My Cicely by Thomas Hardy

(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!