gunnery practice out at seaJust as before you went below;The world is as it used to be:“All nations striving strong to makeRed war yet redder. Mad as hattersThey do no more for Christés sakeThan you who are helpless in such matters.“That this is not the judgment-hourFor some of them’s a blessed thing,For if it were they’d have to scourHell’s floor for so much threatening . . .“Ha, ha. It will be warmer whenI blow the trumpet (if indeedI ever do; for you are men,And rest eternal sorely need).”So down we lay again. “I wonder,Will the world ever saner be,”Said one, “than when He sent us underIn our indifferent century!”And many a skeleton shook his head.“Instead of preaching forty year,”My neighbour Parson Thirdly said,“I wish I had stuck to pipes and beer.”Again the guns disturbed the hour,Roaring their readiness to avenge,As far inland as Stourton Tower,And Camelot, and starlit Stonehenge.””

— Thomas Hardy

“Down there they are dubious and askance; there nobody thinks as I,But mind-chains do not clank where one’s next neighbour is the sky.””

— Thomas Hardy