AT AN INN
by: Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
- HEN we as
strangers sought
- Their catering care,
- Veiled smiles bespoke their thought
- Of what we were.
- They warmed as they opined
- Us more than friends--
- That we had all resigned
- For loves dear ends.
-
- And that swift sympathy
- With living love
- Which quicks the world--maybe
- The spheres above,
- Made them our ministers,
- Moved them to say,
- Ah, God, that bliss like theirs
- Would flush our day!
-
- And we were left alone
- As Loves own pair;
- Yet never the love-light shone
- Between us there!
- But that which chilled the breath
- Of afternoon,
- And palsied unto death
- The pane-flys tune.
-
- The kiss their zeal foretold,
- And now deemed come,
- Came not: within his hold
- Love lingered numb.
- Why cast he on our port
- A bloom not ours?
- Why shaped us for his sport
- In after-hours?
-
- As we seemed we were not
- That day afar,
- And now we seem not what
- We aching are.
- O severing sea and land,
- O laws of men,
- Ere death, once let us stand
- As we stood then!
"At an Inn" is reprinted
from Wessex Poems and Other Verses. Thomas Hardy. New
York: Harper, 1898. |
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POEMS BY THOMAS HARDY |
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