God's Funeral

- Thomas Hardy

I
I saw a slowly-stepping train --
Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar --
Following in files across a twilit plain
A strange and mystic form the foremost bore.

II
And by contagious throbs of thought
Or latent knowledge that within me lay
And had already stirred me, I was wrought
To consciousness of sorrow even as they.

III
The fore-borne shape, to my blurred eyes,
At first seemed man-like, and anon to change
To an amorphous cloud of marvellous size,
At times endowed with wings of glorious range.

IV
And this phantasmal variousness
Ever possessed it as they drew along:
Yet throughout all it symboled none the less
Potency vast and loving-kindness strong.

V
Almost before I knew I bent
Towards the moving columns without a word;
They, growing in bulk and numbers as they went,
Struck out sick thoughts that could be overheard: --

VI
'O man-projected Figure, of late
Imaged as we, thy knell who shall survive?
Whence came it we were tempted to create
One whom we can no longer keep alive?

VII
'Framing him jealous, fierce, at first,
We gave him justice as the ages rolled,
Will to bless those by circumstance accurst,
And longsuffering, and mercies manifold.

VIII
'And, tricked by our own early dream
And need of solace, we grew self-deceived,
Our making soon our maker did we deem,
And what we had imagined we believed,

IX
'Till, in Time's stayless stealthy swing,
Uncompromising rude reality
Mangled the Monarch of our fashioning,
Who quavered, sank; and now has ceased to be.

X
'So, toward our myth's oblivion,
Darkling, and languid-lipped, we creep and grope
Sadlier than those who wept in Babylon,
Whose Zion was a still abiding hope.

XI
'How sweet it was in years far hied
To start the wheels of day with trustful prayer,
To lie down liegely at the eventide
And feel a blest assurance he was there!

XII
'And who or what shall fill his place?
Whither will wanderers turn distracted eyes
For some fixed star to stimulate their pace
Towards the goal of their enterprise?'...

XIII
Some in the background then I saw,
Sweet women, youths, men, all incredulous,
Who chimed as one: 'This is figure is of straw,
This requiem mockery! Still he lives to us!'

XIV
I could not prop their faith: and yet
Many I had known: with all I sympathized;
And though struck speechless, I did not forget
That what was mourned for, I, too, once had prized.

XV
Still, how to bear such loss I deemed
The insistent question for each animate mind,
And gazing, to my growing sight there seemed
A pale yet positive gleam low down behind,

XVI
Whereof, to lift the general night,
A certain few who stood aloof had said,
'See you upon the horizon that small light --
Swelling somewhat?' Each mourner shook his head.

XVII
And they composed a crowd of whom
Some were right good, and many nigh the best....
Thus dazed and puzzled 'twixt the gleam and gloom
Mechanically I followed with the rest.

Saturday Farmer's Market - Mum's the Word

Created by Heather at Capricious Reader, and now hosted by Chris at Stuff as Dreams are Made on.

This is just a small part of the Crepe Myrtle bed. We've expanded the bed twice so that most of the lawn is now gone, and I would like to replace what is left of it with some kind of paving. 

The plants are not all native to my area, but they are all drought tolerant. The Bees and Butterflies are happy with the plants, and the Birds are keeping the pests in check. 

My biggest complaint about the bed at this point is that the Lantana, as a tender perennial, dies to the ground over winter and that area it covers is empty. I need some ideas about what to add that will give me some interest in winter. Whatever I put there needs to be drought tolerant, disease and pest resistant, and easy care. That's not too much to ask, is it?

 

I have a new Garden Cat.

Say hello to George, a scrawny old cat with a snaggletooth.

He's calling loudly for breakfast every morning when I turn on the plant lights.

It's nice having company in the garden again, but his knowledge of horticulture is a bit lacking.

There don't seem to have as many Pomegranates as last year. I've read that it is very common for fruit trees to have a heavy year followed by a light one. This year's fruit is quite large, though. Most of them are at least as large as a softball, and some are larger.








The Budleia is growing nicely and very popular with the winged set.








This is my Mint. (It was hard to get a good angle on it.)

I have four different kinds, each in its own pot, even though it looks like one single hedge.

There is Peppermint, Spearmint, Chocolate Mint, and Orange Mint.

Harvest time!

I plan to make Mint Jelly so I'm looking for a good recipe. Does anyone have a family recipe that they'd like to share?

The Chrysanthemums are just a little bit closer to blooming this week.

The Last Chrysanthemum
- Thomas Hardy

Why should this flower delay so long
         To show its tremulous plumes?
Now is the time of plaintive robin-song,
         When flowers are in their tombs.

Through the slow summer, when the sun
         Called to each frond and whorl
That all he could for flowers was being done,
         Why did it not uncurl?

It must have felt that fervid call
         Although it took no heed,
Waking but now, when leaves like corpses fall,
         And saps all retrocede.

Too late its beauty, lonely thing,
         The season's shine is spent,
Nothing remains for it but shivering
         In tempests turbulent.

Had it a reason for delay,
         Dreaming in witlessness
That for a bloom so delicately gay
         Winter would stay its stress?

- I talk as if the thing were born
         With sense to work its mind;
Yet it is but one mask of many worn
         By the Great Face behind.

A Christmas Ghost Story

by Thomas Hardy

South of the Line, inland from far Durban,
A mouldering soldier lies--your countryman.
Awry and doubled up are his gray bones,
And on the breeze his puzzled phantom moans
Nightly to clear Canopus: "I would know
By whom and when the All-Earth-gladdening Law
Of Peace, brought in by that Man Crucified,
Was ruled to be inept, and set aside?

And what of logic or of truth appears
In tacking 'Anno Domini' to the years?
Near twenty-hundred livened thus have hied,
But tarries yet the Cause for which He died."

The Darkling Thrush

by Thomas Hardy





I leant upon a coppice gate
     When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
     The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
     Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
     Had sought their household fires.

The land's sharp features seemed to be
     The Century's corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy,
     The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
     Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
     Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
     The bleak twigs overhead
In a full-hearted evensong
     Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small,
     In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
     Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
     Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
     Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
     His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
     And I was unaware.

TOMORROW, Or Maybe The Day After

These days, I find myself slipping now and again nearer the swirling eddies of depression, occasionally wetting a toe or two; and I thought, "I must not be the only one."

So I grabbed one of my anthologies - along with my English degree, I amassed quite an impressive collection of anthologies - and in the index, looked under "hope." Nothing. If it were there it would have been between "homo" and "horse," but it was not.

The volume was my NORTON ANTHOLOGY OF CONTEMPORARY POETRY, and apparently hope is not a contemporary theme. A bit of browsing left me feeling lower than I started. Serious stuff here.

Look what I found. I had to go all the way back to Victorian Poetry. I guess they had more to look forward to. Think?

Song of Hope

- Thomas Hardy

O sweet To-morrow! -
After to-day
There will away
This sense of sorrow.
Then let us borrow
Hope, for a gleaming
Soon will be streaming,
Dimmed by no gray -
No gray!

While the winds wing us
Sighs from The Gone,
Nearer to dawn
Minute-beats bring us;
When there will sing us
Larks of a glory
Waiting our story
Further anon -
Anon!

Doff the black token,
Don the red shoon,
Right and retune
Viol-strings broken;
Null the words spoken
In speeches of rueing,
The night cloud is hueing,
To-morrow shines soon -
Shines soon!