Time poems
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Ditty
© Thomas Hardy
(E. L. G.)BENEATH a knap where flown
Nestlings play,
Within walls of weathered stone,
Far away
Thoughts Of Phena
© Thomas Hardy
at news of her death Not a line of her writing have I
Not a thread of her hair,
No mark of her late time as dame in her dwelling, whereby
I may picture her there;
Waiting Both
© Thomas Hardy
A star looks down at me,
And says: "Here I and you
Stand each in our degree:
What do you mean to do,
The Ghost Of The Past
© Thomas Hardy
We two kept house, the Past and I,
The Past and I;
I tended while it hovered nigh,
Leaving me never alone.
The Sick God
© Thomas Hardy
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.
Shelley's Skylark (The neighbourhood of Leghorn: March)
© Thomas Hardy
Somewhere afield here something lies
In Earth's oblivious eyeless trust
That moved a poet to prophecies -
A pinch of unseen, unguarded dust
In A Museum
© Thomas Hardy
Here's the mould of a musical bird long passed from light,
Which over the earth before man came was winging;
There's a contralto voice I heard last night,
That lodges with me still in its sweet singing.
"How Great My Grief" (Triolet)
© Thomas Hardy
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,
She, To Him
© Thomas Hardy
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;
To An Unborn Pauper Child
© Thomas Hardy
Breathe not, hid Heart: cease silently,
And though thy birth-hour beckons thee,
Sleep the long sleep:
The Doomsters heap
Travails and teens around us here,
And Time-Wraiths turn our songsingings to fear.
Last Words To A Dumb Friend
© Thomas Hardy
Housemate, I can think you still
Bounding to the window-sill,
Over which I vaguely see
Your small mound beneath the tree,
Showing in the autumn shade
That you moulder where you played.
"I Need Not Go"
© Thomas Hardy
I need not go
Through sleet and snow
To where I know
She waits for me;
At Castle Boterel
© Thomas Hardy
As I drive to the junction of lane and highway,
And the drizzle bedrenches the waggonette,
I look behind at the fading byway,
And see on its slope, now glistening wet,
Distinctly yet
The House Of Hospitalities
© Thomas Hardy
Here we broached the Christmas barrel,
Pushed up the charred log-ends;
Here we sang the Christmas carol,
And called in friends.
In Time Of "The Breaking Of Nations"
© Thomas Hardy
I
Only a man harrowing clods
In a slow silent walk
With an old horse that stumbles and nods
Half asleep as they stalk.
The Dead Man Walking
© Thomas Hardy
They hail me as one living,
But don't they know
That I have died of late years,
Untombed although?
God's Funeral
© Thomas Hardy
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.
I Look Into My Glass
© Thomas Hardy
I look into my glass,
And view my wasting skin,
And say, "Would God it came to pass
My heart had shrunk as thin!"
He Never Expected Much
© Thomas Hardy
Well, World, you have kept faith with me,
Kept faith with me;
Upon the whole you have proved to be
Much as you said you were.
Lines On The Loss Of The "Titanic"
© Thomas Hardy
In a solitude of the sea
Deep from human vanity,
And the Pride of Life that planned her, stilly couches she.
