2
Steel chambers, late the pyres 5 Of her salamandrine2 fires, Cold currents thrid,3 and turn to rhythmic tidal lyres.
3 Over the mirrors meant To glass the opulent
The sea-worm crawls?grotesque, slimed, dumb, indifferent.
4 io Jewels in joy designed To ravish the sensuous mind Lie lightless, all their sparkles bleared and black and blind.
5 Dim moon-eyed fishes near Gaze at the gilded gear
15 And query: 'What does this vaingloriousness down here?' . . .
6 Well: while was fashioning This creature of cleaving wing, The Immanent Will4 that stirs and urges everything
6. The sound of guns preparing for war across the the ship's maiden voyage, from Southampton to Channel reaches Alfred's ('Stourton') Tower (near the United States, after colliding with an iceberg.
Stourton in Dorset), commemorating King Alfred's 'Twain'; two.
defeat of a Danish invasion in 878; also the site of 2. I.e., destructive. The salamander was supposed
King Arthur's court at Camelot (supposedly near to be able to survive fire.
Glastonbury) and the famous prehistoric stone cir-3. A variant form of the verb thread.
cle of Stonehenge on Salisbury Plain. 4. The force (blind, but slowly gaining conscious
1. The Titanic was the largest and most luxurious ness throughout history) that drives the world, ocean liner of the day. Considered unsinkable, it according to Hardy's philosophy.
sank with great loss of life on April 15, 1912, on
.
AH, ARE You DIGGING ON MY GRAVE ? / 1879
7 Prepared a sinister mate For her?so gaily great?
A Shape of Ice, for the time far and dissociate.
And as the smart ship grew In stature, grace, and hue, In shadowy silent distance grew the Iceberg too.
9 Alien they seemed to be: No mortal eye could see
The intimate welding of their later history,
Or sign that they were bent By paths coincident 30 On being anon' twin halves of one august0 event, soon I important
II
Till the Spinner of the Years Said 'Now!' And each one hears, And consummation comes, and jars two hemispheres.
1912 1912,1914
Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave?
'Ah, are you digging on my grave
My loved one??planting rue?'1 ?'No: yesterday he went to wed One of the brightest wealth has bred.
5 'It cannot hurt her now,' he said, 'That I should not be true.' '
'Then who is digging on my grave? My nearest dearest kin?' ?'Ah, no; they sit and think, 'What use! io What good will planting flowers produce? No tendance of her mound can loose Her spirit from Death's gin.' trap
'But some one digs upon my grave? My enemy??prodding sly?'
is ?'Nay: when she heard you had passed the Gate That shuts on all flesh soon or late, She thought you no more worth her hate,
And cares not where you lie.'
I. A yellow-flowered herb, traditionally an emblem of sorrow (rue is also an archaic word for 'sorrow').
.
188 0 / THOMA S HARD Y 20'Then, who is digging on my grave? Say?since I have not guessed!' ?'O it is I, my mistress dear, Your little dog, who still lives near, And much I hope my movements here Have not disturbed your rest?' 25 'Ah, yes! YOM dig upon my grave . . . Why flashed it not on me That one true heart was left behind! What feeling do we ever find To equal among human kind 30 A dog's fidelity!' 'Mistress, I dug upon your grave To bury a bone, in case I should be hungry near this spot When passing on my daily trot. 35 I am sorry, but I quite forgot It was your resting-place.' 1914 Under the Waterfall 5io15'Whenever I plunge my arm, like this, In a basin of water, I never miss The sweet sharp sense of a fugitive day Fetched back from its thickening shroud of gray. Hence the only prime And real love-rhyme That I know by heart, And that leaves no smart, Is the purl? of a little valley fall rippling About three spans wide and two spans tall Over a table of solid rock, And into a scoop of the self-same block; The purl of a runlet that never ceases In stir of kingdoms, in wars, in peaces; With a hollow boiling voice it speaks And has spoken since hills were turfless peaks.' flmv 'And why gives this the only prime Idea to you of a real love-rhyme? And why does plunging your arm in a bowl 20 Full of spring water, bring throbs to your soul?' 25'Well, under the fall, in a crease of the stone, Though where precisely none ever has known, Jammed darkly, nothing to show how prized, And by now with its smoothness opalized, Is a drinking-glass:
