Love poems
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From Victor Hugo
© Thomas Hardy
Child, were I king, I'd yield my royal rule,
My chariot, sceptre, vassal-service due,
My crown, my porphyry-basined waters cool,
My fleets, whereto the sea is but a pool,
For a glance from you!
The Well-Beloved
© Thomas Hardy
I wayed by star and planet shine
Towards the dear one's home
At Kingsbere, there to make her mine
When the next sun upclomb.
Revulsion
© Thomas Hardy
THOUGH I waste watches framing words to fetter
Some spirit to mine own in clasp and kiss,
Out of the night there looms a sense 'twere better
To fail obtaining whom one fails to miss.
Her Immortality
© Thomas Hardy
UPON a noon I pilgrimed through
A pasture, mile by mile,
Unto the place where I last saw
My dead Love's living smile.
Her Dilemma
© Thomas Hardy
THE two were silent in a sunless church,
Whose mildewed walls, uneven paving-stones,
And wasted carvings passed antique research;
And nothing broke the clock's dull monotones.
Tess's Lament
© Thomas Hardy
I I would that folk forgot me quite,
Forgot me quite!
I would that I could shrink from sight,
And no more see the sun.
Let Me Enjoy
© Thomas Hardy
Let me enjoy the earth no less
Because the all-enacting Might
That fashioned forth its loveliness
Had other aims than my delight.
My Cicely
© Thomas Hardy
"ALIVE?"--And I leapt in my wonder,
Was faint of my joyance,
And grasses and grove shone in garments
Of glory to me.
The Dream-Follower
© Thomas Hardy
A dream of mine flew over the mead
To the halls where my old Love reigns;
And it drew me on to follow its lead:
And I stood at her window-panes;
An Ancient To Ancients
© Thomas Hardy
Where once we danced, where once we sang,
Gentlemen,
The floors are sunken, cobwebs hang,
And cracks creep; worms have fed upon
Her Death And After
© Thomas Hardy
'TWAS a death-bed summons, and forth I went
By the way of the Western Wall, so drear
On that winter night, and sought a gate--
The home, by Fate,
Of one I had long held dear.
The Dance At The Phoenix
© Thomas Hardy
To Jenny came a gentle youth
From inland leazes lone;
His love was fresh as apple-blooth
By Parrett, Yeo, or Tone.
In The Moonlight
© Thomas Hardy
"O lonely workman, standing there
In a dream, why do you stare and stare
At her grave, as no other grave where there?"
Ditty
© Thomas Hardy
(E. L. G.)BENEATH a knap where flown
Nestlings play,
Within walls of weathered stone,
Far away
The Farm Woman's Winter
© Thomas Hardy
IIf seasons all were summers,
And leaves would never fall,
And hopping casement-comers
Were foodless not at all,
The Tree: An Old Man's Story
© Thomas Hardy
Its roots are bristling in the air
Like some mad Earth-god's spiny hair;
The loud south-wester's swell and yell
Smote it at midnight, and it fell.
Thus ends the tree
Where Some One sat with me.
Beeny Cliff
© Thomas Hardy
I
O the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea,
And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free-
The woman whom I loved so, and who loyally loved me.
She, To Him IV
© Thomas Hardy
THIS love puts all humanity from me;
I can but maledict her, pray her dead,
For giving love and getting love of thee--
Feeding a heart that else mine own had fed!
The Cave Of The Unborn
© Thomas Hardy
I rose at night and visited
The Cave of the Unborn,
And crowding shapes surrounded me
For tidings of the life to be,
Who long had prayed the silent Head
To speed their advent morn.
The To-Be-Forgotten
© Thomas Hardy
I
I heard a small sad sound,
And stood awhile among the tombs around:
"Wherefore, old friends," said I, "are you distrest,
Now, screened from life's unrest?"
