To Jenny came a gentle youth From inland leazes lone, His love was fresh as apple-blooth By Parrett, Yeo, or Tone. And duly he entreated her To be his tender minister, And call him aye her own.
Fair Jenny’s life had hardly been A life of modesty; At Casterbridge experience keen Of many loves had she From scarcely sixteen years above; Among them sundry troopers of The King’s-Own Cavalry.
But each with charger, sword, and gun, Had bluffed the Biscay wave; And Jenny prized her gentle one For all the love he gave. She vowed to be, if they were wed, His honest wife in heart and head From bride-ale hour to grave.
Wedded they were. Her husband’s trust In Jenny knew no bound, And Jenny kept her pure and just, Till even malice found No sin or sign of ill to be In one who walked so decently The duteous helpmate’s round.
Two sons were born, and bloomed to men, And roamed, and were as not: Alone was Jenny left again As ere her mind had sought A solace in domestic joys, And ere the vanished pair of boys Were sent to sun her cot.
She numbered near on sixty years, And passed as elderly, When, in the street, with flush of fears, One day discovered she, From shine of swords and thump of drum. Her early loves from war had come, The King’s-Own Cavalry.
She turned aside, and bowed her head Anigh Saint Peter’s door; “Alas for chastened thoughts!” she said; “I’m faded now, and hoar, And yet those notes – they thrill me through, And those gay forms move me anew As in the years of yore!”.
’Twas Christmas, and the Phœnix Inn Was lit with tapers tall, For thirty of the trooper men Had vowed to give a ball As “Theirs” had done (’twas handed down) When lying in the selfsame town Ere Buonaparté’s fall.
That night the throbbing “Soldier’s Joy,” The measured tread and sway Of “Fancy-Lad” and “Maiden Coy,” Reached Jenny as she lay Beside her spouse; till springtide blood Seemed scouring through her like a flood That whisked the years away.
She rose, and rayed, and decked her head Where the bleached hairs ran thin; Upon her cap two bows of red She fixed with hasty pin; Unheard descending to the street, She trod the flags with tune-led feet, And stood before the Inn.
Save for the dancers’, not a sound Disturbed the icy air; No watchman on his midnight round Or traveller was there; But over All-Saints’, high and bright, Pulsed to the music Sirius white, The Wain by Bullstake Square.
She knocked, but found her further stride Checked by a sergeant tall: “Gay Granny, whence come you?” he cried; “This is a private ball.” – “No one has more right here than me! Ere you were born, man,” answered she, “I knew the regiment all!”
“Take not the lady’s visit ill!” U pspoke the steward free; “We lack sufficient partners still, So, prithee let her be! ”They seized and whirled her ’mid the maze, And Jenny felt as in the days Of her immodesty.
Hour chased each hour, and night advanced; She sped as shod with wings; Each time and every time she danced — Reels, jigs, poussettes, and flings: They cheered her as she soared and swooped, (She’d learnt ere art in dancing drooped From hops to slothful swings).
The favourite Quick-step “Speed the Plough” — (Cross hands, cast off, and wheel) — “The Triumph,” “Sylph,” “The Row-dow-dow,” Famed “Major Malley’s Reel,” “The Duke of York’s,” “The Fairy Dance,” “The Bridge of Lodi” (brought from France), She beat out, toe and heel.
The “Fall of Paris” clanged its close, And Peter’s chime told four, When Jenny, bosom-beating, rose To seek her silent door. They tiptoed in escorting her, Lest stroke of heel or clink of spur Should break her goodman’s snore.
The fire that late had burnt fell slack When lone at last stood she; Her nine-and-fifty years came back; She sank upon her knee Beside the durn, and like a dart A something arrowed through her heart In shoots of agony.
Their footsteps died as she leant there, Lit by the morning star Hanging above the moorland, where The aged elm-rows are; And, as o’ernight, from Pummery Ridge To Maembury Ring and Standfast Bridge No life stirred, near or far.
Though inner mischief worked amain, She reached her husband’s side; Where, toil-weary, as he had lain Beneath the patchwork pied When yestereve she’d forthward crept, And as unwitting, still he slept Who did in her confide.
A tear sprang as she turned and viewed His features free from guile; She kissed him long, as when, just wooed, She chose his domicile. She felt she could have given her life To be the single-hearted wife That she had been erstwhile.
Time wore to six. Her husband rose And struck the steel and stone; He glanced at Jenny, whose repose Seemed deeper than his own. With dumb dismay, on closer sight, He gathered sense that in the night, Or morn, her soul had flown.
When told that some too mighty strain For one so many-yeared Had burst her bosom’s master-vein, His doubts remained unstirred. His Jenny had not left his side Betwixt the eve and morning-tide: – The King’s said not a word.
Well! times are not as times were then, Nor fair ones half so free; And truly they were martial men, The King’s-Own Cavalry. And when they went from Casterbridge And vanished over Mellstock Ridge, ’Twas saddest morn to see.
THE CASTERBRIDGE CAPTAINS (KHYBER PASS, 1842)
A Tradition of J. B. L – , T. G. B – , AND J. L –
Three captains went to Indian wars, And only one returned: Their mate of yore, he singly wore The laurels all had earned.
At home he sought the ancient aisle Wherein, untrumped of fame, The three had sat in pupilage, And each had carved his name.
The names, rough-hewn, of equal size, Stood on the panel still; Unequal since. – “’Twas theirs to aim, Mine was it to fulfil!”
– “Who saves his life shall lose it, friends!” Outspake the preacher then, Unweeting he his listener, who Looked at the names again.
That he had come and they’d been stayed, ’Twas but the chance of war: Another chance, and they’d sat here, And he had lain afar.
Yet saw he something in the lives Of those who’d ceased to live That sphered them with a majesty Which living failed to give.
Transcendent triumph in return No longer lit his brain; Transcendence rayed the distant urn Where slept the fallen twain.
A SIGN-SEEKER
I mark the months in liveries dank and dry, The noontides many-shaped and hued; I see the nightfall shades subtrude, And hear the monotonous hours clang negligently by.
I view the evening bonfires of the sun On hills where morning rains have hissed; The eyeless countenance of the mist Pallidly rising when the summer droughts are done.
I have seen the lightning-blade, the leaping star, The cauldrons of the sea in storm, Have felt the earthquake’s lifting arm, And trodden where abysmal fires and snow-cones are.
I learn to prophesy the hid eclipse, The coming of eccentric orbs; To mete the dust the sky absorbs, To weigh the sun, and fix the hour each planet dips.
I witness fellow earth-men surge and strive; Assemblies meet, and throb, and part; Death’s soothing finger, sorrow’s smart; – All the vast various moils that mean a world alive.
But that I fain would wot of shuns my sense — Those sights of which old prophets tell, Those signs the general word so well, Vouchsafed to their unheed, denied my long suspense.
In graveyard green, behind his monument To glimpse a phantom parent, friend, Wearing his smile, and “Not the end!” Outbreathing softly: that were blest enlightenment;
Or, if a dead Love’s lips, whom dreams reveal When midnight imps of King Decay Delve sly to solve me back to clay, Should leave some print to prove her spirit-kisses real;
Or, when Earth’s Frail lie bleeding of her Strong, If some Recorder, as in Writ, Near to the weary scene should flit And drop one plume as pledge that Heaven inscrolls the wrong.
– There are who, rapt to heights of trancéd trust, These tokens claim to feel and see, Read radiant hints of times to be — Of heart to heart returning after dust to dust.
Such scope is granted not to lives like mine.. I have lain in dead men’s beds, have walked The tombs of those with whom I’d talked, Called many a gone and goodly one to shape a sign,
And panted for response. But none replies; No warnings loom, nor whisperings To open out my limitings, And Nescience mutely muses: When a man falls he lies.
MY CICELY (17–)
“Alive?” – And I leapt in my wonder, Was faint of my joyance, And grasses and grove shone in garments Of glory to me.
“She lives, in a plenteous well-being, To-day as aforehand; The dead bore the name – though a rare one — The name that bore she.”
She lived.. I, afar in the city Of frenzy-led factions, Had squandered green years and maturer In bowing the knee
To Baals illusive and specious, Till chance had there voiced me That one I loved vainly in nonage Had ceased her to be.
The passion the planets had scowled on, And change had let dwindle, Her death-rumour smartly relifted To full apogee.
I mounted a steed in the dawning With acheful remembrance, And made for the ancient West Highway To far Exonb’ry.
Passing heaths, and the House of Long Sieging, I neared the thin steeple That tops the fair fane of Poore’s olden Episcopal see;
And, changing anew my onbearer, I traversed the downland Whereon the bleak hill-graves of Chieftains Bulge barren of tree;
And still sadly onward I followed That Highway the Icen, Which trails its pale riband down Wessex O’er lynchet and lea.
Along through the Stour-bordered Forum, Where Legions had wayfared, And where the slow river upglasses Its green canopy,
And by Weatherbury Castle, and thencefrom Through Casterbridge held I Still on, to entomb her my vision Saw stretched pallidly.
No highwayman’s trot blew the night-wind To me so life-weary, But only the creak of the gibbets Or waggoners’ jee.
Triple-ramparted Maidon gloomed grayly Above me from southward, And north the hill-fortress of Eggar, And square Pummerie.
The Nine-Pillared Cromlech, the Bride-streams, The Axe, and the Otter I passed, to the gate of the city Where Exe scents the sea;
Till, spent, in the graveacre pausing, I learnt ’twas not my Love To whom Mother Church had just murmured A last lullaby.
– “Then, where dwells the Canon’s kinswoman, My friend of aforetime?” — (’Twas hard to repress my heart-heavings And new ecstasy.)
“She wedded.” – “Ah!” – “Wedded beneath her — She keeps the stage-hostel Ten miles hence, beside the great Highway — The famed Lions-Three.
“Her spouse was her lackey – no option ’Twixt wedlock and worse things; A lapse over-sad for a lady Of her pedigree!”
I shuddered, said nothing, and wandered To shades of green laurel: Too ghastly had grown those first tidings So brightsome of blee!
For, on my ride hither, I’d halted Awhile at the Lions, And her – her whose name had once opened My heart as a key —
I’d looked on, unknowing, and witnessed Her jests with the tapsters, Her liquor-fired face, her thick accents In naming her fee.
“O God, why this seeming derision!” I cried in my anguish: “O once Loved, O fair Unforgotten — That Thing – meant it thee!
“Inurned and at peace, lost but sainted, Were grief I could compass; Depraved – ’tis for Christ’s poor dependent A cruel decree!”
I backed on the Highway; but passed not The hostel. Within there Too mocking to Love’s re-expression Was Time’s repartee!
Uptracking where Legions had wayfared, By cromlechs unstoried, And lynchets, and sepultured Chieftains, In self-colloquy,
A feeling stirred in me and strengthened That she was not my Love, But she of the garth, who lay rapt in Her long reverie.
And thence till to-day I persuade me That this was the true one; That Death stole intact her young dearness And innocency.
Frail-witted, illuded they call me; I may be. ’Tis better To dream than to own the debasement Of sweet Cicely.
Moreover I rate it unseemly To hold that kind Heaven Could work such device – to her ruin And my misery.
So, lest I disturb my choice vision, I shun the West Highway, Even now, when the knaps ring with rhythms From blackbird and bee;
And feel that with slumber half-conscious She rests in the church-hay, Her spirit unsoiled as in youth-time When lovers were we.