 | Collected poems of Thomas Hardy |  |
BEST TIMES
We went a day's excursion to the stream,
Basked by the bank, and bent to the ripple-gleam,
And I did not know
That life would show,
However it might flower, no finer glow.
Basked by the bank, and bent to the ripple-gleam,
And I did not know
That life would show,
However it might flower, no finer glow.
I walked in the Sunday sunshine by the road
That wound towards the wicket of your abode,
And I did not think
That life would shrink
To nothing ere it shed a rosier pink.
That wound towards the wicket of your abode,
And I did not think
That life would shrink
To nothing ere it shed a rosier pink.
Unlooked for I arrived on a rainy night,
And you hailed me at the door by the swaying light
And I full forgot
That life might not
Again be touching that ecstatic height.
And you hailed me at the door by the swaying light
And I full forgot
That life might not
Again be touching that ecstatic height.
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And that calm eve when you walked up the stair,
After a gaiety prolonged and rare,
No thought soever
That you might never
Walk down again, struck me as I stood there.
After a gaiety prolonged and rare,
No thought soever
That you might never
Walk down again, struck me as I stood there.
| Collected poems of Thomas Hardy | |