Poems of the Past and the Present by Thomas Hardy
page 47 of 148 (31%)
page 47 of 148 (31%)
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Admitting cramps, black humours, wan decay, and baleful blights,
Distress into delights?" IV - "Ah! know'st thou not her secret yet, her vainly veiled deficience, Whence it comes that all unwittingly she wounds the lives she loves? That sightless are those orbs of hers?--which bar to her omniscience Brings those fearful unfulfilments, that red ravage through her zones Whereat all creation groans. V "She whispers it in each pathetic strenuous slow endeavour, When in mothering she unwittingly sets wounds on what she loves; Yet her primal doom pursues her, faultful, fatal is she ever; Though so deft and nigh to vision is her facile finger-touch That the seers marvel much. VI "Deal, then, her groping skill no scorn, no note of malediction; Not long on thee will press the hand that hurts the lives it loves; And while she dares dead-reckoning on, in darkness of affliction, Assist her where thy creaturely dependence can or may, For thou art of her clay." |
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