Casterbridge Fair

Sing, Ballad-singer, raise a hearty tune;
Make me forget that there was ever a one
I walked with in the meek light of the moon
   When the day's work was done.

Rhyme, Ballad-rhymer, start a country song;
Make me forget that she whom I loved well
Swore she would love me dearly, love me long,
   Then - what I cannot tell!

Sing, Ballad-singer, from your little book;
Make me forget those heart-breaks, achings, fears;
Make me forget her name, her sweet sweet look -
   Make me forget her tears.

These market-dames, mid-aged, with lips thin-drawn,
  And tissues sere,
Are they the ones we loved in years agone,
  And courted here?

Are these the muslined pink young things to whom
  We vowed and swore
In nooks on summer Sundays by the Froom,
  Or Budmouth shore?

Do they remember those gay tunes we trod
  Clasped on the green;
Aye; trod till moonlight set on the beaten sod
  A satin sheen?

They must forget, forget! They cannot know
  What once they were,
Or memory would transfigure them, and show
  Them always fair.

 Will's at the dance in the Club-room below,
    Where the tall liquor-cups foam;
 I on the pavement up here by the Bow,
    Wait, wait, to steady him home.

 Will and his partner are treading a tune,
    Loving companions they be;
 Willy, before we were married in June,
    Said he loved no one but me;

 Said he would let his old pleasures all go
    Ever to live with his Dear.
 Will's at the dance in the Club-room below,
    Shivering I wait for him here.

Black'on frowns east on Maidon,
   And westward to the sea,
But on neither is his frown laden
   With scorn, as his frown on me!

At dawn my heart grew heavy,
   I could not sip the wine,
I left the jocund bevy
   And that young man o' mine.

The roadside elms pass by me, -
   Why do I sink with shame
When the birds a-perch there eye me?
   They, too, have done the same!

 The singers are gone from the Cornmarket-place
       With their broadsheets of rhymes,
 The street rings no longer in treble and bass
       With their skits on the times,
 And the Cross, lately thronged, is a dim naked space
    That but echoes the stammering chimes.

 From Clock-corner steps, as each quarter ding-dongs,
       Away the folk roam
 By the "Hart" and Grey's Bridge into byways and "drongs,"
       Or across the ridged loam;
 The younger ones shrilling the lately heard songs,
    The old saying, "Would we were home."

 The shy-seeming maiden so mute in the fair
       Now rattles and talks,
 And that one who looked the most swaggering there
       Grows sad as she walks,
 And she who seemed eaten by cankering care
    In statuesque sturdiness stalks.

 And midnight clears High Street of all but the ghosts
       Of its buried burghees,
 From the latest far back to those old Roman hosts
       Whose remains one yet sees,
 Who loved, laughed, and fought, hailed their friends, drank their toasts
    At their meeting-times here, just as these!