Thomas Hardy

Jubilate

‘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 with somewhere before,
But how or when I now could recall no more.

‘The hazy mazy 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 shut-in sound of fiddles and tambourines.

‘And as I stood hearkening, dulcimers, hautboys, and shawms,
And violoncellos, and a three-stringed 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 minueting 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.