| IN TEBEBRIS Wintertime nighs; But my bereavement-pain It cannot bring again: Twice no one dies. Flower-petals flee; But since it once hath been, No more that severing scene Can harrow me. Birds faint in dread: I shall not lose old strength In the lone frost's black length: Strength long since fled! Leaves freeze to dun; But friends cannot turn cold This season as of old For him with none. Tempests may scath; But love cannot make smart Again this year his heart Who no heart hath. Black is night's cope; But death will not appal One, who past doubtings all, Waits in unhope. --Thomas Hardy --------------------- THE VOICE Woman much missed, how you call to me, call to me, Saying that now you are not as you were When you had changed from the one who was all to me, But as at first, when our day was fair. Can it be you that I hear? Let me view you, then, Standing as when I drew near to the town Where you would wait for me: yes, as I knew you then, Even to the original air-blue gown! Or is it only the breeze, in its listlessness Travelling across the wet mead to me here, You being ever dissolved to wan wistlessness, Heard no more again far or near? Thus I; faltering forward, Leaves about me falling, Wind oozing thin through the thorn from norward, And the woman calling. --Thomas Hardy ---------------------- BEI HENNEF The little river twittering in the twilight, The wan, wondering look of the pale sky, This is almost bliss. And everything shut up and gone to sleep, All the troubles and anxieties and pain Gone under the twilight. Only the twilight now, and the soft "Sh!" of the river That will last for ever. And at least I know my love for you is here; I can see it all, it is whole like the twilight, It is large, so large, I could not see it before, Because of the little lights and flickers and interruptions, Troubles, anxieties and pains. You are the call and I am the answer, You are the wish, and I the fulfillment, You are the night, and I the day, What else? it is perfect enough. It is perfectly complete. You and I. What more--? --D.H. Lawrence |