Poem by 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.

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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