Читать книгу Late Lyrics and Earlier, With Many Other Verses - Thomas Hardy, Eleanor Bron, Томас Харди (Гарди) - Страница 33

Since every sound moves memories,

   How can I play you

Just as I might if you raised no scene,

By your ivory rows, of a form between

My vision and your time-worn sheen,

      As when each day you

Answered our fingers with ecstasy?

So it’s hushed, hushed, hushed, you are for me!

And as I am doomed to counterchord

   Her notes no more

In those old things I used to know,

In a fashion, when we practised so,

“Good-night! – Good-bye!” to your pleated show

      Of silk, now hoar,

Each nodding hammer, and pedal and key,

For dead, dead, dead, you are to me!

I fain would second her, strike to her stroke,

   As when she was by,

Aye, even from the ancient clamorous “Fall

Of Paris,” or “Battle of Prague” withal,

To the “Roving Minstrels,” or “Elfin Call”

      Sung soft as a sigh:

But upping ghosts press achefully,

And mute, mute, mute, you are for me!

Should I fling your polyphones, plaints, and quavers

   Afresh on the air,

Too quick would the small white shapes be here

Of the fellow twain of hands so dear;

And a black-tressed profile, and pale smooth ear;

      – Then how shall I bear

Such heavily-haunted harmony?

Nay: hushed, hushed, hushed you are for me!