The Five Students
The sparrow dips in his wheel-rut bath,
The sun grows passionate-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 high-road 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 moulds the hard fruit mellow,
And forward still we press
Through moors, briar-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 hoarse,
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.
The sun grows passionate-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 high-road 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 moulds the hard fruit mellow,
And forward still we press
Through moors, briar-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 hoarse,
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.
Thomas Hardy
I feel that I want to end my blog year with this Hardy poem - it is one I have loved for a long time, so I may well have blogged it before. Also I guess I can say I have lived it - from the spring of my life to the winter. I am in the last verse now.
But, nevertheless, I still hope that I will be able to "inherit the earth" as Jesus promised, and live on this lovely planet for ever. I hope we all will. And I hope that Thomas Hardy and the friends he lost will too. I hope that Jehovah will wake them from the dreamless sleep of death when the time comes.
The photo that heads the blog is of me as a young student, many many years ago. It was taken by my father I think. I am on the left, the one with the long dark hair. There are of course only three students in the photo, but back then we were all in the first verse of the poem, as were the poet and his friends. At least two of us have made it as far as the last verse. I have lost contact with the third.
How short our lives are now - I cannot tell you how quickly it goes.
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