Well, World, you have kept faith with me, Kept faith with me;Upon the whole you have proved to beMuch as you said you were.Since as a child I used to…
Posts published in “Thomas Hardy Poems”
I am the family face; Flesh perishes, I live on,Projecting trait and traceThrough time to times anon,And leaping from place to placeOver oblivion. The years-heired feature that canIn curve and…
I look into my glass,And view my wasting skin,And say, “Would *** it came to passMy heart had shrunk as thin!” For then, I, undistrestBy hearts grown cold to me,Could…
I Here’s the mould of a musical bird long passed from light,Which over the earth before man came was winging;There’s a contralto voice I heard last night,That lodges with me…
Wintertime nighs;But my bereavement-painIt cannot bring again:Twice no one dies. Flower-petals flee;But since it once hath been,No more that severing sceneCan harrow me. Birds faint in dread:I shall not lose…
“O lonely workman, standing thereIn a dream, why do you stare and stareAt her grave, as no other grave where there?” “If your great gaunt eyes so importuneHer soul by…
Pet was never mourned as you,Purrer of the spotless hue,Plumy tail, and wistful gazeWhile you humoured our ***** ways,Or outshrilled your morning callUp the stairs and through the hall—Foot suspended…
Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn,We should have set us down to wetRight many a nipperkin! But ranged as infantry,And staring face to face,I shot…
My spirit will not haunt the moundAbove my breast,But travel, memory-possessed,To where my tremulous being foundLife largest, best. My phantom-footed shape will goWhen nightfall graysHither and thither along the waysI…
I walked in loamy Wessex lanes, afarFrom rail-track and from highway, and I heardIn field and farmstead many an ancient wordOf local lineage like “Thu bist,” “Er war,”“Ich woll,” “Er…
I do not see the hills around, Nor mark the tints the copses wear;I do not note the grassy groundAnd constellated daisies there. I hear not the contralto noteOf cuckoos…
The Roman Road runs straight and bare As the pale parting-line in hairAcross the heath. And thoughtful menContrast its days of Now and Then,And delve, and measure, and compare; Visioning…
“O ‘Melia, my dear, this does everything crown!Who could have supposed I should meet you in Town?And whence such fair garments, such prosperi-ty?”—“O didn’t you know I’d been ruined?” said…
Here is the ancient floor,Footworn and hollowed and thin,Here was the former doorWhere the dead feet walked in. She sat here in her chair,Smiling into the fire;He who played stood…
A bird sings the selfsame song, With never a fault in its flow,That we listened to here those longLong years ago. A pleasing marvel is howA strain of such rapturous…
Once more the cauldron of the sun Smears the bookcase with winy red,And here my page is, and there my bed,And the apple-tree shadows travel along.Soon their intangible track will…
When battles were fought With a chivalrous sense of should and ought,In spirit men said,“End we quick or dead,Honour is some reward!Let us fight fair—for our own best or worst;So,…
(A Reminiscence, 1893) She wore a ‘terra-cotta’ dress,And we stayed, because of the pelting storm,Within the hansom’s dry recess,Though the horse had stopped; yea, motionless We sat on, snug and…
Breathe not, hid Heart: cease silently,And though thy birth-hour beckons thee,Sleep the long sleep:The Doomsters heapTravails and teens around us here,And Time-Wraiths turn our songsingings to fear. Hark, how the…
‘Whenever I plunge my arm, like this, In a basin of water, I never missThe sweet sharp sense of a fugitive dayFetched back from its thickening shroud of gray.Hence the…
A star looks down at me,And says: “Here I and youStand each in our degree:What do you mean to do,— Mean to do?” I say: “For all I know,Wait, and let Time…
This is the weather the cuckoo likes,And so do I;When showers betumble the chestnut spikes,And nestlings fly;And the little brown nightingale bills his best,And they sit outside at ‘The Traveller’s…
When I set out for Lyonnesse,A hundred miles away,The rime was on the spray,And starlight lit my lonesomenessWhen I set out for LyonnesseA hundred miles away. What would bechance at…
December 1899 I She sits in the tawny vapourThat the Thames-side lanes have uprolled,Behind whose webby fold-on-foldLike a waning taperThe street-lamp glimmers cold. A messenger’s knock cracks smartly,Flashed news in…
How do you know that the pilgrim trackAlong the belting zodiacSwept by the sun in his seeming roundsIs traced by now to the Fishes’ boundsAnd into the Ram, when weeks…