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Thomas Hardy - My Cicely
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"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-rumor 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 ribbon 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 therence
       Through Casterbridge, bore I,
     To tomb her whose light, in my deeming,
       Extinguished had He.

     No highwayman`s trot blew the night-wind
       To me so life-weary,
     But only the creak of the gibbets
       Or wagoners` 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 hocus satiric!"
       I cried in my anguish:
     "O once Loved, of fair Unforgotten—
       That Thing—meant it thee!

     "Inurned and at peace, lost but sainted,
       Where 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.
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