Thomas Hardy Poems

For A. W. B.

SHE sought the Studios, beckoning to her side
An arch-designer, for she planned to build.
...

Had you wept; had you but neared me with a frail uncertain ray,
Dewy as the face of the dawn, in your large and luminous eye,
...

I

Dear Lizbie Browne,
Where are you now?
...

Had I but lived a hundred years ago
I might have gone, as I have gone this year,
By Warmwell Cross on to a Cove I know,
And Time have placed his finger on me there:
...

When the hamlet hailed a birth
   Judy used to cry:
When she heard our christening mirth
   She would kneel and sigh.
...

Southampton Docks: October 1899

Here, where Vespasian's legions struck the sands,
And Cendric with the Saxons entered in,
...

O life with the sad seared face,
   I weary of seeing thee,
And thy draggled cloak, and thy hobbling pace,
   And thy too-forced pleasantry!
...

I

The moving sun-shapes on the spray,
The sparkles where the brook was flowing,
...

I walked in loamy Wessex lanes, afar
From rail-track and from highway, and I heard
In field and farmstead many an ancient word
Of local lineage like "Thu bist," "Er war,"
...

Under a daisied bank
There stands a rich red ruminating cow,
   And hard against her flank
A cotton-hooded milkmaid bends her brow.
...