On One Who Lived and Died
Where He Was Born
When a night in November
Blew forth its bleared airs
An infant descended
His birth-chamber stairs
For the very first time,
At the still, midnight chime;
All unapprehended
His mission, his aim. --
Thus, first, one November,
An infant descended
The stairs.
On a night in November
Of weariful cares,
A frail aged figure
Ascended those stairs
For the very last time:
All gone his life's prime,
All vanished his vigour,
And fine, forceful frame:
Thus, last, one November
Ascended that figure
Upstairs.
On those nights in November --
Apart eighty years --
The babe and the bent one
Who traversed those stairs
From the early first time
To the last feeble climb --
That fresh and that spent one --
Were even the same:
Yea, who passed in November
As infant, as bent one,
Those stairs.
Wise child of November!
From birth to blanched hairs
Descending, ascending,
Wealth-wantless, those stairs;
Who saw quick in time
As a vain pantomime
Life's tending, its ending,
The worth of its fame.
Wise child of November,
Descending, ascending
Those stairs!
Thomas Hardy, Late Lyrics and Earlier, with Many Other Verses (1922).
Not surprisingly, the world-view of the "wise child of November" sounds a great deal like Hardy's own. This world-view is distilled in "He Never Expected Much" (written by Hardy when he was eighty-six), which begins:
Well, World, you have kept faith with me,
Kept faith with me;
Upon the whole you have proved to be
Much as you said you were.
2 comments:
I haven't read much of Hardy's poetry, but lately I keep coming across references to him. First the Auden, and now I am reading "Cakes and Ale" by Somerset Maugham, who was accused of modeling the character of Edward Driffield in that novel on Hardy. Maugham denied this, but is at his most deliciously subversive here.
Rick's wife: it is very nice to hear from you.
Thank you for the reference to Cakes and Ale: I haven't read it, and now I am curious to see how Maugham portrays Hardy. I see that it was published in 1930, after Hardy's death, so the ever-sensitive Hardy would not have seen it. I will track it down.
Perhaps these coincidental encounters with Hardy are telling you: read his poetry! (Please!)
As always, thank you for visiting, and for your thoughts.
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