Poem by Thomas Hardy

The Fight on Durnover Moor

We’d loved, we two, some while,
And that had come which comes when men too much beguile;
And without more ado
My lady said: ‘O shame! Get home, and hide!’ But he was true.

Yes: he was true to me,
And helped me some miles homealong; and vowing to come
Before the weeks were three,
And do in church a deed should strike all scandal dumb.

And when we had traipsed to Grey’s great Bridge, and pitched my box
On its cope, to breathe us there,
He cried: ‘What wrangle’s that in yonder moor? Those knocks,
Gad, seem not to be fair!

‘And a woman on her knees! . . . I’ll go. . . . There’s surely something wrong!’
I said: ‘You are tired and spent
With carrying my heavy things so far and long!’
But he would go, and went.

And there I stood, steadying my box, and screened from none,
Upon the crown of the bridge,
Ashamed o’ my shape, as lower and lower slipped the sun
Down behind Pummery Ridge...

‘O you may long wait so!
Your young man’s done – aye, dead!’ they by and by ran and cried.
‘You shouldn’t have let him go
And join that whorage, but have kept him at your side!

‘It was another wench,
Biggening as you, that he championed: yes, he came on straight
With a warmth no words could quench
For her helpless face, as soon as ever he eyed her state,

‘And fought her fancy-lad, who had used her far from well,
So soon to make her moan,
Aye, closed with him in fight, till at a blow yours fell,
His skull against a stone.

‘She’d followed him there, this man who’d won her, and overwon,
So, when he set to twit her
Yours couldn’t abide him – him all other fighters shun,
For he’s a practised hitter.

‘Your man moved not, and the constables came for the other; so he,
He’ll never make her his wife
Any more than yours will you; for they say that at least ’twill be
Across the water for life.’

‘O what has she brought about!’
I groaned; ‘this woman met here in my selfsame plight;
She’s put another yielding heart’s poor candle out
By dogging her man to-night!

‘He might never have done her his due
Of amends! But mine had bidden the banns for marrying me!
Why did we rest on this bridge; why rush to a quarrel did he
With which he had nothing to do!’

But vain were bursts of blame:
We twain stood like and like, though strangers till that hour,
Foredoomed to tread our paths beneath like gaze and glower,
Bear a like blushful name.

Almost the selfsame day
It fell that her time and mine came on, – a lad and a lass:
The father o’ mine was where the worms waggle under the grass,
Of hers, at Botany Bay.

1. The Supplanter
2. Afternoon Service at Mellstock
3. At the Word ‘Farewell’
4. Tragedian to Tragedienne
5. The Three Tall Men

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