Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses

By Thomas Hardy

Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses by Thomas Hardy showcases an impressive and introspective take on both sides of World War I. It is a stellar and accurate collection of poems that do the war sublime and horrifying justice. Excerpt: " 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…"

• Language: English
• Publisher: Good Press
• Release date: Apr 25, 2021
• ISBN: 4057664610362

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) is best known for his novels, Far from the Madding Crowd (1874), Return of the Native (1878), The Mayor of Casterbridge (1886), Tess of the D'Urbervilles (1891), and Jude the Obscure (1895), which was denounced as morally objectionable. Hardy, disgusted with this reaction, declared he would never write fiction again and devoted the rest of his literary career to poetry.

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Thomas Hardy

Moments of Vision and Miscellaneous Verses

Published by Good Press, 2022

[e-mail]

EAN 4057664610362

Table of Contents

MOMENTS OF VISION

THE VOICE OF THINGS

WHY BE AT PAINS? (Wooer’s Song)

WE SAT AT THE WINDOW (Bournemouth , 1875)

AFTERNOON SERVICE AT MELLSTOCK (Circa 1850)

AT THE WICKET-GATE

IN A MUSEUM

APOSTROPHE TO AN OLD PSALM TUNE

AT THE WORD FAREWELL

FIRST SIGHT OF HER AND AFTER

THE RIVAL

HEREDITY

YOU WERE THE SORT THAT MEN FORGET

SHE, I, AND THEY

NEAR LANIVET, 1872

JOYS OF MEMORY

TO THE MOON

COPYING ARCHITECTURE IN AN OLD MINSTER (Wimborne)

TO SHAKESPEARE AFTER THREE HUNDRED YEARS

QUID HIC AGIS?

ON A MIDSUMMER EVE

TIMING HER (Written to an old folk-tune)

BEFORE KNOWLEDGE

THE BLINDED BIRD

THE WIND BLEW WORDS

THE FADED FACE

THE RIDDLE

THE DUEL

AT MAYFAIR LODGINGS

TO MY FATHER’S VIOLIN

THE STATUE OF LIBERTY

THE BACKGROUND AND THE FIGURE (Lover’s Ditty)

THE CHANGE

SITTING ON THE BRIDGE (Echo of an old song)

THE YOUNG CHURCHWARDEN

I TRAVEL AS A PHANTOM NOW

LINES TO A MOVEMENT IN MOZART’S E-FLAT SYMPHONY

IN THE SEVENTIES

THE PEDIGREE

THIS HEART A WOMAN’S DREAM

WHERE THEY LIVED

THE OCCULTATION

LIFE LAUGHS ONWARD

THE PEACE-OFFERING

SOMETHING TAPPED

THE WOUND

A MERRYMAKING IN QUESTION

I SAID AND SANG HER EXCELLENCE (Fickle Lover’s Song)

A JANUARY NIGHT (1879)

A KISS

THE ANNOUNCEMENT

THE OXEN

THE TRESSES

THE PHOTOGRAPH

ON A HEATH

AN ANNIVERSARY

BY THE RUNIC STONE (Two who became a story)

THE PINK FROCK

TRANSFORMATIONS

IN HER PRECINCTS

THE LAST SIGNAL (Oct. 11, 1886) A MEMORY OF WILLIAM BARNES

THE HOUSE OF SILENCE

GREAT THINGS

THE CHIMES

THE FIGURE IN THE SCENE

WHY DID I SKETCH

CONJECTURE

THE BLOW

LOVE THE MONOPOLIST (Young Lover’s Reverie)

AT MIDDLE-FIELD GATE IN FEBRUARY

THE YOUTH WHO CARRIED A LIGHT

THE HEAD ABOVE THE FOG

OVERLOOKING THE RIVER STOUR

THE MUSICAL BOX

ON STURMINSTER FOOT-BRIDGE (ONOMATOPOEIC)

ROYAL SPONSORS

OLD FURNITURE

A THOUGHT IN TWO MOODS

THE LAST PERFORMANCE

YOU ON THE TOWER

THE INTERLOPER

LOGS ON THE HEARTH A MEMORY OF A SISTER

THE SUNSHADE

THE AGEING HOUSE

THE CAGED GOLDFINCH

AT MADAME TUSSAUD’S IN VICTORIAN YEARS

THE BALLET

THE FIVE STUDENTS

THE WIND’S PROPHECY

DURING WIND AND RAIN

HE PREFERS HER EARTHLY

THE DOLLS

MOLLY GONE

A BACKWARD SPRING

LOOKING ACROSS

AT A SEASIDE TOWN IN 1869 (Young Lover’s Reverie)

THE GLIMPSE

THE PEDESTRIAN AN INCIDENT OF 1883

WHO’S IN THE NEXT ROOM?

AT A COUNTRY FAIR

THE MEMORIAL BRASS: 186–

HER LOVE-BIRDS

PAYING CALLS

THE UPPER BIRCH-LEAVES

IT NEVER LOOKS LIKE SUMMER

EVERYTHING COMES

THE MAN WITH A PAST

HE FEARS HIS GOOD FORTUNE

HE WONDERS ABOUT HIMSELF

JUBILATE

HE REVISITS HIS FIRST SCHOOL

I THOUGHT, MY HEART

FRAGMENT

MIDNIGHT ON THE GREAT WESTERN

HONEYMOON TIME AT AN INN

THE ROBIN

I ROSE AND WENT TO ROU’TOR TOWN (She , alone)

THE NETTLES

IN A WAITING-ROOM

THE CLOCK-WINDER

OLD EXCURSIONS

THE MASKED FACE

IN A WHISPERING GALLERY

THE SOMETHING THAT SAVED HIM

THE ENEMY’S PORTRAIT

IMAGININGS

ON THE DOORSTEP

SIGNS AND TOKENS

PATHS OF FORMER TIME

THE CLOCK OF THE YEARS

AT THE PIANO

THE SHADOW ON THE STONE

IN THE GARDEN (M. H.)

THE TREE AND THE LADY

AN UPBRAIDING

THE YOUNG GLASS-STAINER

LOOKING AT A PICTURE ON AN ANNIVERSARY

THE CHOIRMASTER’S BURIAL

THE MAN WHO FORGOT

WHILE DRAWING IN A CHURCH-YARD

FOR LIFE I HAD NEVER CARED GREATLY

POEMS OF WAR AND PATRIOTISM

MEN WHO MARCH AWAY (SONG OF THE SOLDIERS)

HIS COUNTRY

ENGLAND TO GERMANY IN 1914

ON THE BELGIAN EXPATRIATION

AN APPEAL TO AMERICA ON BEHALF OF THE BELGIAN DESTITUTE

THE PITY OF IT

IN TIME OF WARS AND TUMULTS

IN TIME OF THE BREAKING OF NATIONS

CRY OF THE HOMELESS AFTER THE PRUSSIAN INVASION OF BELGIUM

BEFORE MARCHING AND AFTER (in Memoriam F. W. G.)

OFTEN WHEN WARRING

THEN AND NOW

A CALL TO NATIONAL SERVICE

THE DEAD AND THE LIVING ONE

A NEW YEAR’S EVE IN WAR TIME

I MET A MAN

I LOOKED UP FROM MY WRITING

FINALE

THE COMING OF THE END

AFTERWARDS

MOMENTS OF VISION

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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?

THE VOICE OF THINGS

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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.

Wheeling change has set me again standing where

Once I heard the waves huzza at Lammas-tide;

But they supplicate now—like a congregation there

Who murmur the Confession—I outside,

Prayer denied.

WHY BE AT PAINS?

(Wooer’s Song)

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Why

be at pains that I should know

You sought not me?

Do breezes, then, make features glow

So rosily?

Come, the lit port is at our back,

And the tumbling sea;

Elsewhere the lampless uphill track

To uncertainty!

O should not we two waifs join hands?

I am alone,

You would enrich me more than lands

By being my own.

Yet, though this facile moment flies,

Close is your tone,

And ere to-morrow’s dewfall dries

I plough the unknown.

WE SAT AT THE WINDOW

(Bournemouth, 1875)

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We

sat at the window looking out,

And the rain came down like silken strings

That Swithin’s day. Each gutter and spout

Babbled unchecked in the busy way

Of witless things:

Nothing to read, nothing to see

Seemed in that room for her and me

On Swithin’s day.

We were irked by the scene, by our own selves; yes,

For I did not know, nor did she infer

How much there was to read and guess

By her in me, and to see and crown

By me in her.

Wasted were two souls in their prime,

And great was the waste, that July time

When the rain came down.

AFTERNOON SERVICE AT MELLSTOCK

(Circa 1850)

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On

afternoons of drowsy calm

We stood in the panelled pew,

Singing one-voiced a Tate-and-Brady psalm

To the tune of Cambridge New.

We watched the elms, we watched the rooks,

The clouds upon the breeze,

Between the whiles of glancing at our books,

And swaying like the trees.

So mindless were those outpourings!—

Though I am not aware

That I have gained by subtle thought on things

Since we stood psalming there.

AT THE WICKET-GATE

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There

floated the sounds of church-chiming,

But no one was nigh,

Till there came, as a break in the loneness,

Her father, she, I.

And we slowly moved on to the wicket,