Time's Laughingstocks and Other Verses by Thomas Hardy
page 7 of 158 (04%)
page 7 of 158 (04%)
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Till, the upper roadway quitting,
I adventured on the open drouthy downland thinly grassed, While the spry white scuts of conies flashed before me, earthward flitting, And an arid wind went past. Round about me bulged the barrows As before, in antique silence--immemorial funeral piles - Where the sleek herds trampled daily the remains of flint-tipt arrows Mid the thyme and chamomiles; And the Sarsen stone there, dateless, On whose breast we had sat and told the zephyrs many a tender vow, Held the heat of yester sun, as sank thereon one fated mateless From those far fond hours till now. Maybe flustered by my presence Rose the peewits, just as all those years back, wailing soft and loud, And revealing their pale pinions like a fitful phosphorescence Up against the cope of cloud, Where their dolesome exclamations Seemed the voicings of the self-same throats I had heard when life was green, Though since that day uncounted frail forgotten generations Of their kind had flecked the scene. - And so, living long and longer In a past that lived no more, my eyes discerned there, suddenly, That a figure broke the skyline--first in vague contour, then stronger, And was crossing near to me. |
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