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Late Lyrics and Earlier: With Many Other Verses
Late Lyrics and Earlier With Many Other Verses Author:Thomas Hardy General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1922 Original Publisher: Macmillan Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Literary Criticism / Poetry Poetry / General Poetry / American / General Poetry / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint... more » of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: A GENTLEMAN'S EPITAPH ON HIMSELF AND A LADY, WHO WERE BURIED TOGETHER I DWELT in the shade of a city, She far by the sea, With folk perhaps good, gracious, witty; But never with me. Her form on the ballroom's smooth flooring I never once met, To guide her with accents adoring Through Weippert's "First Set."1 I spent my life's seasons with pale ones In Vanity Fair, And she enjoyed hers among hale ones In salt-smelling air. 1 Quadrilles danced early in the nineteenth century. A GENTLEMAN'S EPITAPH 47 Maybe she had eyes of deep colour, Maybe they were blue, Maybe as she aged they got duller; That never I knew. She may have had lips like the coral, But I never kissed them, Saw pouting, nor curling in quarrel, Nor sought for, nor missed them. Not a word passed of love all our lifetime, Between us, nor thrill; We'd never a husband-and-wife time, For good or for ill. Yet as one dust, through bleak days and vernal, Lie I and lies she, This never-known lady, eternal Companion to me ! THE OLD GOWN (song) I HAVE seen her in gowns the brightest, Of azure, green, and red, And in the simplest, whitest, Muslined from heel to head ; I have watched her walking, riding, Shade-flecked by a leafy tree, Or in fixed thought abiding By the foam-fingered sea. In woodlands I have known her, When boughs were mourning loud, In the rain-re...« less