Thomas Hardy - My Cicely lyrics

"Alive?"--And I leapt in my wonder, Was faint of my joyance, And gra**es and grove shone in garments Of glory to me. "She lives, in a plenteous well-being, To-day as aforehand; The dead bore the name--though a rare one-- The name that bore she." She lived ... I, afar in the city Of frenzy-led factions, Had squandered green years and maturer In bowing the knee To Baals illusive and specious, Till chance had there voiced me That one I loved vainly in nonage Had ceased her to be. The pa**ion the planets had scowled on, And change had let dwindle, Her d**h-rumor smartly relifted To full apogee. I mounted a steed in the dawning With acheful remembrance, And made for the ancient West Highway To far Exonb'ry. Pa**ing heaths, and the House of Long Sieging, I neared the thin steeple That tops the fair fane of Poore's olden Episcopal see; And, changing anew my onbearer, I traversed the downland Whereon the bleak hill-graves of Chieftains Bulge barren of tree; And still sadly onward I followed That Highway the Icen, Which trails its pale ribbon down Wess** O'er lynchet and lea. Along through the Stour-bordered Forum, Where Legions had wayfared, And where the slow river upgla**es Its green canopy, And by Weatherbury Castle, and therence Through Casterbridge, bore I, To tomb her whose light, in my deeming, Extinguished had He. No highwayman's trot blew the night-wind To me so life-weary, But only the creak of the gibbets Or wagoners' jee. Triple-ramparted Maidon gloomed grayly Above me from southward, And north the hill-fortress of Eggar, And square Pummerie. The Nine-Pillared Cromlech, the Bride-streams, The Axe, and the Otter I pa**ed, to the gate of the city Where Exe scents the sea; Till, spent, in the graveacre pausing, I learnt 'twas not my Love To whom Mother Church had just murmured A last lullaby. --"Then, where dwells the Canon's kinswoman, My friend of aforetime?"-- ('Twas hard to repress my heart-heavings And new ecstasy.) "She wedded."--"Ah!"--"Wedded beneath her-- She keeps the stage-hostel Ten miles hence, beside the great Highway-- The famed Lions-Three. "Her spouse was her lackey--no option 'Twixt wedlock and worse things; A lapse over-sad for a lady Of her pedigree!" I shuddered, said nothing, and wandered To shades of green laurel: Too ghastly had grown those first tidings So brightsome of blee! For, on my ride hither, I'd halted Awhile at the Lions, And her--her whose name had once opened My heart as a key-- I'd looked on, unknowing, and witnessed Her jests with the tapsters, Her liquor-fired face, her thick accents In naming her fee. "O God, why this hocus satiric!" I cried in my anguish: "O once Loved, of fair Unforgotten-- That Thing--meant it thee! "Inurned and at peace, lost but sainted, Where grief I could compa**; Depraved--'tis for Christ's poor dependent A cruel decree!" I backed on the Highway; but pa**ed not The hostel. Within there Too mocking to Love's re-expression Was Time's repartee! Uptracking where Legions had wayfared, By cromlechs unstoried, And lynchets, and sepultured Chieftains, In self-colloquy, A feeling stirred in me and strengthened That she was not my Love, But she of the garth, who lay rapt in Her long reverie. And thence till to-day I persuade me That this was the true one; That d**h stole intact her young dearness And innocency. Frail-witted, illuded they call me; I may be. 'Tis better To dream than to own the debasement Of sweet Cicely. Moreover I rate it unseemly To hold that kind Heaven Could work such device--to her ruin And my misery. So, lest I disturb my choice vision, I shun the West Highway, Even now, when the knaps ring with rhythms From blackbird and bee; And feel that with slumber half-conscious She rests in the church-hay, Her spirit unsoiled as in youth-time When lovers were we.