 | Collected poems of Thomas Hardy |  |
733
GENITRIX LAESA
Nature, through these generations
You have nursed us with a patience
Cruelly crossed by malversations,
Marring mother-ministry
To your multitudes, so blended
By your processes, long-tended,
And the painstaking expended
On their chording tunefully.
You have nursed us with a patience
Cruelly crossed by malversations,
Marring mother-ministry
To your multitudes, so blended
By your processes, long-tended,
And the painstaking expended
On their chording tunefully.
But this stuff of slowest moulding,
In your fancy ever enfolding
Life that rhythmic chime is holding:
(Yes; so deem it you, Ladye—
This “concordia discors”!)—truly,
Rather, as if some imp unruly
Twitched your artist-arm when newly
Shaping forth your scenery!
In your fancy ever enfolding
Life that rhythmic chime is holding:
(Yes; so deem it you, Ladye—
This “concordia discors”!)—truly,
Rather, as if some imp unruly
Twitched your artist-arm when newly
Shaping forth your scenery!
Aye. Yet seem you not to know it.
Hence your world-work needs must show it
Good in dream, in deed below it:
(Lady, yes: so sight it we!)
Thus, then, go on fondly thinking:
Why should man your purblind blinking
Crave to cure, when all is sinking
To dissolubility?
Hence your world-work needs must show it
Good in dream, in deed below it:
(Lady, yes: so sight it we!)
Thus, then, go on fondly thinking:
Why should man your purblind blinking
Crave to cure, when all is sinking
To dissolubility?
| Collected poems of Thomas Hardy | |