HER IMMORTALITY
by: Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)
- PON a noon
I pilgrimed through
- A pasture, mile by mile,
- Unto the place where I last saw
- My dead Loves living smile.
-
- And sorrowing I lay me down
- Upon the heated sod:
- It seemed as if my body pressed
- The very ground she trod.
-
- I lay, and thought; and in a trance
- She came and stood me by--
- The same, even to the marvellous ray
- That used to light her eye.
-
- You draw me, and I come to you,
- My faithful one, she said,
- In voice that had the moving tone
- It bore in maidenhead.
-
- She said: Tis seven years since I died:
- Few now remember me;
- My husband clasps another bride;
- My children mothers she.
-
- My brethren, sisters, and my friends
- Care not to meet my sprite:
- Who prized me most I did not know
- Till I passed down from sight.
-
- I said: My days are lonely here;
- I need thy smile alway:
- Ill use this night my ball or blade,
- And join thee ere the day.
-
- A tremor stirred her tender lips,
- Which parted to dissuade:
- That cannot be, O friend, she cried;
- Think, I am but a Shade!
-
- A Shade but in its mindful ones
- Has immortality;
- By living, me you keep alive,
- By dying you slay me.
-
- In you resides my single power
- Of sweet continuance here;
- On your fidelity I count
- Through many a coming year.
-
- --I started through me at her plight,
- So suddenly confessed:
- Dismissing late distaste for life,
- I craved its bleak unrest.
-
- I will not die, my One of all!--
- To lengthen out thy days
- Ill guard me from minutest harms
- That may invest my ways!
-
- She smiled and went. Since then she comes
- Oft when her birth-moon climbs,
- Or at the seasons ingresses
- Or anniversary times;
-
- But grows my grief. When I surcease,
- Through whom alone lives she,
- Ceases my Love, her words, her ways,
- Never again to be!
"Her Immortality" 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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