Chapters 40
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1 01 - We Sat at the Window 1:06
We Sat at the Window, looking out, as the rain came down in silken strings that swithin's day. Each gutter and spout babbled unchecked in the busy way of witless things. Nothing to read. Nothing to see seemed in that room for her and me on Swithin's day. We were irked by the scene, by our own selves. Yes, for I did not know, nor did she infer how much there was to read and guess by her and me, and to see and crown by me and her. Wasted were two souls in their prime. And great was the waste that July time when the rain came down.
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2 02 - The Change 2:42
The Change by Thomas Hardy.
Out of the past there rises a week. Who shall read the years, O? Out of the past there rises a week, enringed with the purple zone. Out of the past there rises a week, when thoughts were strung too thick to speak, and the magic of its lineaments remains with me alone. In that week there was heard a singing. Who shall spell the years, the years? In that week there was heard a singing, and the white owl wondered why. In that week, yea, a voice was ringing, and forth from the casement were candles flinging, radiance that fell on the deodar, and lit up the path thereby. Could that song have a mocking note? Who shall unroll the years, O? Could that song have a mocking note to the white owl's sense as it fell?
Could that song have a mocking note, as it trilled out warm from the singer's throat? And who was the mocker, and who the mocked, when, too, felt all was well? In a tedious trampling crowd yet later, who shall bear the years, the years? In a tedious trampling crowd yet later, when silvery singings were dumb? In a crowd uncaring what time might fate her, Mid mirks of night I stood to await her, And the twanging of iron wheels gave out the signal that she was come. She said with a travel-tired smile, Who shall lift the years, O? She said with a travel-tired smile, half scared by scenes so strange. She said, outworn by mile on mile, the blurred lamps warning her face the while, O love, I am here, I am here with you.
Ah, that there should have come a change. O the doom by someone spoken. Who shall unseal the years, the years? O the doom that gave no token, when nothing of bale saw we! O the doom by someone spoken, O the heart by someone broken, The heart whose sweet reverberances are all time leaves to me.
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3 03 - Afternoon Service at Mellstock 0:49
Afternoon service at mellstock.
On afternoons of drowsy calm, we stood in the paneled pew, singing one voice to Tate and Brady's psalm to the tune of Cambridge New. We watched the elms, we watched the rooks, the clouds upon the breeze, between the whiles of glancing at our books and swaying like the trees. So mindless were those outpourings, though I am not aware, that I have gained by subtle thought on things since we stood psalming there.
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4 04 - First Sight of Her and After 0:45
A day is drawing to its fall I had not dreamed to see. The first of many to enthrall my spirit will it be, or is this eve the end of all such new delight for me? I journey home, the pattern grows, of moon-shades on the way, Soon the first quarter, I suppose, sky-glancing travelers say, I realize that it, for those, has been a common day.
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5 05 - At the Word 'Farewell' 1:38
She looked like a bird from a cloud on the clammy lawn, Moving alone, bare-browed, in the dim of dawn. The candles alight in the room for my parting meal Made all things without doors loom, strange, ghostly, unreal. The hour itself was a ghost, and it seemed to me then as of chances the chance furthermost I should see her again. I beheld not where all was so fleet that a plan of the past which had ruled us from birth-time to meet was in working at last. No prelude did I there perceive to a drama at all, or foreshadow what fortune might weave from beginnings so small. But I rose, as if quicked by a spur I was bound to obey, and stepped through the casement to her, still alone in the gray. "'I am leaving you.
Farewell,' I said, as I followed her on, by an alley bare boughs overspread. I soon must be gone.' Even then the scale might have been turned against love by a feather, but crimson one cheek of hers burned when we came in together.
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6 06 - At a Country Fair 1:20
At a bygone western country fair I saw a giant led by a dwarf with a red string like a long thin scarf. How much he was the stronger there, the giant seemed unaware. And then I saw that the giant was blind. And the dwarf, a shrewd-eyed little thing, the giant, mild, timid, obeyed the string, as if he had no independent mind, or will of any kind. Wherever the dwarf decided to go, at his heels the other trotted meekly. Perhaps, I know not, reproaching weakly, like one fate bade that it must be so, whether he wished or no. Various sights, in various climes, I have seen, and more I may see yet, but that sight never shall I forget, and have thought it the sorriest of pantomimes, if once a hundred times.
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7 07 - The Five Students 2:15
The Five Students The sparrow dips in his wheel-rut bath, The sun grows passion-eyed, And boils the dew to smoke by the paddock-path, As strenuously we stride, Five of us, dark he, fair he, dark she, Fair she, I, all beating by.
The air is shaken, the highroad hot. Shadowless swoons the day. The greens are sobered and cattle at rest, but not we on our urgent way. Four of us. Fair she, dark she, fair he, I are there, but one elsewhere.
Autumn molds the hard fruit mellow, and forward still we press, through moors, brier meshed plantations, clay pits yellow, as in the spring hours, yes, three of us. Fair he, fair she, I as heretofore, but fallen one more.
The leaf drops, earthworms draw it in at night-time noiselessly. The fingers of birch and beech are skeleton-thin, and yet on the beat are we, two of us, fair she, I, but no more left to go, the track we know.
Icicles tag the church aisle leads, the flag-rope gibbers horse, the home-bound foot-folk wrap their snow-flaked heads, yet I still stalk the course. One of us. Dark and fair he, dark and fair she, gone. The rest, anon.
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8 08 - Afterwards 1:53
When the present has latched its postern behind my tremulous stay, and the May month flaps its glad green leaves like wings delicate-filmed as new-spun silk, will the neighbors say, He was a man who used to notice such things.
If it be in the dusk, When, like an eye-lid's soundless blink, the dewfall hawk comes crossing the shades to alight upon the wind-warked upland thorn, a gazer may think, to him this must have been a familiar sight.
If I pass, during some nocturnal blackness, mothy and warm, when the hedgehog travels furtively over the lawn, one may say, He strove that such innocent creatures should come to no harm, but he could do little for them, and now he is gone. If, when, hearing that I have been stilled at last, they stand at the door watching the full-starred heavens that winter sees, will this thought rise on those who will beat my face no more? He was one who had an eye for such mysteries. And will any say when my bell of quittance is heard in the gloom, and a crossing breeze cuts a pause in its out-rollings, till they rise again as they were a new bell's boom? He hears it not now, but used to notice such things.
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9 09 - The Background and the Figure 0:53
The Background and the Figure, Lover's Diddy, by Thomas Hardy.
I think of the slope where the rabbits fed, of the perowinks' rock-work lair, of the fuchsias ringing their bells of red, and the something else seen there. Between the blooms were the sod basked bright by the bobbing fuchsia-trees, Was another and yet more isome sight, the sight that richened these. I shall seek those beauties in the spring, when the days are fit and fair, but only as foils to the one more thing that also will flower there.
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10 10 - The Figure in the Scene 1:08
The figure in the scene.
It pleased her to step in front and sit where the cragged slope was green, while I stood back, that I might pencil it with her amid the scene, till it gloomed and rained, but I kept on, despite the drifting wet that fell and stained my draught, Leaving for curious quizzings yet the blots ingrained. And thus I drew her there alone, seated amid the gauze of moisture, hooded, only her outline shone with rainfall marked across. Soon passed our stay. Yet her rainy form is the genius still of that spot, immutable, yea, though the place now knows her no more, and has known her not ever since that day.
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11 11 - The Young Churchwarden 1:06
The Young Churchwarden When he lit the candles there, and the light fell on his hand, and it trembled as he scanned her and me, his vanquished air hinted that his dream was done, and I saw he had begun to understand. When love's viol was onstrung, Sore, I wished, the hand that shook had been mine that shared her book while that evening hymn was sung. His, the victor's, as he lit candles where he had bidden us sit with vanquished look. Now her dust lies listless there, his afar from tending hand. What avails the victory scant? Does he smile from upper air? Ah, my friend, your dream is done, and tis you. who have begun to understand.
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12 12 - The Dolls 0:55
The Dolls Whenever you dress me dolls, Mammy, why do you dress them so, and make them gallant soldiers, when never a one I know? And not as gentle ladies, with frills and frocks and curls, as people dress the dollies of other little girls? Ah! why did she not answer? Because your mammy's heed is always gallant soldiers, as well may be, indeed. One of them was your daddy, his name I must not tell. He's not the dad who lives here, but one I love too well.
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13 13 - Life Laughs Onward 1:03
Life laughs onward.
Rambling I looked for an old abode, Where, years back, one had lived I knew, Its sight a dwelling duly showed, But it was new. I went where, not so long ago, The sod had riven two breasts asunder, Daisies throve gaily there, As though no grave were under. I walked along a terrace where loud children gambled in the sun. The figure that had once sat there was missed by none. Life laughed and moved on unsubdued. I saw that old succumbed to young. Twas well. My too regretful mood died on my tongue.
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14 14 - The Pink Frock 0:49
The Pink Frock by Thomas Hardy.
Oh, my pretty pink frock! I shan't be able to wear it. Why is he dying just now? I hardly can bear it. He might have contrived to live on. But they say there's no hope whatever, and must I shut myself up, and go out never? Oh, my pretty pink frock, puff-sleeved and accordion pleaded. He might have passed in July, and not so cheated.
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15 15 - The Peace-Offering 0:46
The Peace Offering by Thomas Hardy. Read for LibriVox.org by David Butler. It was but a little thing. Yet I knew it meant to me ease from what had given a sting to the very bird-singing latterly. But I would not welcome it, and for all I then declined, O the regrettings infinite! When the night processions flit through the mind.
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16 16 - The Glimpse 1:23
The Glimpse She sped through the door, and, following in haste and stirred to the core, I entered, hot-faced. But I could not find her. No sign was behind her. Where is she? I said. Who, they asked, that sat there? Not a soul's come in sight. A maiden with red hair! Ah! they paled. She is dead. People see her at night, but you are the first on whom she has burst in the keen common light.
It was ages ago, when I was quite strong. I have waited since, oh, I have waited so long. Yea, I set me to own the house where now lone I dwell in void rooms, booming hollow as tombs. But I never come near her, though nightly I hear her, and my cheek has grown thin, and my hair has grown gray, with this waiting therein, but she still keeps away.
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17 17 - The Pedestrian - an Incident of 1883 2:15
The Pedestrian, An Incident of 1883, Sir, will you let me give you a ride? Nox vain it, and the heath is wide. My fight on lantern shone on one, Young, fair, even fresh, but burdened with flesh. A leathern satchel at his side, his breathing short, his coat undone. Twas as if his corpulent figure slopped with the shake of his walking when he stopped. And though the night's pinch grew acute, he wore but a thin, wind-thrided suit. Yet well-shaped shoes for walking in, artistic beaver, cane gold-topped. "'Alas, my friend,' he said with a smile, "'I am daily bound to foot ten mile, wet, dry or dark, before I rest.' Six months to live my doctors give me as my prospect here at best, unless I vamp my sturdiest.
His voice was that of a man refined, a man one well could feel of mind, quite winning in its musical ease, but in mould maligned by some disease. And I asked again, but he shook his head. Then, as if more were due, he said, A student was I, of Schopenhauer, Kant, Hegel, and the Fountained Bower of the Muses, too, knew my regard. But ah, I fear me, the grave gapes near me. Would I could this gross sheath discard, and rise an ethereal shape unmarred? How I remember him, his short breath, his aspect marked of early death, as he dropped into the night forever. One caught in his prime of high endeavor, From all philosophies soon to sever, Through an unconscienced trick of time.
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18 18 - The Choirmaster's Burial 1:49
The Choir-master's Burial He often would ask us that, when he died, After playing so many to their last rest, If out of us any should here abide, And it would not task us, We would with our lutes play over him By his grave brim, the psalm he liked best. The one whose scent suits Mount Ephraim. And perhaps we should seem to him in death's dream like the seraphim.
As soon as I knew that his spirit was gone, I thought this is due, and spoke thereupon. I think, said the vicar, a red service quicker than vials out of doors in these frosts and haws. That old-fashioned way requires a fine day, and it seems to me it had better not be. Hence, that afternoon, though never knew he that his wish could not be to get through it faster, they buried the master without any tune. But twas said that when at the dead of next night the vicar looked out, there struck on his ken, thronged round about, where the frost was graying the head-stoned grass, a band all in white, like the saints in church-glass, singing and playing the ancient stave by the choir-master's grave. Such the tenor man told when he had grown old.
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19 19 - The Memorial Brass: 186- 1:38
Why do you weep there, O sweet lady? Why do you weep before that brass? I'm a mere student sketching the medieval. Is some late death lined there, alas, your father's? Well, all pay the debts that paid he. Young man, oh, I must tell, my husband's, and under his name I set mine and my death, its date left vacant till my heirs should fill it, stating me faithful till my last breath. Madam, that you are a widow wakes my wonder. Oh, wait, for last month I remarried, And now I fear "'twas a deed amiss. We've just come home, and I'm sick and saddened at what the new one will say to this. And will he think—think that I should have tarried? I may add, surely, with no wish to harm him, that he's a temper.
Yes, I fear. And when he comes to church next Sunday morning and sees that written, O dear, O dear! Madam, I swear your beauty will disarm him.
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20 20 - Paying Calls 1:04
Paying Calls by Thomas Hardy. I went by footpath and by stile, beyond where bustle ends, Strayed here a mile and there a mile, and called upon some friends. On certain ones I had not seen for years past did I call. and then on others who had been the oldest friends of all. It was the time of midsummer, when they had used to roam, but now, though tempting was the air, I found them all at home. I spoke to one and other of them by mound and stone and tree, of things we had done ere days were dim, but they spoke not to me.
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21 21 - The Upper Birch-Leaves 1:06
The Upper Birch-Leaves Warm yellowy green In the blue serene How they skip and sway On this autumn day! They cannot know What has happened below, That their boughs down there Are already quite bare, That their own will be When a week has passed, For they jig as in glee, To this very last. But no, there lies at times in their tune A note that cries what at first I fear I did not hear. Oh, we remember at each wind's hollow, Though life holds yet. We go hence soon, for tis November, But that you follow you may forget.
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22 22 - He Fears his Good Fortune 1:11
He Fears His Good Fortune. There was a glorious time at an epoch of my prime. Morning's beryl be spread, and evening's golden red, nothing gray. And in my heart I said, However this chance to be, it is too full for me, too rare, too rapturous, rash. Its spell must close with a crash some day. The radiance went on, and on, and yet anon, and sweetness fell around, like manna on the ground. I've no claim, said I, to be thus crowned. I am not worthy this. Must it not go amiss? Well, let the end foreseen come duly. I am serene. And it came.
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23 23 - Jubilate 2:25
The very last time I ever was here, he said, I saw much less of the quick than I saw of the dead. He was a man I had met somewhere before, but how or when I now could recall no more. The hazy-mazzy moonlight at one in the morning, spread out as a sea across the frozen snow, glazed to live sparkles like the great breastplate adorning the priest of the temple with Urim and Thummim aglow. The yew-tree arms glued hard to the stiff stark air, hung still in the village sky as theatre scenes. When I came by the churchyard wall, And halted there, at a shot-in sound of fiddles and tambourines. And as I stood hearkening, dulcimers, hautboys and shawms, and violoncellos, and a three-string double bass joined in, and were intermixed with a singing of psalms.
And I looked over at the dead men's dwelling-place. Through the shine of the slippery snow I now could see, As it were through a crystal roof, a great company of the dead, minuetting in stately step underground, to the tune of the instruments I had before heard sound. It was Eden New, and dancing they sang in a chore. We are out of it all, yea, in little ease, cramped no more. And their shrouded figures pacing with joy I could see, as you see the stage from the gallery, and they had no heed of me. And I lifted my head, quite dazed, from the churchyard wall, and I doubted not that it warned I should soon have my call, but—then in the ashes he emptied the dregs of his cup, and onward he went. And the darkness swallowed him up.
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24 24 - I Thought, My Heart 1:18
I thought, my heart, that you had healed of those sore smartings of the past, and that the summers had oversealed all mark of them at last. But closely scanning in the night, I saw them standing crimson bright, just as she made them, Nothing could fade them. Yea, I can swear that there they were, they still were there. Then the vision of her who cut them came, and looking over my shoulder said, I am sure you deal me all the blame for those sharp smarts and red, but meet me, dearest, tomorrow night. In the churchyard at the moon's half height, And so strange a kiss shall be mine, I wis, That you'll cease to know If the wounds you show be there or know.
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25 25 - The Shadow on the Stone 1:41
The Shadow on the Stone by Thomas Hardy.
I went by the Druid-stone that broods in the garden, white and lone, and I stopped and looked at the shifting shadows that at some moments fall their own from the tree hard by with a rhythmic swing, and they shaped in my imagining to the shade that a well-known head and shoulders threw there when she was gardening. I thought her behind my back, yea, her I long had learned to lack, and I said, I am sure you are standing behind me, though how do you get into this old track? And there was no sound but the fall of a leaf as a sad response, and to keep down grief I would not turn my head to discover That there was nothing in my belief. Yet I wanted to look and see that nobody stood at the back of me.
But I thought once more, nay, I'll not envision a shape which somehow there may be. So I went on softly from the glade, and left her behind me, throwing her shade, as she were indeed an apparition. My head unturned, lest my dream should fade.
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26 26 - The Nettles 1:07
This, then, is the grave of my son, whose heart she won, and nettles grow upon his mound, and she lives just below. How he upbraided me and left, and how our lives were cleft. Because I said she was hard, unfeeling, caring but to wed. Well, to see this sight I have fared these miles, and her firelight smiles from her window there, whom he left his mother to cherish with tender care. It is enough. I'll turn and go. Yes, nettles grow where lone lies he. Who spurred me for seeing what he could not see.
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27 27 - On a Midsummer Eve 0:59
On a Midsummer Day I idly cut a parsley stalk, and blew therein towards the moon. I had not thought what ghosts would walk with shivering footsteps to my tune. I went and knelt and scooped my hand, as if to drink, into the brook, and a faint figure seemed to stand above me, With the bygone look. I lipped through rhymes of chance, not choice. I thought not what my words might be. There came into my ear a voice that turned a tenderer verse for me.
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28 28 - The Faded Face 1:12
The Faded Face How was this I did not see Such a look as here was shown Ere its womanhood had blown Past its first felicity? That I did not know you young, Faded face, know you young? Why did time so ill bestead That I heard no voice of yours? Hail from out the curved contours of those lips, when rosy red. Wheated not the songs they sung. Faded face, songs they sung. By these blanchings, blooms of old, and the relics of your voice, Leaving rare of rich and choice from your early tone and mould, Let me mourn. I sorrow wrung, faded face. Sorrow wrung.
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29 29 - Transformations 1:03
Transformation portion of this yew is a man my grandsire knew, Bosomed here at its foot. This branch may be his wife, A ruddy human life now turned to a green shoot. These grasses must be made of her who often prayed last century for repose, and the fair girl long ago whom I often tried to know may be entering this rose. So they are not underground, but as nerves and veins abound in the growths of upper air, and they feel the sun and rain and the energy again. That made them what they were.
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30 30 - In a Waiting-Room 2:16
On a morning sick as the day of doom, with the drizzling gray of an English may, there were few in the railway waiting-room. About its walls were framed and varnished pictures of liners, fly-blown, tarnished. The table bore a testament for travelers' reading, if suchwise bent. I read it on and on, and thronging the Gospel of St. John were figures, additions, multiplications, by someone scrawled with sundry emendations, not scoffingly designed, but with an absent mind, plainly a bagman's counts of cost, what he had profited, what lost. And whilst I pondered if there could have been any particle of a soul in that poor man at all, to cipher rates of wage upon that printed page, there stood in the charmless scene and stood over me and the scribbled book, to lend the hour's mean hue a smear of tragedy to, a soldier and wife with haggard look subdued to stone by strong endeavor.
And then I heard, from a casual word, they were parting as they believed forever. But next there came, like the eastern flame of some high altar, children, a pair, who laughed at the fly-blown pictures there. Here are the lovely ships that we, mother, are by-and-by going to sea. When we get there, tis most sure to be fine, and the band will play, and the sun will shine. It rained on the skylight with a din as we waited, and still no train came in. But the words of the child in the squalid room had spread a glory through the gloom.
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31 31 - The Clock-Winder 1:51
The clock-winder by Thomas Hardy. It is dark as a cave or a vault in the nave when the iron door is closed and the floor of the church relayed with trowel and spade. But the parish clerk cares not for the dark, as he winds in the tower at a regular hour the rheumatic clock, whose dilatory knock you can hear when praying at the day's decaying, or at any lone while from a pew in the aisle. Up, up from the ground, round and around, in the turret stair he clambers to where the wheel-work is with its tick. Click-whiz, reposefully measuring each day to its end, that mortal man spend in sorrowing and pleasuring, nightly thus does he climb to the trackway of time. Him I followed one night to this place without light, and ere I spoke heard him say, word by word, at the end of his winding, the darkness unminding, So I wipe out one more, my dear, of the sore, sad days that still be, like a drying, dead sea between you and me.
Who she was, no man knew. He had long borne him blind to all womankind, and was ever one who kept his past out of view.
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32 32 - In a Whispering-Gallery 1:06
In a Whispering Gallery by Thomas Hardy.
That whisper takes the voice of a spirit's compassionings close but invisible, and throws me under a spell at the kindling vision it brings. And for a moment I rejoice, and believe in transcendent things that would mold from this muddy earth a spot for the splendid birth of everlasting lives, whereto no night arrives. And this gaunt gray gallery, a tabernacle of worth, on this drab-aired afternoon, when you can barely see across its haze lacune, if opposite aught there be of fleshed humanity. Wherewith I may commune, or if the voice so near be a soul's voice floating here.
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33 33 - This Heart - A Woman's Dream 2:34
At midnight, in the room where he lay dead, whom in his life I had never clearly read, I thought, if I could peer into that citadel, his heart, I should at last know, full and well, what hereto had been known to him alone, despite our long sit-out of years for-flown. And if— I said, I do this for his memory's sake. It would not wound him, even if he could wake. So I bent over him. He seemed to smile with a calm confidence the whole long while that I, withdrawing his heart, held it, and bit by bit perused the unguessed things found written on it. It was inscribed like a terrestrial sphere, with quaint vermiculations close and clear his graving. Had I known, would I have risked the stroke its reading brought, and my own heart may broke.
Yes, there at last, eyes opened, did I see his whole sincere symmetric history. There were his truth, his simple single-mindedness, strained may be by time's storms, but there no less. There were the daily deeds from sun to sun, in blindness but good faith, that he had done. There were regrets, at instances wherein he swerved, as he conceived, from cherishings I had deserved. There were old hours, all figured down as bliss—those spent with me! How little had I thought this! Then those when, at my absence, whether he slept or waked, though I knew not t'was so, his spirit ached. There, that when we were severed, how day dulled, till time joined us anew, was chronicled. And arguments and battlings in defense of me, that heart recorded clearly and ruddily.
I put it back, and left him as he lay, while pierced the morning, pink, and then the gray, into each dreary room and corridor around, where I shall wait, but his step will not sound.
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34 34 - To Shakespeare After Three Hundred Years 2:14
By Corrie Samuel.
Bright baffling soul, least capturable of themes, thou, who displayedst a life of commonplace, leaving no intimate word or personal trace of high design outside the artistry of thy penned dreams, still shalt remain at heart unread eternally. Through human orbits thy discourse to-day, despite thy formal pilgrimage, throbs on in harmonies that cow oblivion, and, like the wind, with all uncared effect, maintain a sway not fore desired in tracks unchosen and unchecked. And yet, at thy last breath, with mindless note, the borough clocks but samely tongued the hour, the avon just as always glassed the tower, Thy age was published on thy passing-bell, but in due rote, with other dwellers' death accorded a like knell.
And at the strokes, some townsman, met maybe, and thereon queried by some squire's good dame driving in shopward, may have given thy name with—yes, a worthy man and well to do, though, as for me, I knew him but by just a neighbour's nod, tis true. If faith, few knew him much here save by word, he having elsewhere led his busier life, though to be sure he left with us his wife. Ah, one of the tradesman's sons, I now recall. Witty, I've heard. We did not know him. Well, good-day, death comes to all.
So, like a strange bright bird we sometimes find to mingle with the barn-door brood a while, Then vanish from their homely domicile. Into man's poesy we wot not whence Flew thy strange mind, Lodged there a radiant guest, And sped for ever thence.
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35 35 - Great Things 1:25
Great Things by Thomas Hardy. Sweet cider is a great thing, a great thing to me, Spinning down to Weymouth Town by Ridgeway Thirstily, And maiden mistress summoning who tend the hostelry. Oh, cider is a great thing, a great thing to me. The dance it is a great thing, a great thing to me, With candles lit and partners fit for night-long revelry, And going home when day dawning peeps pale upon the lea, Oh, dancing is a great thing, a great thing to me. Love is, yea, a great thing, a great thing to me, When, having drawn across the lawn in darkness silently, A figure flits like one a-wing out from the nearest tree. Oh, love is, yes, a great thing, a great thing to me. Will these be always great things?
Great things to me. Let it befall that one will call, Soul, I have need of thee. What then? Joy jaunts, impassioned flings, Love and its ecstasy, Will always have been great things, Great things to me.
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36 36 - Before Knowledge 0:58
Before Knowledge by Thomas Arty. Read for LibriVox.org by Wain Rollin. When I walked roseless tracks and wide, E'er dawned your date for meeting me. Oh, why did you not cry, Allo, across the stretch between, and say? We move, while years as yet divide, On closing lines which, Though it be you know me not, nor I know you, will intersect and join some day. Then, well, I had borne each scraping torn, but the winters froze and grew no rose. No bridge bestrode the gap at all. No shape you showed, and I heard no call.
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37 37 - An Upbraiding 0:52
An Upbraiding by Thomas Hardy. Read for LibriVox.org by Wien Rollin.
Now I am dead, you sing to me the songs we used to know. But while I lived, you had no wish or care for doing so. Now I am dead, you come to me in the moonlight, comfortless. Ah, what would I have given alive? To win such tenderness. When you are dead, and stand to me not differenced as now. But like again will you be cold as when we lived, or how?
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38 38 - Old Excursions 1:20
Old Excursions What's the good of going to Ridgeway, Kern, or Sidling Mill, or to Yellum Hill, Blithely bearing Casterbridge Way, as we used to do? She will no more climb up there, or be visible Anywhere in those haunts we knew. But to-night, while walking weary, near me seemed her shade, come as twere to upbraid this my mood, in deeming dreary, scenes that used to please. And if she did come to me, still solicitous, there may be good in going to these. So I'll care to Rome, to Ridgeway, Kern or Sideling Mill, or to Yellam Hill, Blithely bearing cast the bridgeway, as we used to do, since her phasm may flit out there, and may greet me anywhere in those haunts we knew.
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39 39 - Paths of Former Time 1:13
Paths of Former Time No, no, it must not be so. They are the ways we do not go. Still chew the kine and moo in the meadows we used to wander through. Still purl the rivulets and curl towards the weirs with a musical swirl. Haymakers, as in former years, Rake rolls into heaps that the pitchfork rears. Wheels crack on the turfy track, The wagon pursues with its toppling pack. Why then shun, since summer's not done, All this because of the lack of one? Had you been sharer of that scene, You would not ask while it bites in keen Why it is so We can no more go by the summer paths We used to know.
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40 40 - Moments of Vision 1:16
Moments of Vision. Moments of Vision. That mirror which makes of men a transparency, who holds that mirror and bids us such a breast-bare spectaclcy of you and me? That mirror whose magic penetrates like a dart, Who lifts that mirror and throws our mind back on us and our heart until we start? That mirror works well in these night hours of ache. Why in that mirror are things we never see ourselves once take when the world is awake? That mirror can test each mortal when unaware. Yeah, that strange mirror. May catch his last thoughts, whole life, foul or fair, glassing it where?