Thomas Hardy Poems

THOUGH I waste watches framing words to fetter
Some spirit to mine own in clasp and kiss,
Out of the night there looms a sense 'twere better
To fail obtaining whom one fails to miss.
...

I

Last year I called this world of gain-givings
The darkest thinkable, and questioned sadly
...

I LONGED to love a full-boughed beech
And be as high as he:
I stretched an arm within his reach,
And signalled unity.
...

(After passing Sirmione, April 1887.)

Sirmio, thou dearest dear of strands
That Neptune strokes in lake and sea,
...

Queer are the ways of a man I know:
He comes and stands
In a careworn craze,
And looks at the sands
...

Upon a poet’s page I wrote
Of old two letters of her name;
Part seemed she of the effulgent thought
Whence that high singer’s rapture came.
...

He enters, and mute on the edge of a chair
Sits a thin-faced lady, a stranger there,
A type of decayed gentility;
And by some small signs he well can guess
...

Forty years back, when much had place
That since has perished out of mind,
I heard that voice and saw that face.
...

They bear him to his resting-place—
In slow procession sweeping by;
I follow at a stranger’s space;
His kindred they, his sweetheart I.
...

In Memory of one of the Writer's Family who was a Volunteer during the War
with Napoleon

In a ferny byway
...