We stood by a pond that winter day,
And the sun was white, as though chidden of God,
And a few leaves lay on the starving sod;
– They had fallen from an ash, and were gray.
Your eyes on me were as eyes that rove
Over tedious riddles of years ago;
And some words played between us to and fro
On which lost the more by our love.
The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die;
And a grin of bitterness swept thereby
Like an ominous bird a-wing….
Since then, keen lessons that love deceives,
And wrings with wrong, have shaped to me
Your face, and the God curst sun, and a tree,
And a pond edged with grayish leaves.
In My Own Words
You and I stood by a pond on a winter day, and the sun was white, as if it was sad and embarrassed after being scolded by God. A few shriveled, dead, grey leaves lay on the dry, infertile earth.
You looked at me like you would look at an annoying, unsolvable puzzle you tried years ago. We said some useless words to each other.
Your smile was so close to being dead that it looked as though the only thing it could do was die. Your bitter grin swept across your face like an ominous bird sweeps across the sky.
Ever since that day, reminders of the fact that love is just lies makes me think of you, standing by the pond that day.
Reflection
I love this hopeless poem. It feels like a reincarnation of Anne Shirley’s “perfect graveyard of buried hopes.”
This poem was first introduced to me by the best professor I ever had in college, Stephanie Wells. She introduced this poem to us with a smile, a not-quite laugh, and a promise that this poem contained some of the most unforgettable lines in all of literature. She wasn’t wrong:
“The smile on your mouth was the deadest thing
Alive enough to have strength to die”
It’s a lot. You kind of have to laugh. But at the same time, it is extremely not funny. This is why I think of it as being exactly like “my life is a perfect graveyard of buried hopes” from Anne of Green Gables. Both Anne and Thomas Hardy feel the need to express themselves in the most dramatic way possible, in hopes it will match the extent of their strong feelings.
There are great souls in this world who have the gift for seeing certain truths with more clarity than the rest of us. And some of those great souls also have the gift of words, so they can share their greatness with us. Thomas Hardy is one of those great, gifted souls, who can convey the furthest reaches of human emotion with shocking clarity. What a wonderful thing it must be to take the writhing mess of feelings that exists inside all of us, and to sort it out into intelligible words. And what a blessing it is for us to be able to read those words and find a modicum of that organization in our own personal mess.
Even if you have never seen a smile that is only alive enough to have the strength to die (and I hope you never will), aren’t all of our lives made richer by that outlandish description?