Poems (Hardy)/In hermitage with fancy
IN HERMITAGE WITH FANCY
THE clock strikes four. Deep starry skies,A sinking moon, a jagged line of roof,And mountain's far black ridge; my window framesThis picture dim for dim unwilling eyesToo soon recalled from rest.She stands aloofThere,—the dear angel, Sleep. With all her namesOf beauty, poet given, have I besoughtHer tendance till the east turns red:But nay, she will not! Farther still withdrawn—Remote as those fair fables she once wroughtOf dreams for me, reluctant to be ledFrom fireside play.Then come, thou Fancy kind.We 'll will to dream with open eye till dawn,Like Chaucer's little birds, and drive the dayTo come, the day that's gone, so far awayThey shall not ope the portals of the mindTo let the world's affairing in, till the sunHas waked the world.Suppose, now, this:We 'll build a pleasure-house for you and me;I know a spring whose waters runAnd skip along the mountain-side, most free,Most like a frolic child. Azaleas there unfoldTheir flowers, and there the budding clematisStill starts with whiteness. And suppose, now, this:That there we make our pleasure-house to be."Built like to that the century's king of songOnce made for his own soul? Or like to his, That other, with his friar and his room of pink?"Nay, now, not so! A log-built cabin, brownWith bark, a window in a chink,And low of roof; a chimney—think!Such as you knew when all the years were long,And all the bars to pleasure-fields were down.
The clock strikes five:—and stars, and yet the stars.
We still will dream, for Fancy 's loyal yet.Go thou with me—for I can go—and stayAn æon in an hour, in hermitageAmong the mountains. I can lead the wayFrom here to there; and now the there is here.
Around this spot are prints of Nature's feet,And ways there are to learn her counsel sweet.For here she gives long leisure, days, and nightsOf peace, wood-silent,—fields of calmAnd brook-led paths by beds of mint and balm,The morning breath of trees, and darling sightsOf small shy birds among the sheltering trees.Dost marvel, Fancy, why I choose not theseWith dish of pulse and cotton gownIf need were, rather than the streeted townAnd all that better it may seem to giveWhile in the stream of hurry I must live?
And here, at last, should I but choose to stay,Invoking comrades with a scholar's daring thrift,Might Wordsworth come familiar to my cabin door,And sit to hear the flapping of my fire, and sayHis words of tranquil wisdom. Yea, in joy and awe,Might I hear Milton's unmatched lyre, Beneath a sky, noon-blue, or all aflame with fireOf mountain sunset, or in the roarOf gusty rain, or sweeping, hail-white flaw,Or in the eternal calm of starry heights,In long, reposeful, heaven-clear nights.
Here in some wild garden of the pines,Oft might I walk with Emerson, serene and sage,And feel the calm of this old earthDown to her center, up from her earliest age,The dim and dateless era of her birth,Filter through all his golden-worded lines.
Along pine-fragrant alleys, there would sweep a gentle wind,And Browning's Pippa singing her clear songWould cross the web of sunshine it had spinnedBetween the swaying limbs; a whole day long(So large would be my leisure) might I, else, enjoyThe tender presence of Fidèle, or ask and wearThe ring of Canace, and learn your ways and words,And be kindred with you close, you gentle birds.But sure am I, whatever might befall,One nearer than these kings of song should comeAnd teach me more than I can hearIn windharp, smiting leaves, or droppings clearFrom rain-tipped boughs, or the orchestral sumOf woodland sounds; and more than I can callMy own in bird, or tree, or flower, or allThat mountain color-glory,—bands of purpled mist,Cloud-gray, night-blue, dim and misty blue,—(Were it a purple now, or whatso royal hue?)And all the glimmering lights and shades that hardly are,They seem so little real, look so scarcely true,So far removed, so far.
Ah, he should come, that child-eyed seerWho sang such gracious things of hill and field;Who had companionship with star and wave,With wind and brook, and loved the souls of men so nearHe feared to lose one chance to say his wordBefore his time to go. Him have I heardIn very presence—from him have learned to saveMy hour from trivial waste. Imperfect, so, the "choirInvisible" about my cabin fire,If he come not.The mossy root, the leafThat drops amid the affluent woods and dies,The winding shell that greatens year by yearIts fairy crypt, the little ground-rose, dearAs morning—have I the thought that spiesOut these and not the thought to markWhen one has gone who made us smile with tearsAnd weep with smiles, or, at his winsome will,Convoyed to stately dwellings through the arcPrismatic of a shell?Something moreIt were to feel him living still,Among us wholly, still our ownTo speak to, smile with, learn from, follow.The realm of thought is cold, from shore to shore,Cold, and for the heart forever hollow.
To be alone,—always to be aloneWith shades and voices though of Sovereign Lords,Were that all well? Not once to know the hand'sWarm touch, the eyes' glad kindling from the heart?Shall they not come, the living in these lands,With those that live large lives apartIn lands we know not? Yea, my Fancy, hark! Though now the noonday bards have flown,The century's twilight shelters some to chantAlong the years that edge the mystic darkBefore a New Time's dawn. There are who weaveBy paths of glowing life, their tales of aweAnd make their songs amid the city's din;There are who sing by hillside streams, and hauntThe glens of life. Now, what if we could winThese hither to this cabined hermitageTo live an æon in an hour?
Secrets unraveled, go promise to them, and talesOf the little wood-people that creepIn the thickets all dusky and deep,Or hide in the rocks of the streams,And play on the terraces mossedOver with deer-grass and matted with leaves;A thought's respite promise,—a breath of repose,Just while the vireo another long strandInto her new nest works and weaves,Just while the dew is bright on the fresh-blown rose,And wild-plums for the autumn plannedBreak from their blossoms by light winds fanned.
And everywhere peace,—everywhere! Pine-fragrant stirrings of air, Sweet forest murmurs mysterious; Gentle, serious, Hardly heardCallings of bush-dwelling bird,They may answer in thought and in word;Companioned by brook and by tree,By Nature herself they may be.
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The striking clock! The ended hour of dreamBrings day. Now I shall never knowHow real my Fancy might have made it grow.The stars are gone behind a skyOf veiling mist, and, white and high,My window looks on things that seemAnd are not in the cloud that fillsAll space. There is no more a line of hills,A jagged roof, but day, just dayThat seeks, and forces, and must have its sovereign way.