Poem Of The Week

[jazzy_dave]

Thomas Hardy was a poet as well as being a novelist.


The Pity of It
BY THOMAS HARDY
April 1915

I walked in loamy Wessex lanes, afar
From rail-track and from highway, and I heard
In field and farmstead many an ancient word
Of local lineage like 'Thu bist,' 'Er war,'

'Ich woll', 'Er sholl', and by-talk similar,
Nigh as they speak who in this month's moon gird
At England's very loins, thereunto spurred
By gangs whose glory threats and slaughters are.

Then seemed a Heart crying: 'Whosoever they be
At root and bottom of this, who flung this flame
Between kin folk kin tongued even as are we,

'Sinister, ugly, lurid, be their fame;
May their familiars grow to shun their name,
And their brood perish everlastingly.'



Source: Thomas Hardy: The Complete Poems (Palgrave, 2001)

Comments

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

I didn't realize that he was still writing so late as that; that's not a poem of his I've encountered before. I like a lot of his poems; most especially "In Time of 'The Breaking of Nations'" and "The Ruined Maid," which has a similar focus on linguistics, but to a different point:

"At home in the barton you said thee and thou,
And thik oon, and theäs oon, and t'other; but now
Your talking quite fits 'ee for high compa-ny!" —
"Some polish is gained with one's ruin," said she.