 | Collected poems of Thomas Hardy |  |
671
THE MONUMENT-MAKER
I chiselled her monument
To my mind's content,
Took it to the church by night,
When her planet was at its height,
And set it where I had figured the place in the daytime.
Having niched it there
I stepped back, cheered, and thought its outlines fair,
And its marbles rare.
To my mind's content,
Took it to the church by night,
When her planet was at its height,
And set it where I had figured the place in the daytime.
Having niched it there
I stepped back, cheered, and thought its outlines fair,
And its marbles rare.
Then laughed she over my shoulder as in our Maytime:
“It spells not me!” she said:
“Tells nothing about my beauty, wit, or gay time
With all those, quick and dead,
Of high or lowlihead,
That hovered near,
Including you, who carve there your devotion;
But you felt none, my dear!”
“It spells not me!” she said:
“Tells nothing about my beauty, wit, or gay time
With all those, quick and dead,
Of high or lowlihead,
That hovered near,
Including you, who carve there your devotion;
But you felt none, my dear!”
And then she vanished. Checkless sprang my emotion
And forced a tear
At seeing I'd not been truly known by her,
And never prized!—that my memorial here,
To consecrate her sepulchre,
Was scorned, almost,
By her sweet ghost:
Yet I hoped not quite, in her very innermost!
And forced a tear
At seeing I'd not been truly known by her,
And never prized!—that my memorial here,
To consecrate her sepulchre,
Was scorned, almost,
By her sweet ghost:
Yet I hoped not quite, in her very innermost!
1916.
| Collected poems of Thomas Hardy | |