Thomas Hardy Poems

IF but some vengeful god would call to me
From up the sky, and laugh: "Thou suffering thing,
Know that thy sorrow is my ecstasy,
That thy love's loss is my hate's profiting!"
...

Well, World, you have kept faith with me,
Kept faith with me;
Upon the whole you have proved to be
Much as you said you were.
...

"Ah, are you digging on my grave,
My loved one? -- planting rue?"
-- "No: yesterday he went to wed
One of the brightest wealth has bred.
...

Long have I framed weak phantasies of Thee,
   O Willer masked and dumb!
   Who makest Life become, -
As though by labouring all-unknowingly,
...

I LOOK into my glass,
And view my wasting skin,
And say, "Would God it came to pass
My heart had shrunk as thin!"
...

As I drive to the junction of lane and highway,
And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette,
I look behind at the fading byway,
And see on its slope, now glistening wet,
...

I

In a solitude of the sea
...

There trudges one to a merry-making
With sturdy swing,
On whom the rain comes down.
...

I
I saw a slowly-stepping train --
Lined on the brows, scoop-eyed and bent and hoar --
Following in files across a twilit plain
...

O sweet To-morrow! -
   After to-day
   There will away
This sense of sorrow.
...