 | Collected poems of Thomas Hardy |  |
AT THE WORD “FAREWELL”
She looked like a bird from a cloud
On the clammy lawn,
Moving alone, bare-browed
In the dim of dawn.
The candles alight in the room
For my parting meal
Made all things withoutdoors loom
Strange, ghostly, unreal.
On the clammy lawn,
Moving alone, bare-browed
In the dim of dawn.
406
For my parting meal
Made all things withoutdoors loom
Strange, ghostly, unreal.
The hour itself was a ghost,
And it seemed to me then
As of chances the chance furthermost
I should see her again.
I beheld not where all was so fleet
That a Plan of the past
Which had ruled us from birthtime to meet
Was in working at last:
And it seemed to me then
As of chances the chance furthermost
I should see her again.
I beheld not where all was so fleet
That a Plan of the past
Which had ruled us from birthtime to meet
Was in working at last:
No prelude did I there perceive
To a drama at all,
Or foreshadow what fortune might weave
From beginnings so small;
But I rose as if quicked by a spur
I was bound to obey,
And stepped through the casement to her
Still alone in the gray.
To a drama at all,
Or foreshadow what fortune might weave
From beginnings so small;
But I rose as if quicked by a spur
I was bound to obey,
And stepped through the casement to her
Still alone in the gray.
“I am leaving you. . . . Farewell!” I said
As I followed her on
By an alley bare boughs overspread;
“I soon must be gone!”
Even then the scale might have been turned
Against love by a feather,
—But crimson one cheek of hers burned
When we came in together.
As I followed her on
By an alley bare boughs overspread;
“I soon must be gone!”
Even then the scale might have been turned
Against love by a feather,
—But crimson one cheek of hers burned
When we came in together.
| Collected poems of Thomas Hardy | |