Thomas Hardy Poems

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by Hardy, Thomas

 You did not come,
And marching Time drew on, and wore me numb.
Yet less for loss of your dear presence there
Than that I thus found lacking in your make
That high compassion which can overbear
Reluctance for pure loving kindness' sake
Grieved I, when, as the hope-hour stroked its sum,
You did not come. 

You love me not,
And love alone can lend you loyalty;
--I...Read more of this...

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by Hardy, Thomas

 South of the Line, inland from far Durban,
A mouldering soldier lies--your countryman.
Awry and doubled up are his gray bones,
And on the breeze his puzzled phantom moans
Nightly to clear Canopus: "I would know
By whom and when the All-Earth-gladdening Law
Of Peace, brought in by that Man Crucified,
Was ruled to be inept, and set aside?

And what of logic or of truth appears
In...Read more of this...

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by Hardy, Thomas

 AS evening shaped I found me on a moor
Which sight could scarce sustain:
The black lean land, of featureless contour,
Was like a tract in pain.

"This scene, like my own life," I said, "is one
Where many glooms abide;
Toned by its fortune to a deadly dun--
Lightless on every side.

I glanced aloft and halted, pleasure-caught
To see the contrast there:
The ray-lit clouds gleamed glory;...Read more of this...

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by Hardy, Thomas

 I MARK the months in liveries dank and dry,
The day-tides many-shaped and hued;
I see the nightfall shades subtrude,
And hear the monotonous hours clang negligently by.

I view the evening bonfires of the sun
On hills where morning rains have hissed;
The eyeless countenance of the mist
Pallidly rising when the summer droughts are done.

I have seen the lightning-blade, the leaping star,
The caldrons of...Read more of this...

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by Hardy, Thomas

 Through vaults of pain, 
Enribbed and wrought with groins of ghastliness, 
I passed, and garish spectres moved my brain 
 To dire distress. 

 And hammerings, 
And quakes, and shoots, and stifling hotness, blent 
With webby waxing things and waning things 
 As on I went. 

 "Where lies the end 
To this foul way?" I asked with weakening...Read more of this...

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by Hardy, Thomas

 "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. 
'It cannot hurt her now,' he said, 
'That I should not be true.'" 

"Then who is digging on my grave, 
My nearest dearest kin?" 
-- "Ah, no: they sit and think, 'What...Read more of this...

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by Hardy, Thomas

 I 

A shaded lamp and a waving blind, 
And the beat of a clock from a distant floor: 
On this scene enter--winged, horned, and spined - 
A longlegs, a moth, and a dumbledore; 
While 'mid my page there idly stands 
A sleepy fly, that rubs its hands . . . 

II 

Thus meet we five, in this still place,...Read more of this...

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by Hardy, Thomas

 Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea, 
Now steals along upon the Moon's meek shine 
In even monochrome and curving line 
Of imperturbable serenity. 

How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry 
With the torn troubled form I know as thine, 
That profile, placid as a brow divine, 
With continents of moil and misery? 

And can immense Mortality but...Read more of this...

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by Hardy, Thomas

 Around the house the flakes fly faster, 
And all the berries now are gone 
From holly and cotoneaster 
Around the house. The flakes fly!--faster 
Shutting indoors that crumb-outcaster 
We used to see upon the lawn 
Around the house. The flakes fly faster, 
And all the berries now are gone!...Read more of this...

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by Hardy, Thomas

 I 

"Percussus sum sicut foenum, et aruit cor meum." 
- Ps. ci 

 Wintertime nighs; 
But my bereavement-pain 
It cannot bring again: 
 Twice no one dies. 

 Flower-petals flee; 
But, since it once hath been, 
No more that severing scene 
 Can harrow me. 

 Birds faint in dread: 
I shall not lose old strength 
In the lone...Read more of this...

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by Hardy, Thomas

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

II 
And by contagious throbs of thought
Or latent knowledge that within me lay
And had already stirred me, I was wrought
To consciousness of sorrow even as they.

III 
The fore-borne shape, to my...Read more of this...

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by Hardy, Thomas

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!"

Then would I bear it, clench myself, and die,
Steeled by the sense of ire unmerited;
Half-eased in that a Powerfuller than I
Had willed and meted me the tears I shed.

But not...Read more of this...

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by Hardy, Thomas

 How great my grief, my joys how few, 
Since first it was my fate to know thee! 
- Have the slow years not brought to view 
How great my grief, my joys how few, 
Nor memory shaped old times anew, 
 Nor loving-kindness helped to show thee 
How great my grief, my joys how few, 
 Since first it...Read more of this...

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by Hardy, Thomas

 WHEN you shall see me lined by tool of Time,
My lauded beauties carried off from me,
My eyes no longer stars as in their prime,
My name forgot of Maiden Fair and Free;

When in your being heart concedes to mind,
And judgment, though you scarce its process know,
Recalls the excellencies I once enshrined,
And you are irked that they have withered so:

Remembering that...Read more of this...

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by Hardy, Thomas

I leant upon a coppice gate
     When Frost was spectre-gray,
And Winter's dregs made desolate
     The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
     Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
     Had sought their household fires. 

The land's sharp features seemed...Read more of this...

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by Hardy, Thomas

 They hail me as one living,
But don't they know
That I have died of late years,
Untombed although?

I am but a shape that stands here,
A pulseless mould,
A pale past picture, screening
Ashes gone cold.

Not at a minute's warning,
Not in a loud hour,
For me ceased Time's enchantments
In hall and bower.

There was no tragic transit,
No catch of breath,
When silent seasons inched me
On to this...Read more of this...

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by Hardy, Thomas

 I

If seasons all were summers, 
And leaves would never fall, 
And hopping casement-comers 
Were foodless not at all, 
And fragile folk might be here 
That white winds bid depart; 
Then one I used to see here 
Would warm my wasted heart!

II

One frail, who, bravely tilling 
Long hours in gripping gusts, 
Was mastered by their chilling, 
And now his ploughshare...Read more of this...

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by Hardy, Thomas

 Christmas Eve, and twelve of the clock.
 "Now they are all on their knees,"
An elder said as we sat in a flock
 By the embers in hearthside ease.

We pictured the meek mild creatures where
 They dwelt in their strawy pen,
Nor did it occur to one of us there
 To doubt they were kneeling then.

So fair a fancy few would...Read more of this...

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by Hardy, Thomas

 I 

 In days when men had joy of war, 
A God of Battles sped each mortal jar; 
 The peoples pledged him heart and hand, 
 From Israel's land to isles afar. 

II 

 His crimson form, with clang and chime, 
Flashed on each murk and murderous meeting-time, 
 And kings invoked, for rape and raid, 
 His...Read more of this...

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by Hardy, Thomas

Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me,
Saying that now you are not as you were
When you had changed from the one who was all to me,
But as at first, when our day was fair.

Can it be you that I hear?  Let me view you, then,
Standing as when I drew near to the town
Where you would...Read more of this...

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