Thomas Hardy Poems

While the far farewell music thins and fails,
And the broad bottoms rip the bearing brine -
All smalling slowly to the gray sea line -
And each significant red smoke-shaft pales,
...

At last I entered a long dark gallery,
Catacomb-lined; and ranged at the side
Were the bodies of men from far and wide
Who, motion past, were nevertheless not dead.
...

(E. L. G.)

BENEATH a knap where flown
Nestlings play,
...

'What do you see in that time-touched stone,
When nothing is there
But ashen blankness, although you give it
A rigid stare?
...

With Thoughts of Sergeant M---- (Pensioner), who died 185-

"WHY, Sergeant, stray on the Ivel Way,
As though at home there were spectres rife?
...

At nine in the morning there passed a church,
At ten there passed me by the sea,
At twelve a town of smoke and smirch,
...

My spirit will not haunt the mound
Above my breast,
But travel, memory-possessed,
To where my tremulous being found
...

Where once we danced, where once we sang,
Gentlemen,
The floors are sunken, cobwebs hang,
And cracks creep; worms have fed upon
...

I found me in a great surging space,
At either end a door,
And I said: "What is this giddying place,
With no firm-fixéd floor,
...

I come across from Mellstock while the moon wastes weaker
To behold where I lived with you for twenty years and more:
...