Car poems
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The Colonel's Solilquy
© Thomas Hardy
"The quay recedes. Hurrah! Ahead we go! . . .
It's true I've been accustomed now to home,
And joints get rusty, and one's limbs may grow
More fit to rest than roam.
Middle-Age Enthusiasms
© Thomas Hardy
WE passed where flag and flower
Signalled a jocund throng;
We said: "Go to, the hour
Is apt!"--and joined the song;
And, kindling, laughed at life and care,
Although we knew no laugh lay there.
She, to Him, II
© Thomas Hardy
Perhaps, long hence, when I have passed away,
Some others feature, accent, thought like mine,
Will carry you back to what I used to say,
And bring some memory of your loves decline.
The Tenant-For-Life
© Thomas Hardy
The sun said, watching my watering-pot
"Some morn you'll pass away;
These flowers and plants I parch up hot -
Who'll water them that day?
San Sebastian
© Thomas Hardy
"I watched her to-day; a more comely maid,
As she danced in her muslin bowed with blue,
Round a Hintock maypole never gayed."
--"Aye, aye; I watched her this day, too,
As it happens," the Sergeant said.
Leipzig
© Thomas Hardy
"OLD Norbert with the flat blue cap--
A German said to be--
Why let your pipe die on your lap,
Your eyes blink absently?"--
At An Inn
© Thomas Hardy
WHEN we as strangers sought
Their catering care,
Veiled smiles bespoke their thought
Of what we were.
The Bridge of Lodi.
© Thomas Hardy
When of tender mind and body
I was moved by minstrelsy,
And that strain "The Bridge of Lodi"
Brought a strange delight to me.
The Problem
© Thomas Hardy
Shall we conceal the Case, or tell it -
We who believe the evidence?
Here and there the watch-towers knell it
With a sullen significance,
Heard of the few who hearken intently and carry an eagerly upstrained
sense.
The Supplanter: A Tale
© Thomas Hardy
He bends his travel-tarnished feet
To where she wastes in clay:
From day-dawn until eve he fares
Along the wintry way;
From day-dawn until eve repairs
Unto her mound to pray.
At A Bridal
© Thomas Hardy
WHEN you paced forth, to wait maternity,
A dream of other offspring held my mind,
Compounded of us twain as Love designed;
Rare forms, that corporate now will never be!
The Peasant's Confession
© Thomas Hardy
Good Father!
Twas an eve in middle June,
And war was waged anew
By great Napoleon, who for years had strewn
Mens bones all Europe through.
The Two Men
© Thomas Hardy
THERE were two youths of equal age,
Wit, station, strength, and parentage;
They studied at the self-same schools,
And shaped their thoughts by common rules.
The Superseded
© Thomas Hardy
As newer comers crowd the fore,
We drop behind.
- We who have laboured long and sore
Times out of mind,
And keen are yet, must not regret
To drop behind.
De Profundis
© Thomas Hardy
Wintertime nighs;
But my bereavement-pain
It cannot bring again:
Twice no one dies.
Cardinal Bembo's Epitaph on Raphael
© Thomas Hardy
Here's one in whom Nature feared--faint at such vying -
Eclipse while he lived, and decease at his dying.
Catullus: XXXI
© Thomas Hardy
(After passing Sirmione, April 1887.) Sirmio, thou dearest dear of strands
That Neptune strokes in lake and sea,
With what high joy from stranger lands
Doth thy old friend set foot on thee!
Long Plighted
© Thomas Hardy
Is it worth while, dear, now,
To call for bells, and sally forth arrayed
For marriage-rites -- discussed, decried, delayed
So many years?
Wives in the Sere
© Thomas Hardy
I Never a careworn wife but shows,
If a joy suffuse her,
Something beautiful to those
Patient to peruse her,
The Phantom Horsewoman.
© Thomas Hardy
Queer are the ways of a man I know:
He comes and stands
In a careworn craze,
And looks at the sands
