The Man With A Past

There was merry-making
When the first dart fell
As a heralding, -
Till grinned the fully bared thing,
And froze like a spell -
Like a spell.

Innocent was she,
Innocent was I,
Too simple we!
Before us we did not see,
Nearing, aught wry -
Aught wry!

I can tell it not now,
It was long ago;
And such things cow;
But that is why and how
Two lives were so -
Were so.

Yes, the years matured,
And the blows were three
That time ensured
On her, which she dumbly endured;
And one on me -
One on me.

Thomas Hardy

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928) was an English novelist and poet. Born in Dorset, his works often featured the semi-fictional region of Wessex. Hardy was initially trained as an architect, but he later pursued writing full-time. His novels, including 'Tess of the d'Urbervilles,' 'Far from the Madding Crowd,' and 'Jude the Obscure,' are known for their critical portrayal of Victorian society and its mores. As a poet, he is recognized for his explorations of human suffering and the indifferent forces of nature. Hardy's legacy is profound, influencing both literature and criticism.

Thomas Hardy

Beeny Cliff

Thomas Hardy, Simple Poetry

Fragment

Thomas Hardy, Simple Poetry

Friends Beyond

Thomas Hardy, Simple Poetry

An Experience

Thomas Hardy, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

Explore a curated selection of verses that share themes, styles, and emotional resonance with the poem you've just read.

The Noble Lady's Tale

I

"We moved with pensive paces,
I and he,
And bent our faded faces
Wistfully,
For something troubled him, and troubled me.

"The lanthorn feebly lightened
Our grey hall,
Where ancient brands had brightened
Hearth and wall,
And shapes long vanished whither vanish all.

"'O why, Love, nightly, daily,'
I had said,
'Dost sigh, and smile so palely,
As if shed
Were all Life's blossoms, all its dear things dead?'

"'Since silence sets thee grieving,'
He replied,
'And I abhor deceiving
One so tried,
Why, Love, I'll speak, ere time us twain divide.'

"He held me, I remember,
Just as when
Our life was June - (September
It was then);
And we walked on, until he spoke again.

"'Susie, an Irish...

Thomas Hardy

A Trampwoman's Tragedy

I

From Wynyard's Gap the livelong day,
The livelong day,
We beat afoot the northward way
We had travelled times before.
The sun-blaze burning on our backs,
Our shoulders sticking to our packs,
By fosseway, fields, and turnpike tracks
We skirted sad Sedge-Moor.

II

Full twenty miles we jaunted on,
We jaunted on, -
My fancy-man, and jeering John,
And Mother Lee, and I.
And, as the sun drew down to west,
We climbed the toilsome Poldon crest,
And saw, of landskip sights the best,
The inn that beamed thereby.

III

For months we had padded side by side,
Ay, side by side
Through the Great Forest, Blackmoor wide,
And where the Parret ran.
We'd faced the gusts on Mendip ridge,
Had crossed the Yeo unhel...

Thomas Hardy

In The Night She Came

I told her when I left one day
That whatsoever weight of care
Might strain our love, Time's mere assault
Would work no changes there.
And in the night she came to me,
Toothless, and wan, and old,
With leaden concaves round her eyes,
And wrinkles manifold.

I tremblingly exclaimed to her,
"O wherefore do you ghost me thus!
I have said that dull defacing Time
Will bring no dreads to us."
"And is that true of YOU?" she cried
In voice of troubled tune.
I faltered: "Well . . . I did not think
You would test me quite so soon!"

She vanished with a curious smile,
Which told me, plainlier than by word,
That my staunch pledge could scarce beguile
The fear she had averred.
Her doubts then wrought their shape in me,
And when next day I ...

Thomas Hardy

The Re-Enactment

    Between the folding sea-downs,
    In the gloom
    Of a wailful wintry nightfall,
    When the boom
Of the ocean, like a hammering in a hollow tomb,

    Throbbed up the copse-clothed valley
    From the shore
    To the chamber where I darkled,
    Sunk and sore
With gray ponderings why my Loved one had not come before

    To salute me in the dwelling
    That of late
    I had hired to waste a while in -
    Vague of date,
Quaint, and remote wherein I now expectant sate;

    On the solitude, unsignalled,
    Broke a man
    Who, in air as if at home there,
    Seemed to scan
Every fire-flecked nook of the apartment span by span.

    A stranger's and no lover's
    Eyes were these,
    Eyes of a man wh...

Thomas Hardy

The Contretemps

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
On that harbour-bridge; nor was I he of her tryst.

So loosening from me swift she said:
"O why, why feign to be
The one I had meant! to whom I have sped
To fly with, being so sorrily wed!"
- 'Twas thus and thus that she upbraided me.

My assignation had struck upon
Some others' like it, I found.
And her lover rose on the night anon;
And then her husband entered on
The lamplit, snowflaked, sloppiness around.

"Take her and welcome, man!" he cried:
"I wash my hands of her.
I'll find me twice as good a bride!"
All this to me, whom he had eyed,
Plainly, as his wife's planned deliverer....

Thomas Hardy

The Woman I Met

A stranger, I threaded sunken-hearted
A lamp-lit crowd;
And anon there passed me a soul departed,
Who mutely bowed.
In my far-off youthful years I had met her,
Full-pulsed; but now, no more life's debtor,
Onward she slid
In a shroud that furs half-hid.

"Why do you trouble me, dead woman,
Trouble me;
You whom I knew when warm and human?
How it be
That you quitted earth and are yet upon it
Is, to any who ponder on it,
Past being read!"
"Still, it is so," she said.

"These were my haunts in my olden sprightly
Hours of breath;
Here I went tempting frail youth nightly
To their death;
But you deemed me chaste me, a tinselled sinner!
How thought you one with pureness in her
Could pace this street
Eyeing some man to greet?...

Thomas Hardy