The Lacking Sense Scene.--A sad-coloured landscape, Waddon Vale
Thomas Hardy 1840 (Stinsford) – 1928 (Dorchester, Dorset)
I
"O Time, whence comes the Mother's moody look amid her labours,
As of one who all unwittingly has wounded where she loves?
Why weaves she not her world-webs to according lutes and tabors,
With nevermore this too remorseful air upon her face,
As of angel fallen from grace?"
II
- "Her look is but her story: construe not its symbols keenly:
In her wonderworks yea surely has she wounded where she loves.
The sense of ills misdealt for blisses blanks the mien most
queenly,
Self-smitings kill self-joys; and everywhere beneath the sun
Such deeds her hands have done."
III
- "And how explains thy Ancient Mind her crimes upon her creatures,
These fallings from her fair beginnings, woundings where she
loves,
Into her would-be perfect motions, modes, effects, and features
Admitting cramps, black humours, wan decay, and baleful blights,
Distress into delights?"
IV
- "Ah! know'st thou not her secret yet, her vainly veiled deficience,
Whence it comes that all unwittingly she wounds the lives she
loves?
That sightless are those orbs of hers?--which bar to her
omniscience
Brings those fearful unfulfilments, that red ravage through her zones
Whereat all creation groans.
V
"She whispers it in each pathetic strenuous slow endeavour,
When in mothering she unwittingly sets wounds on what she loves;
Yet her primal doom pursues her, faultful, fatal is she ever;
Though so deft and nigh to vision is her facile finger-touch
That the seers marvel much.
VI
"Deal, then, her groping skill no scorn, no note of malediction;
Not long on thee will press the hand that hurts the lives it
loves;
And while she dares dead-reckoning on, in darkness of affliction,
Assist her where thy creaturely dependence can or may,
For thou art of her clay."
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Submitted on May 13, 2011
Modified on March 05, 2023
- 1:29 min read
- 90 Views
Quick analysis:
Scheme | aaaaa baxbcc abAaaa abAdaaa dadee cxAcff |
---|---|
Closest metre | Iambic hexameter |
Characters | 1,795 |
Words | 299 |
Stanzas | 6 |
Stanza Lengths | 5, 6, 6, 7, 5, 6 |
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"The Lacking Sense Scene.--A sad-coloured landscape, Waddon Vale" Poetry.com. STANDS4 LLC, 2024. Web. 28 Mar. 2024. <https://www.poetry.com/poem/36522/the-lacking-sense-scene.--a-sad-coloured-landscape,-waddon-vale>.
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