Thomas Hardy Poems

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

In a ferny byway
...

"O passenger, pray list and catch
   Our sighs and piteous groans,
Half stifled in this jumbled patch
   Of wrenched memorial stones!
...

I rose at night and visited
The Cave of the Unborn,
And crowding shapes surrounded me
For tidings of the life to be,
...

Bother Bulleys, let us sing
   From the dawn till evening! -
For we know not that we go not
   When the day's pale pinions fold
...

When mid-autumn's moan shook the night-time,
And sedges were horny,
And summer's green wonderwork faltered
On leaze and in lane,
...

Who, then, was Cestius,
And what is he to me? -
Amid thick thoughts and memories multitudinous
One thought alone brings he.
...

O epic-famed, god-haunted Central Sea,
Heave careless of the deep wrong done to thee
When from Torino's track I saw thy face first flash on me.
...

I

It bends far over Yell'ham Plain,
   And we, from Yell'ham Height,
...

A forward rush by the lamp in the gloom,
And we clasped, and almost kissed;
But she was not the woman whom
I had promised to meet in the thawing brume
...

I

"O Time, whence comes the Mother's moody look amid her labours,
   As of one who all unwittingly has wounded where she loves?
...