Released Into Life

Life lacks lustre
And my world is grey;
As it re-awakes,
Is it here to stay?

I’ve slumbered long
In my cocoon,
Sheltered and shielded
‘Neath a midday moon.

Spring with its joy
Struggles to bring
Its warmth and colour,
Its song to sing.

But after the storm
The clouds disperse;
I await with hope
To end my verse.

Thomas Hardy – ‘Regret Not Me’

 [  No.71 of my favourite short poems  ]

‘The Churchyard, Haworth’ … WHB – Pen & Ink:  1983

There is sadness, but with a quiet acceptance, in Hardy’s recall of the optimism of his ‘heydays’.  He has come to an accommodation with old age. long life and a resignation which will take him content into his everlasting ‘slumber’.

Regret not me;
Beneath the sunny tree
I lie uncaring, slumbering peacefully.

Swift as the light
I flew my faery flight;
Ecstatically I moved, and feared no night.

I did not know
That heydays fade and go,
But deemed that what was would be always so.

I skipped at morn
Between the yellowing corn,
Thinking it good and glorious to be born.

I ran at eves
Among the piled-up sheaves,
Dreaming, “I grieve not, therefore nothing grieves.”

Now soon will come
The apple, pear, and plum
And hinds will sing, and autumn insects hum.

Again you will fare
To cider-makings rare,
And junketings; but I shall not be there.

Yet gaily sing
Until the pewter ring
Those songs we sang when we went gipsying.

And lightly dance
Some triple-timed romance
In coupled figures, and forget mischance;

And mourn not me
Beneath the yellowing tree;
For I shall mind not, slumbering peacefully

‘Thomas Hardy’ (1840-1928) by Walter William Ouless (National Portrait Gallery) 

Readers may find it interesting to compare and contrast the lyrics of the classic Edith Piaf song . . .

 

WORDSWORTH: ‘A Slumber did my Spirit Seal’

(Poem No.40 of my favourite short poems)

I posted Wordsworth’s poem   ‘She dwelt among the untrodden ways’ on the 1st August 2016.   Wordsworth’s ‘Lucy’ poems are laden with wistfulness and melancholy, but the simplicity and delicacy of their language, and the directness and aptness of their rhyme, have always touched me with their beauty and tenderness.  Below I print another of these short poems from the ‘Lucy’ series, usually known by their first line …  ‘A Slumber did my Spirit Seal’

Burne-Jones … ‘Sleeping Beauty’

A Slumber did my Spirit Seal

A slumber did my spirit seal;
I had no human fears:
She seemed a thing that could not feel
The touch of earthly years. 

No motion has she now, no force;
She neither hears nor sees;
Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course,
With rocks, and stones, and trees. 

By:  William Wordsworth