Thomas Hardy Poems

I rose at night and visited
The Cave of the Unborn,
And crowding shapes surrounded me
For tidings of the life to be,
...

Bother Bulleys, let us sing
   From the dawn till evening! -
For we know not that we go not
   When the day's pale pinions fold
...

When mid-autumn's moan shook the night-time,
And sedges were horny,
And summer's green wonderwork faltered
On leaze and in lane,
...

Who, then, was Cestius,
And what is he to me? -
Amid thick thoughts and memories multitudinous
One thought alone brings he.
...

O epic-famed, god-haunted Central Sea,
Heave careless of the deep wrong done to thee
When from Torino's track I saw thy face first flash on me.
...

Its former green is blue and thin,
And its once firm legs sink in and in;
Soon it will break down unaware,
Soon it will break down unaware.
...

'What do you see in that time-touched stone,
When nothing is there
But ashen blankness, although you give it
A rigid stare?
...

I

It bends far over Yell'ham Plain,
   And we, from Yell'ham Height,
...

A forward rush by the lamp in the gloom,
And we clasped, and almost kissed;
But she was not the woman whom
I had promised to meet in the thawing brume
...

I

Everybody else, then, going,
And I still left where the fair was?
...